Oct. 7 marked the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which was originally known as Our Lady of Victory. The date commemorates the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when the armies of the Christian west, united as the Holy League under King Philip II of Spain and Pope (later St.) Pius V, defeated the Ottoman Turks who would otherwise have conquered and blotted out all of Christianity from Europe.
In a passage from his classic “Confessions,” St. Augustine looks back on his life and admits: “Late have I loved you O beauty so ancient and new, late have I loved you!” Have we also come late to know God as beautiful? Or worse still, maybe we have yet to experience God’s beauty. So how can we come to know God as beauty, not late but early? A good place to begin, as always, is with Scripture.