Daily Meditation: Wednesday, April 9, 2003

Sometimes, while in the mountains, we see on the edge of a …

04/09/2003

Sometimes, while in the mountains, we see on the edge of a precipice a tree whose trunk and branches are oddly twisted. This tree has had to withstand bad weather, and the struggle is reflected in its trunk and branches. In the same way, in life we meet people whose faces are tortured and asymmetrical, but what gifts, what talents! This proves that they too have had to endure very difficult conditions, which they have overcome. But in order to do so, they have often developed their mind and will to the detriment of certain qualities of the heart, and these efforts, these tensions, have eventually deformed their faces. Beauty in human beings speaks more of the qualities of their heart than of their intellectual faculties or their will. This is why very beautiful people are often predestined to be victims. Because beauty, true beauty, has a much greater affinity with goodness than with intelligence, they often lack adequate means to defend themselves against the desires their beauty arouses in others.