The deacon was eager to hear more about what led Rory to the Catholic faith. “I remember when you first came here; you were just enrapt by the iconography and beauty of the chant. Is that what has brought you to this decision?” he asked.
“No, it’s because of what’s happening on that altar,” the young man replied.
“Here’s a young man who had no background in Byzantine Eucharistic theology or Byzantine liturgy, but he intuitively understood that all of the icons, the beauty of the chant, pointed to that — the holy Eucharist — and he was hungry for it.”
The young man had been led by “the path of beauty.”
A similar story involved Quinton, who showed up one day as Bennett led a weekly young adult discussion on the Nicene Creed with prayer.
“One Saturday, a young guy comes who I’ve never seen before, and we are talking about some of the high Christology in the central part of the Creed, and I could see his face, and the wheels of his mind were racing.”
Afterward, Quinton introduced himself. Although baptized Catholic, he hadn’t been raised in the Church and became a self-professed atheist. After studying humanities in university, he began reading Plato, Aristotle, and then St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas.
He had many questions and visited various churches before coming to Bennett, with whom he had “many, many conversations.”
Finally, Quinton asked: “What do I need to do to come back to church?”
Learning that Quinton had been baptized and confirmed, the deacon told him he only needed to make a solemn confession and then could receive the Eucharist.
“He became this amazingly devout, faithful young man who married a Ukrainian Greek Catholic girl.”
After the couple became mainstays at their college chapel church, Bennett asked Quinton what had drawn him back. “He said, ‘It’s the truth, and I wanted the truth.’”
Rory had been drawn by beauty, while for Quinton it was reason.
“These two paths of reason and beauty are abundant in the Catholic tradition,” the deacon said. Those who work with young adults need to “form them, to educate them in beauty, nurturing their reason.”
The Church offers a “beautiful depth of tradition” for young people’s desire for truth and authenticity, he said. “We must focus on being holy, catholic, and apostolic in all things that we do, in every aspect of our faith, and in every aspect of our lives. In our sacramental lives, in our liturgical lives, and in our own personal prayer lives, we should always strive for excellence in everything.”
The Church also has to respond to its apostolic call, he said. “We have to innovate, we have to surprise, and we have to be the Church fully in the world for the life of the world. We have to, as Catholics, completely rethink how we are active in the world today and do things differently.”
It all comes down to giving young people “a sense of life in beauty, truth, and goodness — those great classic transcendentals. That is what we’re trying to do at Catholic Pacific College.”
This article was originally published at The B.C. Catholic and is reprinted here with permission.