Our Sacred Duty as Creative Writers
I think it is the creative writer’s duty to find what is beautiful and to share that beauty in one’s writings. As a writer, one of my greatest joys is when a reader somehow sees a truth I wanted to convey. It is that point when my longing heart meets another heart and we can both rise up in praise for the beauty that we have found.
In a world filled with so much darkness, we all need as much light as we could possibly find.
Light that gives sense to our suffering. Light that gives us hope in the midst of despair.
I am not saying that a writer’s work does not include dark and terrible things. It is our very business to be acquainted with grief and tragedy.
But in doing so, it is our responsibility not to leave our readers in total darkness.
We must have eyes that see beyond our present woes, eyes that can continue to look towards heaven while we journey along the narrow and difficult path here below.
Without such eyes, we also lose our heart. And our words become but mere fragments that pass on to nothingness.
And it is not “nothingness” that we proclaim but meaning. It is not senselessness but truth.
That every person who reads our work may become a better human being. One who can think deeply, and feel compassion for one’s fellowmen.
We often complain why God has made this world that’s filled with so much pain. It’s as if we can somehow create a better world when we ourselves refuse to make the most of the one we already have.
God may not have made a world without suffering. But it is certainly a world where beauty, truth and goodness can still be found.
This may not be a world where we can stay as innocent young children. But this is a world where our deepest griefs can turn into our highest joys.
Catholic writers can do a lot when it comes to acquainting the world with eternity and God’s salvation. We can let the whole world know that the shadows we see are but witnesses to the existence of light.
“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”— Simone Wei
“Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you.” — Mark Oliver Everett
“...the present time is marked… by a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair... What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty? Dear friends, as artists you know well that the experience of beauty… the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful. - Pope Benedict XVI
Jocelyn Soriano works full-time as a Catholic writer to share the word of God and invite everyone to take refuge in God’s truth and love.
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