They were the most beautiful women I had ever seen together!

Oh yes, I have stared unashamedly at calendar collections of beauty queens gathering at some resort, with some famous photographer cunningly revealing all their vital assets, have even read from underneath those pictures, that these women were the most gorgeous in their country. But as I entered the room today and sat in the last corner chair, and as I saw each of these women, it was a beauty that far transcended any picture that any photographer of any beauty pageant had ever taken.

There was no movement from any of them. They sat transfixed, listening in pin drop silence to the sound of music from a hymn that was being played. And as they listened, their faces reflected a peace, a stillness that every beautiful woman on every calendar, poster or beauty pageant would have exchanged her soul to get.

They were looks of a divine peace, a glowing beauty.

Looks that revealed they had in these moments connected with the stillness of God, and what a radiance it caused to shine from each of them.

Here I was in Bhopal, at the Tanmaya Provincialate, with the sisters of St Joseph of Chambery, where I’d been called to teach these wonderful daughters of God the art of speaking and writing powerfully. Where in a few hours I would explain to each of them how to raise their voices as speakers and use the pen as writers, to showcase truths the world needed to hear. I had come, I thought to give them a voice, but in that stillness and silence and in the beauty that shone from their faces I realised that all I had to tell them was to draw from the well within themselves that fuel of stillness and peace they already possessed.

Through moving pictures that are widely spread, I see women in military apparel marching in regimental formation in Chinese and other armies. In their body language, we see a ferocity and fierceness that reveals a savage force that can withstand the brutalities of the world.

But in the stillness of these beauty queens, I beheld a force mightier than those in any military parade. Even as the music, nothing but one of worship to a God above brings them to such still postures, in that still ‘unmovement’ does one feel a power no army can break through. A strength connected to the Divine above!

Oh yes, they were the most beautiful women I had ever seen.

Beautiful in their absolute stillness.

Beautiful in their relationship to the One above.

Beautiful in the amazing power and strength they derived through stillness!

And in hushed tones I say even as I gaze upon the Divine who can give the same beauty to anyone who receives it, “you too can be the most beautiful women and the handsomest men in the world..!”

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