Jim Mahoney's Blog - Sacred to Etc.

Some Wisdom for Holy Week

 
One of the towering spiritual giants of our Church was Sister Thea Bowman, an African American sister whose spiritual writings and life showed explicit goodness and holiness. She died at the age of 52. I just came across some words she wrote about Holy Week. It would be difficult to find better words to consider as we move through this week into the definitive victory of Easter. I hope that you will be nourished by her words:

"Let us resolve to make this week holy by claiming Christ’s redemptive grace and by living holy lives. The Word became flesh and redeemed us by his holy life and holy death. This week especially, let us accept redemption by living grateful, faithful, prayerful, generous, just and holy lives.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by reading and meditating Holy Scripture.

So often, we get caught up in the hurry of daily living. As individuals and as families, reserve prime time to be with Jesus, to hear the cries of the children waving palm branches, to see the Son of Man riding on an ass' colt, to feel the press of the crowd, to be caught up in the "Hosannas” and to realize how the cries of acclamation will yield to the garden of suffering, to be there and watch as Jesus is sentenced by Pilate to Calvary, to see him rejected, mocked, spat upon, beaten and forced to carry a heavy cross, to hear the echo of the hammer, to feel the agony of the torn flesh and strained muscles, to know Mary’s anguish as he hung three hours before he died.

We recoil before the atrocities of war, gang crime, domestic violence and catastrophic illness. Unless we personally and immediately are touched by suffering, it is easy to read Scripture and to walk away without contacting the redemptive suffering that makes us holy. The reality of the Word falls on deaf ears.

Let us take time this week to be present to someone who suffers. Sharing the pain of a fellow human will enliven Scripture and help us enter into the holy mystery of the redemptive suffering of Christ.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by participating in the Holy Week services of the church, not just by attending, but also by preparing, by studying the readings, entering into the spirit, offering our services as ministers of the Word or Eucharist, decorating the church or preparing the environment for worship.

Let us sing, "Lord, have mercy," and "Hosanna." Let us praise the Lord with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, uniting with the suffering church throughout the world -- in Rome and Northern Ireland, in Syria and Lebanon, in South Africa and Angola, India and China, Nicaragua and El Salvador, in Washington, D.C., and Jackson, Mississippi.

Let us break bread together; let us relive the holy and redemptive mystery. Let us do it in memory of him, acknowledging in faith his real presence upon our altars.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy within our families, sharing family prayer on a regular basis, making every meal a holy meal where loving conversations bond family members in unity, sharing family work without grumbling, making love not war, asking forgiveness for past hurts and forgiving one another from the heart, seeking to go all the way for love as Jesus went all the way for love.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy with the needy, the alienated, the lonely, the sick and afflicted, the untouchable.

Let us unite our sufferings, inconveniences and annoyances with the suffering of Jesus. Let us stretch ourselves, going beyond our comfort zones to unite ourselves with Christ's redemptive work.

We unite ourselves with Christ's redemptive work when we reconcile, when we make peace, when we share the good news that God is in our lives, when we reflect to our brothers and sisters God's healing, God's forgiveness, God's unconditional love.

Let us be practical, reaching out across the boundaries of race and class and status to help somebody, to encourage and affirm somebody, offering to the young an incentive to learn and grow, offering to the downtrodden resources to help themselves.

May our fasting be the kind that saves and shares with the poor, that actually contacts the needy, that gives heart to heart, that touches and nourishes and heals.

During this Holy Week when Jesus gave his life for love, let us truly love one another."

____

Do you want to figure out how to live a Christian life? Here is what Sister Thea told Mike Wallace on 60 minutes:  "I think the difference between me and some people is that I'm content to do my little bit. Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change. But if each one would light a candle we'd have a tremendous light."

Of Gods and Men - The Most Spiritual Film I've Ever Seen

I saw a movie that I still have difficulty describing because it is so packed with images, emotions, stories, faith, courage, and death. I tend to avoid movies with subtitles - just a personal quirk. However, people I admire mentioned this film. So I saw it. (As of 4-1-11, only playing in Cranford and Montclair. There will be a DVD, but release date has not been announced.)

At a time when we see the Catholic Church at its human worst in the handling of the sex abuse crisis, this film, a true story, is about the Catholic Church at its human best. It is hard to remember a film that touched me on so many levels. It is appropriately rated PG-13. But if you can withstand a few seconds of violence and an earthy word or two, run, don't walk, and go see it. This is about people whose faith was neither contrived nor superficial. This is about holiness, about martyrs, about goodness. This makes me incredibly proud to be Catholic.

An objective truth is that the Church is build upon the blood of the martyrs. The stories of the martyrs have always fascinated us and probably bewildered us. This story about martyrs may do the same - but it will also place you in contact with goodness and holiness to a degree that I have never found in a movie.

I want to reflect more about this film before writing about it. So, in the meantime, you might be interested in what Father Jim Martin, S.J., wrote about it for America Magazine:

Profound Work of Art

 

“Of Gods and Men” is the greatest film on faith I’ve ever seen.  It surpasses even some of my longtime favorite movies on the spiritual life, like “Romero,” “Diary of a Country Priest,” “A Man for All Seasons,” "The Mission" and “The Song of Bernadette.”  Perhaps only Franco Zeffirelli’s multi-part series “Jesus of Nazareth” has moved me more. 

By now, you probably know that the French-language movie, lauded in all corners (except, inexplicably, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—the film was omitted from being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film), is about the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Atlas Monastery in Algeria, who were assassinated by Algerian extremists in 1996.  Their story, which was in danger of being forgotten even in many corners of the Catholic world, is told in John Kiser’s essential book, The Monks of Tibhirine.

What may make the film so profound? 

First of all, it is a realistic portrayal of the life of faith.  The monks are not perfect; no saint, or martyr, is.  Holiness always makes its home in humanity.  Occasionally the monks are impatient, tetchy, or short with one another.  (“He’s tired,” says an older monk after a younger one has spoken to him sharply while cleaning up after a meal.)  One of them thinks wistfully of the life that he might have had "on the outside."  Moreover, the group struggles mightily with the idea that they might be "called" to be martyrs, indeed resisting it until almost the last minute.  As anyone would.  The life of the believer often involves uncertainty, doubt and confusion.  Two of them are seen, quite distinctly, as “avoiding” their fate.  But all try to grapple with what God seems to be asking of them, strange and frightening as it may seem to them. 

Second, the movie does not stint—at all—on the religious underpinnings of their actions and choices.  Too often in contemporary cinema, producers or directors indicate by their own choices that audiences will not understand people who talk about God in a serious way. And so we see (and hear) the monks chanting their prayers, celebrating Mass, preparing for Christmas.  In this way the movie was reminiscent of another recent film on the monastic life, the documentary "Into Great Silence."  We hear the words of their prayers, too; and we are privy to their conversations with one another about God, and often with God.  God is real to them; and God’s effect on their lives is made real to the viewer.

We see, too, the real-life effects of their Christian faith: particularly in the love they show (and receive) from the villagers who live near the monastery.  The Trappists are, moreover, charitable and loving not only to friends (to one another; to their longtime friends in the village); but to those who oppose them (to both the terrorists who threaten their lives and the army officers who have nothing but contempt for their desire to stay.)  The life of contemplation and action are inseparable; the true effects of their belief are made manifest.

Third, the director Xavier Beauvois underplays many scenes, like a beautifully pastoral image of the abbot walking silently through a flock of sheep.  Another director might have wanted to demonstrate more explicitly (through music, a caption or a voice-over) the idea of the Good Shepherd who does not leave his flock, which the monks discuss at one point during their deliberations on whether or not to "stay." The use of music from “Swan Lake,” which Anthony Lane in the New Yorker felt was used more effectively than even in “Black Swan,” is also subtle.  At a meal, a kind of Last Supper before their martyrdom, the community listens not to the traditional “reading at table” (where a monk reads from a religious text to the silent diners), but to Tchaikovsky’s great music.  They drink good wine, as the camera pans over their now confused, now calm, now sorrowful, now joyful faces. 

The movie, as the modernist poets liked to say, shows rather than tells.

Fourth, the actors' performances are nearly perfect.  Based on the monks (and Trappists) I know, these characters felt as close to real monks as I’ve ever seen on screen, particularly the kind-hearted Brother Luc, played by Michael Lonsdale; and the intellectually-minded abbot, Christian, played by Lambert Wilson (who can be heard here on NPR’s “Fresh Air” speaking about his role.)

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the film treats the idea of martyrdom intelligently.  Watching “Of Gods and Men,” I started to realize, slowly at first then more strongly, that more people might begin to understand the strange idea of martyrdom.  For it is an idea that even believers find hard to comprehend.

Besides this unique film, perhaps only “A Man for All Seasons” and “Romero” can help people understand this difficult and complex idea, which today is often seen as naïve, bizarre or simply masochistic.  But martyrdom is always more about fidelity to one’s mission than it is about an outright courting of danger.  None of the Trappist monks do this; they all want to live.  Until they cannot.

In addition to being the final result of fidelity to God in a dangerous situation, or a faithfulness to those with whom one ministers, martyrdom may also involve a negation, a via negativa.  That is, martyrdom is just as often about finding oneself not being able to do something.  St. Thomas More could not say “yes” to the king’s actions in Renaissance England; Archbishop Oscar Romero, the American churchwomen and Jesuit priests could not leave the poor with whom they worked in El Salvador in the 1980s; the Trappist monks in Algeria could not desert a poor and oppressed village that had come to depend upon them. 

But in this “no” comes a “yes.”  A “yes” to solidarity with the oppressed; a “yes” to God; a “yes,” paradoxically, to life. 

James Martin, SJ