Resurrecting Chicago

A piece of chalk scraped across a blackboard. The scream of a kindergarten girl  piercing the chatter of kids in a school yard playing catch-me-if-you-can.  They both make me cringe.  So do most movies about religion.  Which brings me to “Father Stu.”

I haven’t seen it yet but I suppose I will.  From “The Bells of St. Mary’s” and  “The Nuns Story” to “The Shoes of the Fisherman” I’ve been disappointed by films dealing with religious experience of Catholics. I will just mention “The Exorcist” and “Spotlight.”

Maybe its simply impossible to show authentic religious experience when it costs you money to see it. Holiness for sale. With buttered popcorn and a Diet Coke. “Father Stu” for sale.

However, film is made for stories. Movies should somehow pick up on individuals with spiritual experiences, especially conversion stories. But you can’t tell these stories without describing the suffering that goes with them.  Love God and you are going to suffer.  Or, do you want to try to answer the question that a man casually tossed my way when he said,” Do you think that God will ever make a human being  that can’t suffer?” The scene was a packed E.R.  The middle-aged man who spoke was trying to comfort his withered aged mother groaning from a wheel chair. I’m not sure whom he meant to ask about, his mother or himself. Suffering as redemption does not transfer well to film, though I hear “Father Stu” tries hard to do it.

Mark Wahlberg is Father Stu, an irreligious ex-boxer who converts and eventually becomes a Catholic priest.  He suffers a horrific motorcycle accident and finally dies of an obscure disease characterized by muscle deterioration. He dies just after his ordination, a shadow of himself but an inspiration to everyone who met him.

So, I’ll go see “Father Stu” but not soon. I guess I don’t want to be disappointed again.  If I wait a while, maybe I’ll mature enough to see it.

Holy Week, 2022

This past Saturday in the Office of Readings, St Gregory Nazianzen’s words came alive to me. St. Gregory challenges us to live the Passover with Jesus in our own way.  Jesus tells us of a new covenant, a new sharing of the cup in a new Jerusalem.  We live that life now in symbol of what is coming for all of us soon, the reality in paradise.  But, first we too have to pass over to the other side.

I can understand the meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus with all its desperation, blood, pain, abasement and heroism, if I consider what the Father is asking of me.  He is asking for my life, too.  He is asking for it during this week of holiness before Easter.

How do I bring myself to the altar in my church? I can only be who I am, no more, no less.  Here, it is a simple wooden table raised like a Calvary in the center of the place of meeting.  The building has its tented space and the holy place at the altar and the holy of holies represented by the tabernacle containing the Bread of life.

What am I going to offer? Who and where is the victim?

St. Gregory looks over the passion narrative and helps me to think about this.  There are as many different kinds of sacrifice as there are followers of Christ. Are you a Joseph of Arimathea? Go to the one who condemned him and ask for His body and care for it. Care for the suffering Christ wherever you find Him.

Are you a Simon of Cyrene? Take up your cross and follow Christ.

If you are crucified next to him like one of the thieves, call on him to make you a promise to be with Him in paradise. “Derive some benefit from your shame; purchase salvation with your death.” He has done nothing to deserve this. Ask Him for this grace even though you, too, are hanging on a cross.

We should avoid the horror of denouncing him as we hang on our cross. Or do we join in the hatred for a God who lets children suffer and convulse in death or in bitter disappointment for our screwed-up lives. Do we hang there and curse and demean the Lord who is with us in our suffering? Is His will simply too much for us, His plan insufferable?

Are you a St. John at the foot of the cross? Receive His mother as your mother. This was the concern of Jesus as he was affixed to the cross and at the point of death. Who would take care of His mother?  You will, John. You, and now I, too, take her for my mother. We take her into our homes. She graces us with her presence because she is full of grace.  She helps keep our house in sanctity and we provide her companionship.

Are you Joseph of Arimathea?  Go to the one who condemned Him to death and ask for His Body. Are you Nicodemus?   Bring burial spices and prepare His body for the tomb.  You and Joseph must carry the body to the garden close by Calvary where Joseph had a tomb which had been prepared for his own body.

Are you one of the Marys or Salome or Joanna at the foot of he cross? Them stand there and comfort him and his mother. Weep through the night and into the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back and experience angels and maybe even see, Jesus Himself.”

(a meditation from a sermon of St Gregory Nazianzen quoted in the second reading on April 9, 2022, the Saturday before Palm Sunday. The title seems to be “We are soon going to share in the Passover.”)