"Science Queen"

After our father Saint Jerome, maximal Doctor of Holy Mother Catholic Church, we may see Beauty in terms of the three transcendental attributes of God: Oneness, Goodness, Truth. Beauty is the transcendental perfection of God in time. Beauty is God’s plenitude, an overflowing — vast yet in nothing superfluous — pouring down in a cascade of music through the orders of Creation, through the stars and heavens, through the whole sublunary world — human, animal, vegetal, mineral — down to the smallest of atoms. Since the Fall, so is it also with our human senses: each being an instrument crafted to resonate differently. In full possession of our senses we are like unto a prism breaking beauty into its spectra and gamuts and separate registers — red, blue, gold — mi, fa, sol — sight, hearing, touch — that scatter in tints and tones and hints and hues; in flocks, in flights, in schools; through water, into air, over ground.

But to return us whence we have fallen is a long climb and arduous. And in assembling our provisions for this ascent, it is not enough to lay the evidence of the senses side by side. These instruments of mind must be fused, in the sense that Lope tells us the painting of Rubens is a poetry for the eye. Imagine poetry, then, as painting for the ear. It is the mind that slowly teaches us to weave together these separate elements into a score, and in this sense we rightly call Theology the Queen of the Sciences, for it is she who enters the final chamber, the abode of the Beloved.

Even as to the lover every aspect of the Beloved is beauty ... the turns and pauses of His mind, the fragrance of His skin, the warmth of His breath as if the radiance of a perfect fire, the chords and separate notes of His voice, His songs ... but here one must not go on too far. In recollecting these, the Queen in her actions is like a lover straining to learn every small and separate thing of her Beloved. These are the notes, and she strives to show us how to compose them in their very fullest arrangement, to fuse them in perfect union, making full use of each and every instrument.

Mind is the shepherd, Mind is the falconer, Mind is the net that recalls and collects, Mind is the guide that shall one day bring them all home to rest. Our mind is an instrument of collection, and a collection of instruments. Logica, inventio, divinatio, and the finest of all is admiratio, for it is this gift of marvelling at the world that brings us most closely on its own to our condition before the Fall.

And it is the soul in Grace that plays them. The soul is in the grace of the orchestra, the Soul is the orchestra of Grace. And its Music is Love.