Small beauties will pass away; great beauty is God.

Christians face two dangers: the temptation to deify earthly things and to make one’s habitual practices divine, as if all of this were to last forever. However, the only eternal beauty is God’s beauty. God himself is the most incredible beauty. The psalm also says so: ‘The heavens talk about the beauty of God’. The problem with humans is that they often bow down to something that is merely a reflection of this beauty, which will disappear one day anyway. Even worse, he serves even more fleeting pleasures.

There are two types of idolatry, into which even the faithful can fall. The first liturgical reading (Wis 13:1–9) and psalm (Ps 19:2–3, 4–5) speak of ‘the beauty of creation’, but they also emphasise the misconduct of those who are unable to see the transcendence behind these beautiful things. This attitude hides ‘idolatry of immanence’. A person who falls into this trap stands before beauty without penetrating what lies behind it, and becomes attached to this idolatry, struck with wonder at the power and energy of these things. They do not consider how much higher their creator is, despite being created by the one who is the beginning and author of beauty. Idolatry is looking at many beautiful things without considering that one day they will pass away. Even twilight has its beauty. We are all in danger of this idolatry — of becoming attached to the beauties of this earth without considering anything beyond it. It is the idolatry of immanence. We believe that things are almost gods and that they will never end. We forget that they are part of something greater. Another kind of idolatry is the customs that harden the heart. In today’s Gospel (Lk 17:26-37).

Jesus describes people in the time of Noah and in the time of Sodom as eating, drinking, marrying, and giving out without caring for others, until the moment of the flood and the moment when fire and brimstone came down from heaven — in other words, until the moment of absolute destruction. Everything becomes a matter of habit — that’s life! We live like this without considering how fleeting this way of life is. This too is idolatry: becoming attached to habits without thinking that they will pass away. The Church reminds us of the purpose of these things. Customs can also be regarded as deities. Idolatry? Life is like that; we carry on! Just as another beauty completes beauty, our habit is completed by eternity and another habit. Well, there’s God.