Tag: saints

Mandatory Lent Film Party, 2024: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Every Lent for the last few years, we’ve been watching a worthwhile, faith-related movie together as a family on Friday nights. (Full list at the end.)

The tradition continues! And, in keeping with tradition, right out of the gate we didn’t manage to do it on the first Friday of Lent, but instead started The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) on Saturday, had some streaming issues, and finished watching it Sunday. 

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “MY family would never watch a weird French black-and-white silent film from the 20’s, much less one that got broken up into two nights.” You may be surprised. This is an absolutely enthralling movie. My youngest kid is eight, and she sat there gripping my arm the whole time, and when it was over, she just said, “Wow.” 

It follows Joan’s last week or so of life, from her trial at the hands of her captors, until her execution. The historically accurate synopsis is simply: Joan is interrogated, threatened, and tormented as the English and their French collaborators try to get her to sign a document repudiating her actions leading a revolt against the English. She eventually breaks down and complies, and is sentenced to life in prison, but she regrets her moment of weakness, takes it back, and is burned at the stake. 

You might think of silent film as relying on exaggerated, histrionic facial distortions, with tossed heads and fluttering fingers, pantomime and rolling eyes meant to stand in for dialogue, but that’s not how this works. It does spend most of the film disconcertingly close to individual faces, with the camera at an odd, discomfitingly low angle, looking up at faces from about chin level.

At first I was reminded of the grotesque faces in so many paintings of Jesus being mocked — Hieronymous Bosch or many others.

 

But the faces of her tormenters are not actually grotesques. Instead, when you see them leering or smirking or looking outraged or disgusted, it’s just showing humanity at its recognizable worst.

Some pieces of dialogue are displayed on the screen, in French and in English, enough to keep you current with the story. An incredible complexity of emotion is displayed on screen, so although you often see the actors moving their lips and you don’t hear anything but the musical soundtrack, you don’t feel like you’re missing anything. The story and dialogue are taken directly from the contemporary account of her actual trial. 

The backgrounds are very spare, with light and shadow making up the most important shapes on screen (although the sets and the costume are painstakingly accurate). Much is made of people passing by windows and in and out of shadow, and appearing in doorways. You could have convinced me the film, with its minimalism and startling angles, was shot in in the 1950’s, rather than in 1928. There is so little on screen besides human faces, every object that appears — especially the woven grass crown that follows Joan around —  takes on a gripping significance; and when she is allowed to hold a crucifix as she is led up to her execution space, she cradles it so gratefully and lovingly, and you FEEL that. 

You also feel how horrific it is when, previously, they try to coerce her into recanting, showing her the Eucharist — and then, when she refuses, they put the host away again, blow out the candles, and leave her to herself.  

I thought many times of people who believe they are following their conscience, and find themselves rejected by the Church, or with people who say they represent the Church. Joan is entirely focused on Jesus, her king; and as soon as her captors understand that she really is devoted to him, they use it against her, and try to coerce her literally with Jesus. It’s horrible. This movie isn’t anti-Church, I don’t think. It doesn’t seem to be trying to convey the idea that the hierarchy is by definition cruel. It does show what happens when you follow Jesus, and when you don’t. 

It includes the historically accurate charges against her, that she offends God by wearing men’s clothes, and that she must be guilty of witchcraft; but it doesn’t veer into territory that would surely be unavoidable if it had been made today: You don’t come away with the impression that these evil, patriarchal men are tormenting her because they can’t abide a strong female lead. It does show that they’re evil, but it’s because they don’t recognize holiness, and they don’t love or recognize the Lord. And they’re willing to use Jesus as a weapon. 

There are several different musical scores that accompany different versions of this film. The one we saw, from Criterion, had “Voices of Light” by Richard Einhorn, written in 1994, and I can’t imagine an improvement. It sounded both hauntingly modern and bracingly medieval, and it sometimes underscores the emotion on screen, but sometimes provides an emotional counterpoint or contrast that heightens the sense of seeing the action from a perspective perhaps beyond the natural world. Worth listening to on its own. 

In the first part, Jane is feverish and her eyes bug out in an unnatural fashion that is exhausting to watch, but after she has been bled, threatened with torture, and interrogated some more, her eyelids droop more and more, and you can’t help but internally mirror her. Although the camera isn’t from Joan’s perspective, the experience of the film is not a normal viewer experience., where the viewer watches a story unfold. It is an ordeal, in some ways, but a bracingly compelling one, that makes you feel like something is happening to you. You don’t want to look away, as you might during, for instance, The Passion of the Christ; instead, you find yourself straining all your senses so as to be as present as possible in what feels like a real encounter with something beyond a story. It’s not that it’s so realistic (although the camera seeks out every pore, hair, wrinkle, and tear on every face). It feels instead like something you remember or something you dreamed about: Not realistic, but more intimate than reality. 

Before and during her execution, the camera pans past the faces in the crowd, and you see there, as you did earlier with the judges, bald human emotion, frailty, pain, regret, and also foolishness, fear, perversion. The camera spends so much time on individual faces, not only on Joan’s but on everyone’s, that you come to realize everyone is on trial. Everyone is being searched, and is given a chance to either be faithful, or not. 

I wondered, as I always do when I think about Joan of Arc, why God chose to intervene in history in such an unusually political way. Joan apparently got direct orders to lead a military charge in order to bring about a specific regime change, and it really feels like God is rooting for one country over another, which seems . . . unusually Old Testamenty. But then I thought, maybe he does actually do this often, and the people he speaks to just decide not to respond! I just don’t know. In any case, this Joan is so singlemindedly fixed on her love of Christ, and her obedience to him, that you can see that that really is the main point — love and obedience — and anything else she does is merely the form her love happens to take.

That being said, she is terrified. She’s not brash or beyond human emotion. She trembles and weeps and struggles as she fights to stay true to Jesus, and you can see that she trusts God but is still terribly afraid of where that trust will lead her. She is holy, but also clearly only 19. Early on, they ask her if she knows the Lord’s Prayer, and who taught it to her. She says, “Ma mère” and a tear slips down her cheek.

Here is the “Has God made you promises?” scene.

Never ever have I seen such acting before. And it’s just her face. 

There aren’t a lot of tellingly clever lines or ideas, although Joan comes across as outwitting the judges a few times, just because she’s completely honest. When they hope to trap her by asking if she’s in a state of grace, she says, “If I am not, God put me there. If I am, please God so keep me.” When they ask if God has promised to free her, she says yes, but she doesn’t know the day or the hour.

This very simplicity, and the way she is both faithful and fearful, is the most memorable depiction of faith I can recall ever seeing. The movie pretty overtly shows Joan is walking in the same steps as Jesus in his final hours. It would make very appropriate viewing for Holy Week, and it would be perfect for kids of high school age.

Content warnings: It shows torture devices and many scenes where Joan is in terror; it shows her being bled to relieve a fever, and it shows her being executed. You see her alive and inhaling smoke, and then you see her burned, already-dead body through the flames, so it’s clear what is happening, but it’s not extremely graphic. The entire movie is tense and alarming, so even though you don’t clearly see the worst things that happen to her, I can imagine  this movie leading to nightmares for sensitive viewers. But she is so clearly triumphant at the end, it leaves you feeling — well, as I said, like something happened to you. Something good. 

***
Here is the list of movies we’ve watched in previous years, with link to ReelGood so you can see where to stream them, and my review (if any):

Lilies of the Field (1963) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Secret of Kells (2009) 
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Saint Philip Neri: I Prefer Heaven
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Miracle Maker (1999)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

The Jeweller’s Shop (1989)
available via Formed
 (My longer review here)

The Reluctant Saint: The Story of Joseph of Cupertino (1963)
available via Formed
(My longer review here)

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Boys Town (1938)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

Fatima (2020)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Song of Bernadette (1943)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Ushpizin (2005)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Calvary (2014)
where to stream

I Confess (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here) 

The Robe (1953)
where to stream
(My longer review here)

The Trouble With Angels (1966)
where to stream
 (My longer review here) 

Babette’s Feast (1987)
where to stream
 (My longer review here)

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
where to stream
(My full review here)

There Be Dragons (2011)
where to stream
(my longer review here) 

The Prince of Egypt (1998)
where to stream

 

Darwin’s immediate book meme! vol. ???

Just the other day, I was thinking Mrs. Darwin needed to do an immediate book meme, and lo: It came to pass!

Here’s my current reading situation:

1. What book are you reading now?

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge

This book is a delight. A delight! My first book by this author, and it pulls you in instantly, with fully rounded characters, beautifully crafted sentences, and an incredibly vivid sense of place. It does have a little publisher’s note in the beginning, which would have annoyed me at one point, but which I now think is useful and balanced:

PUBLISHER’S NOTE (2015) Elizabeth Goudge’s novels present us with many rich fictional worlds. The way in which these stories are told gives us insight into Elizabeth Goudge’s own life and the culture in which she wrote. Green Dolphin Street includes many passages that display oppressive attitudes in matters of race relations and the exercise of colonial power. We believe that offering this book to readers as Elizabeth Goudge wrote it allows us to see English literary culture in 1944 in a way that would be obscured were we to alter the text. Justice must be built on truth. We are sensitive to the fact that English colonial history is a subject more difficult to approach for some than for others, and trust that readers will appreciate the chance to encounter both the fictional world of Green Dolphin Street and the voice of the novel in its original form.

I could have figured this out on my own by reading the book, but it’s helpful context if you’re going to read the book with, say, high school students who are still forming their idea of the world. Anyway, if the choice is between adding a note like this and not publishing the book at all, or worse, sanitizing it like they did with Roald Dahl, I can live with a note. Anyway, tremendous book, and I’m looking forward to reading more by Goudge. 

Mort by Terry Pratchett

I think I’ve read this before, but I can’t remember if I finished it or not. It’s a Discworld book about a hapless young man, Mort, who is taken on as an apprentice by Death. Death is a wonderful, sympathetic character. Classic Pratchett: Cleverly written and conceived, likable characters, slightly insane plot, very funny with a splash of melancholy, thoughtful but not cynical. This is the fourth book in the Discworld series, but you don’t have to have read others to follow the plot. 

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Dude. I don’t know what I thought this book was going to be (probably influenced by the pop culturalization of psychology, making me halfway afraid it was gonna be some kind of “you go grrrrl, it’s not you, it’s your polyvagal nerve, so live laugh love!! Stanley cup of a book), but I’m finding it thorough, thoughtful, and captivating. Again, I only just started it, but it’s fascinating, and told vividly but with a respect for the subjects that reminds me of Oliver Sacks. 

Philip Neri: The Fire of Joy by Paul Türks 

This is my current Adoration read. The book was a gift from an Oratorian priest who visited last summer (or two summers ago?), who confirmed that I Prefer Heaven is a very nice movie indeed, but doesn’t actually have much in common with the actual life of Philip Neri. It’s maybe a tiny bit drier than something I would read on my own (I spoil myself with a steady diet of novels), but it moves along and is full of fascinating details not only about Neri himself, but 16th century Italy. 

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly

Bought this book solely on the strength of a string of tweets by author, recounting how he got his schedule confused and ended up alone in a room with his boss and the President of Ireland while he was on ketamine. This memoir is (so far) a wonderful read that starts with the death of his mother when he was five, which left his father to raise him and his ten siblings in rural Ireland in the 90’s. Sweet, affectionate, very funny, and a little bit harrowing, as you can imagine. 

1a. What is your current readaloud?

Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

Corrie (age almost 9) requested that I read this to her, but she keeps scampering away and doing other things, so I don’t know how far we’ll get. We just don’t real aloud like we used to! E. Nesbit is the author who inspired Edward Eager, the author of Half Magic (and I think I remember the characters in Half Magic speaking admiringly of E. Nesbit). It’s old fashioned enough to be interesting, but the kids are very recognizable characters, and it is a weird and satisfying story. 

The Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale

I started reading this out loud to the teenagers quite some time ago, and we keep getting overtaken by events, but I’m holding out hope that we’ll pick it up again. If people are going to cotton to popular ideas about gender fluidity, they should at least know the history of how we got here as a society. I read this myself first, and learned a lot, and enjoyed Favale’s voice. I found the final few chapters to be a tiny bit weaker than the rest, unfortunately. I think the author allowed herself a little too much sarcasm, which the rest of the book is free from. Still extremely lucid and thought-provoking overall, a reasonable read for smart high schoolers.

King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

Damien and I started reading this aloud to each other (taking turns with chapters) last night. It is hilarious, and insane. If any book qualifies for a publisher’s note like Green Dolphin Street got, it’s King Solomon’s Mines (the first chapter contains the word “n*gg*r,” although it’s in the context of the narrator saying he’s not going to use that word anymore). But if you can deal with some indelicacy, this is an incredibly entertaining adventure story that wastes zero time. Includes several maps depicting two mountains called “Sheba’s Breasts,” and has directions about what to do when you get to the nipple. What indeed? 

2. What book did you just finish?

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I don’t even know why I re-read this (probably just because it had all its pages, which is not a given in this disrespectful house). The characters are all so frustrating. It was gratifying to see how thoroughly Emma Bovary’s actions are repaid in the final chapters — enough to almost make me feel sorry for her, almost. I guess if you’re looking for a “classic”to read that you can zip through pretty quickly, this is a good one. The writing is great. It’s just rough when, by the end, you feel a very grudging pity for the main perpetrator, and a guilty disgust for the main victim.

3. What do you plan to read next?

Maybe something by Stephen King. I haven’t read anything by him since I was a teenager. Damien is reading Salem’s Lot and enjoying it, so I’m interested to see how it hits me now. 

4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?

Kristin Lavransdatter

I know I know I know.

5. What book do you keep meaning to start?

Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski

You’d think this book would be [clears throat, straightens tie, checks the room] right up my alley, but I just haven’t started it yet. 

6. What is your current reading trend?

Taking other people’s recommendations, I guess! If you have the right kind of friends, this is a solid plan. 

Now your turn! Tell me what your book situation looks like. Yes, audiobooks count. Thanks to Mrs. Darwin for keeping this going. 

Also, to answer your question: Graphic design is still my passion, yes. 

“Beauty is always the right answer”: Painter and illustrator Jaclyn Warren

“I was so nervous about having the chalice and paten in my garage,” Jaclyn Warren said.

“We have too many kids and too many cats; something’s going to happen to them,” she said.

But the precious liturgical vessels survived. They were in Warren’s home, along with a priest in full vestments holding a censer billowing smoke, because she was making sketches for a series of paintings of the North American Martyrs for a high school chapel.

The project, the brainchild of Father John Brown, who commissioned the pieces for Jesuit High School in New Orleans, will show two of the martyred laymen toward the back of the church, and then some of the saints in liturgical dress worshipping along with the congregation, with their vestments becoming more splendid the closer to the altar they are. It’s a huge project, and Warren is working feverishly in between caring for her young children, who, like everyone else in the country, keep getting sick.

Warren, a Louisiana-based liturgical painter and illustrator, said what’s more overwhelming is when she remembers where her work will be displayed.

“It plays on my nerves a little bit. It’s kind of a big deal. People are going to be looking at this for I don’t know how long, maybe after I’m dead and gone, and thinking maybe that nose doesn’t look quite right,” she laughed. “But I know the mission is so important, I can’t get hung up having an artistic crisis.”

Captivating an audience

Mainly, she tries to keep her audience in mind.

“I think of all the boys that are going to be looking at [the paintings of saints]. It’s important that they see them as a source of inspiration and strength, and not just, ‘Look at all these bald guys,’” she said.

She knows from personal experience how an off-putting depiction of a saint can stick with you for years.

“I remember growing up, I had my book of saints, and Mary Magdalene was wearing this bright pink dress and green eyeshadow, and even at 10 years old I was thinking it was so dated,” she said. She also remembers the Black saints were painted so clumsily, their skin almost looked green.

That was a missed opportunity by Catholic art. Warren grew up loving the saints, but it was despite these illustrations, not because of them; and even though she wanted to be an artist herself, nothing she saw drew her in personally. It never occurred to her that she could be the one to update those unappealing pictures.

“It had already been done. The books have been illustrated; the churches have been decorated,” she remembers thinking. She didn’t see herself as someone who could step up and answer a call.

So when she did study art in high school and then at Savannah College of Art and Design, sacred art was not on her radar.

“I thought, ‘I have to do something that’s going to sustain me. I have this talent; I’ll be a portrait artist. That will make money, and I’ll be secure,’” she said.

An artist’s struggle

But when she attended a summer program at Yale, she found herself the odd man out, ostracized because of her faith and because she made figurative art that wasn’t designed mainly to shock and titillate the viewer. She also noticed that artists who chased the cutting edge of artistic fads might have their moment of fame, but then they were just as quickly forgotten.

“I had to rethink, ‘Is being famous and well-esteemed all it’s cracked up to be?’” Warren said.

Read the rest of my latest monthly artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor. 

***

This is the seventh in a monthly feature on Catholic and Catholic-friendly artists I’ve been writing for Our Sunday Visitor. 
Previous artists featured in this series:
Daniel Finaldi
Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs
Chris Lewis
Kreg Yingst
Sarah Breisch
Charles Rohrbacher

If you know of (or are) a Catholic or Catholic-friendly artist you think should be featured, please drop me a line! simchafisher at gmail dot com. I’m not always excellent about responding, but I always check out every suggestion. Thanks!

A ‘very human life’ is the hallmark of Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs’ sacred art

Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs said her husband Andrew asked her after Mass, “Did you see the guy with Jesus hair?”

She did see him and had wanted to run after him, but she hesitated, and now she regrets it. He would have made a great model.

It was one leap she didn’t take, but only one.

Four years ago, she and her husband took a chance, and now she supports the family full-time with their home business, Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs Sacred Art. She mostly paints commissions and also teaches painting in person.

As a working mother and breadwinner, she’s something of an oddity in her community.

“In my parish, many of the mothers stay home full time, and the husband works. I try to explain to people we chose to have this small business of making sacred art because it allows us to live the liturgical year more fully,” she said.

As fulfilling as this life often is, it wasn’t easy to land there.

“To take that leap, God sort of had to put us in a situation where we lost a different job and we didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t seem prudent to try to raise a family on being an artist, but God knew we didn’t have the courage to do it without taking away the other options,” she said.

Thompson-Briggs said she looks to the medieval model of a family workshop, including apprentices who were part of the household.

“It seems like a very human life to live, that my children see their father throughout the day, and we’re always switching off with childcare and homeschooling and business duties. It’s a model I love, but it has been rare. It may be coming back, since everyone’s been working at home,” she said.

That “very human life” is a hallmark of Thompson-Briggs’ approach to art. Many of her live models, like the one with the Jesus hair who got away, are not professionals, but fellow parishioners at the church down the street from her studio.

“I will snag them and say, ‘Are you available to linger for an hour next Tuesday after Mass?’ and surprisingly, most people are amenable. I’ve gotten to have so many wonderful conversations. You meet so many people you think you know because you see the back of their head for months, and then you start to talk to them, and you’re always surprised,” she said.

The in-person conversation and time together give her visual insight an artist can’t attain by working from a photograph.

“When you’re working from a photo, you can get caught up in the detail. [But] when you work from life, you introduce the element of time. What’s the most natural way their head would tilt or that drape would fall?” she said.

As her model settles in and gets comfortable, her eyes also discern more breadth of color, more depth in shadow, and more atmosphere.

Her favorite models are good conversationalists, and she also acknowledges that talking helps keep them awake. Her studio heats up tremendously in the summer, and fans can only do so much when a model is draped in layers of wool.

Even their discomfort can be a revealing part of the artistic process, though.

“If you’re carrying something heavy in one arm, it’s going to affect the angle of the hips, or something,” she said.

But because she is making sacred art, she is not trying to paint a recognizable portrait, but to assist the viewer in prayer; and so to portray a beloved saint, or Mary, or the Sacred Heart, she often uses three or four models, combining select elements from their various faces and bodies, hands and hair.

“Using multiple models allows me to approach the idealization of the saint who is a distinct personality, who is separate from all the reference models. Sometimes, I will transform someone, make them older or younger; other times, it’s a rare person who has really beautiful hands,” she said…Read the rest of my latest artist profile for Our Sunday Visitor.

Image: Detail of St. Martin de Porres by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs

Through the Year With Tomie dePaola GIVEAWAY!

Note: I am now an Ignatius Affiliate, and earn money when readers purchase books through my links. 

When Tomie dePaola died a few years ago, I had just recently gotten up the nerve to ask him for an interview, and it’s an everlasting regret that I missed my chance. I don’t know how likely it is that he would have agreed, but he certainly was generous with his work. 

That’s one reason it feels like such a gift to have this new book, published posthumously: Through the Year With Tomie dePaola. Ignatius is sponsoring one copy for me to give away! Read on. 

Through the Year With Tomie dePaola collects the “art mail” he used to send to family and friends (and sometimes post on social media), and it is lovely. 

Each page features one of his bright, fluid illustrations of a saint or other depiction of a holy day, and is decorated with dePaola’s characteristic clouds, stars, leaves, flowers, and doves, and the pictures are accompanied by text written by Catherine Harmon and John Herreid. It feels like a beloved journal or sketchbook by someone in love with celebration of the liturgical year.

There is not an entry for every single day, but each month features between eight and fourteen little pictures and passages, and each month also ends with a list of “other important feast days.”

Some are well known

some are more obscure

some include prayers

a few are specifically American, while still staying grounded in the faith

and a few include history lessons, and are also just cute

It is a small, solid hardcover that comes with a ribbon bookmark, so you can keep your spot and dip into it as you move through the calendar. 

This book would be an easy enrichment for evening prayers, or would be a pleasant way to start the day with little ones. It would make an appealing baptism or first Communion gift (or confirmation gift, depending on how old kids are when your diocese confirms them). The reading level makes it completely appropriate for older kids, maybe through age 12 or even older, but they may look at the cover and think it’s aimed at younger kids. I would not hesitate to make it part of family prayers, though, even if you don’t have younger kids in the house, because dePaola’s art is for everybody.

AND NOW THE GIVEAWAY! Just leave a comment on this post and I will use a random number generator to chose a winner in a few days. U.S. and Canada only, please. And please o please be sure that the email you use when you comment on this site is a real email address! I will be using it to contact you if you win. If the winner is “nicetryfeds@biteme.edu” then you won’t get your lovely book. 

If you just want to buy the book, which is $18.99, you can order it here. Go ahead! I get a commission! Mama needs a new set of teeth. 

This is the second book that John Herried has produced, and I’m delighted to see him using his considerable creative powers in this direction. If you haven’t yet checked out his Catholic Home Gallery, also from Ignatius, do take a look! It’s an excellent collection of contemporary Catholic artwork in all different styles, and the book is designed so you can pull the prints right out and hang them in your home. I interviewed John about it here. 

And thank you to Ignatius for sponsoring this giveaway!

Love of God is something we can learn

When I was little, I pored over the stories of the saints, especially the martyrs. I was morbidly fascinated by stories of little 6-year-old Conchita of the Drooping Veil who loved God so passionately that, whenever her wicked pagan stepmother would torment her and put tar in her hair and report her to the governor for being Christian, she would simply smile and pray for them all, because she just loved God so much. (Please don’t look Conchita up; she is just an amalgam, but you get the idea.)

I was enthralled. I was captivated by the exoticism of the setting (saints all seemed to live in a time when people wore robes and carried things around in clay jugs, which sounded amazing) and the exoticism of the spirituality itself; but even more compelling was how every story carried a clear message: This is what I was supposed to be like. I was supposed to imitate this girl in my own life, right now.

I was savvy enough to figure out that a lot of the details of the story were adaptable. You could wear shorts and a shirt with a purple unicorn on it, like my own favorite shirt, and be a saint. You could pursue holiness by not fighting with your sister or by cleaning the living room like your mother said or by putting your whole allowance in the basket at church instead of spending it on nail polish. I understood that.

The part that was not clicking was the part where St. Conchita loved God. And I, myself, did not. And boy, did I feel bad about it.

It actually shows some pretty good self-awareness that as a kid I even realized I didn’t love God, and loving him is the main point of the stories of the lives of the saints. It wasn’t my fault that these stories were presented in a grotesque and melodramatic way that made them seem foreign to my own life, and it also wasn’t my fault that I didn’t automatically and naturally feel a great love for my creator and savior by the time I reached the age of reason.

It would have been nice if someone had told me how to go about learning to love God, though. Because I have discovered that, for most people, it is something that they have to learn. We may be created to love God, but that doesn’t mean it happens on its own….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

 

Photo by Bicanski on Pixnio

Lent Film Party Review: The Reluctant Saint

Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party has been kind of a bust this year. So far we have only watched the second half of I Prefer Heaven, which we started last year and watched on the Formed app, and The Reluctant Saint (1962). We watched that on Tubi; it’s also currently on Amazon Prime.

What I know about Joseph of Cupertino is basically: He was Italian, known as kind of a simpleton, and he levitated. I don’t know how biographically accurate the movie is; I’m just reviewing what I saw. Here’s the trailer:

Here’s the plot:

Giuseppe is a grown man living with his impoverished mother and no-good father in 17th century Italy. His mother has been keeping him in school because she can’t figure out what else to do with him, because he’s so slow-witted and accident prone. She manages to palm him off on some Franciscan friars, who reluctantly allow him to tend the animals; but even there, trouble finds him, partly because, while some of the men are patient and kind, others are resentful and suspicious of his foolish, forbearing ways. He happens to meet and impress the local bishop, who is also of peasant stock, and who sees value and worth in Giuseppe’s simplicity and devotion. He directs him to study for the priesthood, to the horror of everyone including Giuseppe himself. 

His studies are a disaster, but when he reports for his preliminary examinations, the one scripture passage he is quizzed on is the only one he happens to know: about the lost lamb that the shepherd goes to find. So he’s doomed to study for another year, with even more esoteric books, and when he arrives in the city for his exam, the interlocutor turns out to be his old friend the bishop, who immediately lets him pass. 

But in the mean time (I may be slightly scrambling the order of events, but it doesn’t matter much), Giuseppe has taken up the slightly disturbing habit of floating up into the air when he prays. The fellow who previously considered himself Giuseppe’s rival tells the whole town that this is because he’s a saint, and the people swarm the monastery, begging for healing. One of his superiors (played by Ricardo Montalban), who has always eyed Giuseppe with suspicion, now believes that his powers must come from the devil, and Giuseppe is forced to undergo an excruciating exorcism. When it is completed and he is declared free of possession, he immediately begins to levitate again, and his persecutor realizes his mistake and repents. 

In the final scene, we see Giuseppe integrated happily into the community, accepted and valued at last, processing with them and chanting, and blissfully floating away, only to be tugged like a balloon gently back to earth by the very man who accused him of being possessed. 

My take:

It’s a dated movie. The characters speak with accents to show they are Italian, and moments of divine intervention are indicated by blinding light and loud, heavenly choirs. Giuseppe’s intellectual state is portrayed in a way that may make modern viewers squirm.

That being said, I give the actor, Maximilian Schell, full credit for taking on a kind of role that wasn’t really a thing at that time, and generally lending the character a dignity that’s probably ahead of its time, despite the plot relying heavily on comedy. 

Early on, it’s a little painful to watch Schell’s grinning, fumbling performance. It’s almost like the beginning of an Adam Sandler movie, where you think, “Oh my gosh, is he going to act like this the whole time?” But either the acting gets better or you just begin to accept it within the world of the movie, because it does get less uncomfortable.

It’s not entirely clear what Giuseppe’s intellectual capacity is, but he’s constantly mocked, abused, and bullied, and he tries his best to accept it with good humor. There’s some indication that he struggles with treating people well when they abuse him. It’s a comedy, overall, bbut you do feel how badly he wants to belong somewhere and be useful somewhere; and you feel how painful and awful it is for him to be dragged away from his happy world he’s found in the barn with the animals, and to have to be in a monk’s cell studying books he doesn’t understand; but you also see that he does it out of obedience and humility. 

Giuseppe is the patron saint of aviators, which is cute, but at least as he is portrayed in this movie, I think he would be especially dear to people who never feel like they belong or fit in or are in the right place, and never feel like they’re good enough, and are trying very hard to humbly work with the hand they were dealt. 

One thing I liked very much was the character of the bishop. Catholics and anti-Catholics alike generally take the shortcut of almost reflexively showing hierarchy as bad guys — but Bishop Durso (Akim Tamiroff) is so affable and lovely, it’s like balm for Giuseppe to have such a good friend. I love that he readily (correctly) identifies Giuseppe as a “true son of Francis,” and it’s pleasant to see another such man in the role of bishop. (I generally find it comforting to realize that, just like today, the church has always struggled with religious orders straying from their charisms, and has always had a problem with internal jealousy and competition and infighting cropping up in otherwise sound groups; but God, then and now, continues to raise up good, solid men and to place them where they need to be at the right time. The movie doesn’t necessarily draw this theme out; maybe it’s just something I especially needed to see right now! Nevertheless, it is there in the story. )

There was very little discussion of spiritual things in the movie, that I can recall, and that was a good choice. I mean there is, but Giuseppe doesn’t come out with any maxims, corny or profound, about God’s love or intentions; you can just tell from the expression on his face that he’s very devoted to Mary, that he tries very hard to be good, that he works hard to forgive people when they wrong him, and that it’s a constant sorrow to him that he’s always failing at what he tries, but he does love life all the same. All this makes it immensely gratifying when he eventually does find his place at the end. It’s not excellent acting, but it’s good enough. It works. 

There is no explanation or theorizing, that I can recall, about exactly why he levitates. It makes life much harder for him! It’s not something he would chose for himself. The very first time it happens, the movie (not especially creative in its cinematography in general) depicts this by showing, not him, but the statue that has sent him into ecstasy. We see it from his point of view, first over his head, then only slightly overhead, and then at face level, and that’s how we realize he’s rising into the air. This is clever, because it avoids what could be a clumsy-looking special effect of him dangling in mid-air, and it also invites us to see the phenomenon from his point of view: Just something that is happening, utterly out of his control, and who knows why. I’m not trying to read too much into it. I just appreciate that this is a movie that keeps things simple and doesn’t try to go beyond its own means. Levitation is weird. It’s something that Giuseppe just has to accept, and, well, so do we. 

When you see him levitating when he’s facing the altar, saying his first Mass, his face almost distorted with joy, it’s a short scene but quite powerful. It shows something you maybe don’t think about very often: What it feels like to be a priest. Or maybe what it ought to feel like? 

The only thing I had a quibble with is when the bishop, in the middle of their lovely nighttime chat while roasting chestnuts, admits to Giuseppe that’s he’s never really understood the trinity. That’s fine, but then Giuseppe blithely explains it by saying that it’s like his robe: You fold it into three, and that’s it: Three folds, one robe; three persons, one God. The bishop says “Brilliant!” Well, actually that’s the heresy of partialism! So if you’re watching with your kids, you might want to follow up on that scene.

It’s not really a kid’s movie, but there’s nothing graphic or terrifying in it. More sensitive viewers might be upset by how often the mother hits Giuseppe, and how mean she is to him in general, although she clearly loves him. There is nothing graphic in this movie, and although its overall tone is lighthearted, there are some sad and intense scenes throughout, mostly because Giuseppe is constantly mocked and harassed and pushed around so much. It also has a scene where he feeds a starving mother and baby, and is beaten up. His father is a drunk, and then he dies. The scene of the exorcism lasts several minutes and shows him kneeling and sweating by candlelight while in chains, while the priest dramatically prays in Latin. Kids who watch it will probably need adults to put some things in context. But as I said, the movie keeps things straightforward and simple.

Overall, I liked it very much, and I’m glad my family saw it. It was entertaining and engaging and memorable. Recommended, as long as you understand the sensitivities of your viewers. 

One Theresa at a time: A quick note to new Catholics

By this time of year, newly baptized Catholics have really begun to settle in to their pews, physically and metaphorically. The solemn rites are long since accomplished, the party is over, and now the hard and joyful work of practicing the faith begins.

At this stage, it’s not uncommon for new converts to begin to take on a slightly baffled look, because while they definitely felt overcome with Paschal joy at the time, they may now also feel overwhelmed with . . . Catholicism in general. Specifically, the vast and bewildering array of cultural and liturgical and pious practices and customs and traditions that never came up in RCIA, but which everyone around seems to know about, and treats as if they’re completely foundational to their faith. Saints, prayers, holy days, sacramentals, pieties, practices, not to mention synods and sodalities and bitter Twitter fights over doctrine. It’s all a bit much. 

Fear not, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve been a Catholic for most of my life, and I feel exactly the same way. Just about every time I spend time with a large group of Catholics, in or outside of church, I end up hearing something that makes me feel like a newcomer. 

I have come to conclude that the Catholic church is, like, really really big, and as such, it is, like, really really full of stuff. I’m never going to feel completely caught up, and that’s okay. As long as I keep trying to come back to Jesus, it’s okay. 

Here are just a few of the things that I, as a nearly lifelong Catholic, still find confounding:

I can’t keep my creeds straight. When I was little, my mother had me memorize the Nicene creed. Or possibly the Apostle’s Creed. It was definitely the one that we didn’t say at Mass, and I could say it! as long as we weren’t at Mass. If we were at Mass, I could only say the one everyone else was saying, whichever one that was. You just get swept along with the general rumble of the crowd and you don’t stand a chance. I fully understand that people have shed blood over whether it ought to be homoousios or homoiousios, and I admire that, but if I were at Nicea, let me tell you, I would have not have been helpful. The body is not made up of one part, but many, and I am the part saying, “Wha?” and I’m too old to change. And yet I am still a real Catholic. 

I can only know about one Theresa at a time. There are about fourteen different St Theresas (including Thereses and Teresas, not to mention Thérèses). Some of them said something about how people are like flowers; some of them apparently are little flowers in some way that escapes me at the moment. We have a picture of one of them dressed up like an entirely different saint, purely to be confusing. The one I’m very clear on is Mother Teresa, because I remember when she was alive and hanging out with President Reagan, who was also alive at the time. I saw them on TV, so that helps. But then there is the Theresa with the nice cheeks. You know the one. Beyond that, I am completely at sea, and when people start going on about the Interior Castle, my eyes glaze over and I wonder if there will be sandwiches at this thing, or what. And yet I am still a real Catholic. 

I have no idea how to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I’m very much in favor of mercy, but when I see a chaplet, it’s pretty clear to me that that’s just a stumpy little rosary, and I feel that this is much easier to lose in the washing machine than a normal rosary. So what you should do is get yourself a normal rosary, say part of it, and fall asleep. Boom, divine mercy. Boom, real Catholic! 

The liturgical calendar in general.  I’m already losing my mind over here trying to keep Christ in Christmas while buying presents for everybody but not too many presents, and making sure we’re all sufficiently praying for the souls in purgatory while we dress up like zombies, because if we don’t do that, we’ll drive our children away from the faith, and so on. And we won’t even talk about what it does to your psyche to cook for Passover while you’re fasting on Good Friday.

So I have given myself a pass for, for instance, having to look up every single Holy Day of Obligation every single time, every single year, and I don’t even feel bad about it. I only have so many brain cells. When I hear about people also keeping track of First Fridays or First Saturdays and then also ember days and rogation days and whatever the hell it is, I just assume they are praying for me, or people very much like me, and it will all even out. See above: Divine Mercy. Boom. 

In short, it’s a big church. A very very very big church. And if you keep coming across things that are unfamiliar, don’t think of it as evidence that you’re a stranger. File it under “treats for later,” and maybe you’ll get to it in this world, and maybe you won’t. But someone is definitely praying for you, and we’re so glad you jumped in and became a real Catholic. Just keep coming back to Jesus, and you’ll be okay. 

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A version of this essay was first published on August 1, 2022 at The Catholic Weekly. 

Dr. Mellifluus on distraction in prayer

Today, a few days before his feast day, is a great day for this story about St. Bernard of Clairvaux:

Bernard was riding his horse up into the Alps to give a retreat, and as he passed a farmer along the road he heard a loud grunt. He stopped to look down at the him, and the farmer remarked, “I envy you, with nothing to do but pray while I have to kill myself working in this rocky soil.”

Bernard said, “Well, praying can be even harder work that digging around those stones.”

“I doubt that very much,” the man said, “With that beautiful horse and the gorgeous saddle, what do you know of hardship?”

Up till then Bernard hadn’t given any attention to his mount. He said, ”It is a beautiful horse, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what, if you can say the Lord’s Prayer from beginning to end without taking your mind off it, I’ll give you this horse.”

“That’s so generous of you,” the man said; and he began praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be…do I get the saddle too?” 

(more here from Word on Fire) 

I knew the basic story, but not the context that the man considered prayer easy; and I didn’t realize it was St. Bernard who featured as the wise monk.  St. Bernard is the patron of our local church, but I know almost nothing about him (but I’m reading up! Here’s some great information from Amy Wellborn). The white plaster statue of him that used to be in the narthex includes a large bee near his feet — I guess because he is known as “Doctor Mellifluus,” or “honey-sweet doctor [of the Church]” because of his sweetly flowing eloquence.

Speaking of distraction from prayer, that narthex is where parents of small children often find themselves when they’re fulfilling their Sunday obligation in the most basic way: by being bodily inside the walls, even if they can’t catch more than a second or two of actual prayer time. Our parish is pretty kid-friendly, but the narthex makes a good rumpus room for the truly bonkers; and that is where St. Bernard stood, too.

One mother I saw kept her kid happy by carrying him up to the feet of the statue, finding the bee, making contact with her son’s little hand clasped in hers, and going, “BZZT!” Kid laughs, forgets to wreak havoc, everyone’s happy. Honey sweet, indeed.

We can draw a few things from this:

First, that saints don’t require us to know anything about them. They’re here to help, period. St. Bernard, who happens to be a great Biblical scholar and reformer, is perfectly content to also be Anonymous Plaster Bee Guy Who Entertains Buggy Kids. It’s a very good thing to do your homework and get to know the saints, but you can also just stretch out your hand and ask for help from all of God’s friends the saints, and they’ll oblige. I can think of numerous stories of people reaching out to saints, drawn in by some random appealing detail, and they turned out later to be a very willing patron. There’s a pretty good Thomas More story on this theme.

Second, if a quick “bzzt” of contact is all you can manage in your prayer life, then DO THAT. Don’t wait until you can get on your knees and say twenty decades without your mind wandering — because, as the story demonstrates, focused prayer is harder than it looks, even highly motivated people can’t seem to help but be distracted. It’s just the human condition. So the remedy is to keep making contact, keep coming back, keep regrouping, keep putting a check on that tendency we have, like restless kids in the pew, to lose focus and bug out.

We don’t have to be the most skillful bees; it’s God that will bring honey from the rock, if he so choses. But you do have to show up; and you do have to eventually acknowledge that it’s not about your efforts, at all. It’s about Jesus. “All food of the soul is dry”, he professed, “unless it is moistened with this oil; insipid, unless it is seasoned with this salt. What you write has no savour for me unless I have read Jesus in it.”

Third, I forget what three was for. Oh yes! St. Bernard, pray for us.

Bzzt!

 

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Image: honey bee, photo by Oregon State University via Flickr (Creative Commons)

No holy eyerolls on the Assumption

A friend was very reasonably grousing about holy cards that make saints look like they’ve died halfway through a seizure. The mouths hang slightly open, the eyes are rolled up, and they’re pale as a corpse. That’s how sanctity is portrayed.

This gooey, sentimental style has just about died out, thankfully. I do understand why it was once popular, though. Artists were trying to depict someone who was in the world but not of the world. The rolled-up eyes and otherworldly stare were intended to show a holy detachment in a saint whose entire attention is fixed on Heaven.

Unfortunately, what it conveys to modern people is: “Saints are creepy weirdos who don’t care about you and are definitely not like you.” Pretty much the opposite of what we should be hearing, when we think of the universal call to grow in holiness and to be saints ourselves.

Another friend, an artist, commented,

“Honestly, though, anyone looking up to heaven looks pretty dumb. Just like anyone looking down at a baby looks pretty. Mary got lucky.”

It was just a quip, but she is onto something. There’s a reason we’re more drawn to this look:

than this one:

The otherworldly glow of her skin is warm, like embers, bidding you to draw closer, rather than pallid, like leprosy, repelling you; and her tender, gracious, intimate downward gaze at her beloved Child expresses the holiness the more sentimental artist was grasping at.

The thing is, in this picture, Mary is looking to Heaven. She is finding it in her son.

I once heard the account of the annunciation, and had a thought I’d never had before. The angel comes to Mary and says,

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

But (as you know), “Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” 

Ha! I thought. The angel — an angel — just told her, “You are going to have a baby who will be THE SON OF GOD and He will BE KING OF EVERYTHING AND RULE FOR EVER. And her question is, “Okay, but about this pregnancy . . . ”

She’s not wondering about the theology of how a human child can be the son of God. She’s not thinking about salvation history or heavenly thrones or eternity —  not right this moment. She just wants to know about her and the baby, and also about her husband-to-be. First things first. This is the conversation she wants to have with an archangel: Let’s talk about my son, that’s going to be in my body, because it’s personal.

That’s how Mary does things. There’s that downward gaze we associate with her. So much better than rolled-up eyes! It’s a good look, on Mary and on all of us: that personal, intimate, “You’re real and so am I” connection. Not a faraway gaze at something beyond the mysterious beyond, but at the Heaven that has located itself directly in our lives. And despite how artists often choose to portray it, I believe that, even during the Assumption, and most definitely afterwards, Mary did not forget her little ones, and however it happened that she was assumed into heaven, you would not catch her rolling her eyes away from us. 

So this is how we can be like Mary, if you are looking for a way: Look to the ones who are closest to us. Look to their needs. Take their day-to-day existence seriously as our own concerns. That includes beloved family and friends, and the ones who are easy to smile at and cherish, but also the people whom God puts close to us whether we wanted to cross paths or not: the crabby customer service lady, the cantor whose warbling gets on your nerves, the snotty stranger who comments on your social media. And the family and friends who are behaving in ways that do not invite us to instinctively draw closer. If we can, it would be a good goal to remember Mary’s gaze — that intimate, personal, attentive focus — and try to adopt that. Because that’s what holiness looks like. 

Sometimes, let’s be real, the best we can do is recruit Mary to our side, and ask her to be the one to be loving and attentive, when we can’t or shouldn’t get too close to someone ourselves. This is holy, too, and this is a way to sanctify our relationships with other people. Mary will be there. She will do that for us. She will be the person who will make it personal. 

But holiness has to be personal. If it’s impersonal and abstract, if it remains closed off from other people, then it’s not holiness. Like it or not, sanctifying our responses to each other is how we will find Heaven. Don’t roll your eyes at me! Not in exasperation, and not in sentimental piety, either. This is how we find Heaven. It’s personal.

 

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A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly in December of 2017.

Images:
Photo of St. Gerard statue holy card courtesy of a friend
Adoration of the Shepherds (detail) by Gerard van Honthorst [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]