Aesthetics is concerned with form, shape, composition, expression, and seeing forms AS THEY ARE. Just as the artist is "inspired" and filled with enthusiasm, so too those who SEE are seized with the divine spirit. What is seen is the doxa (glory) of the form, but this glory is the glory of being. Balthasar argues that the mystery in such beauty is the interruption of the eternal into the material in such a way that one can speak of the event of beauty, the entrance of the numinous into this world. To see beauty is to be overcome by the glory that breaks out of this person, this poem, this picture, this flower... We are confronted by the sense of its Otherness.
In 1979 Mother Antonia started a tradition in the prison which she calls the Day of Forgiveness: her protest agains the eye-for-an-eye logic that dominates prison culture. She believes forgiveness is far more effective than any punishment at controlling all the hate and homicide.
"Forgiveness is hard," she says, "but not forgiving is harder. Unforgiveness will age me, it will make me sick, and it will make me ugly. Nothing can bring me so low that I'm goijng to not forgive somebvoedy and destroy myself. Because that's what unforgiveness does. It's a boomerang that comes back."