This makes me think...

A genuine falling in love... is a capitulation to the beautiful.

Falling in love here does not refer to the superficial infatuations or egocentric lust but rather to a selfless commitment made to a fascinating beloved.  While this is seen in ideal and holy marriages, it is especially clear in the case of the saints who are head over heels in love with the supreme Beloved, whose name is God. Saints see and are smitten. The heroic response is the only response. They know from experience that anything less than Everything is simply not enough.


In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevski place on the lips of one of his characters the observation that "beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men."  The one is supreme Glory (the biblical name for supereminent beauty), the other is supreme ugliness. Though our free wills make the choice, it is beauty that provides the powerful attraction to the only victory that ultimately matters in this peak of all combats.
---Thomas Dubay, SM, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet

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