IT was a hot Sunday in summer long before the pandemic. As the priest was delivering an interminable homily, I started to get fidgety at some point. Then looking around, I sensed others were bored too and like me probably wanted the priest to end the agonizing sermon.
An idea popped in my mind. Instead of the usual homily, why not just let the congregation watch a short film (maybe 5 minutes long) with a theme related to the day’s gospel. Then after the film is over, the priest can just intone: “The homily is finished. Reflect on it and strive to apply it in your life.”
Now that all Lenten religious activities in churches have again been suspended, perhaps devotees may want to give my idea a try. Get your Lenten spiritual fill by watching good movies at home during Holy Week.
I’m serious. Yes, with a good movie, visceral pleasure and spiritual nourishment can be experienced simultaneously.
My brother Caloy, a Benedictine monk and a desaparecido, was the mentor who taught me to read books, listen to songs, and watch movies through a spiritual looking glass. Since then, I’ve always believed one should take spiritual insight or wisdom where you can get it. Even in ordinary things a spiritual teaching is always hidden in them. A movie’s portrayal of a situation may just be what you need to know at some point in your spiritual journey as a Christian.
On streaming platforms, there are what they call “Christian films” that are family-friendly, faith-based films designed for “preaching to the choir” so to speak. Some are stories from the bible like the Gospel of St. Matthew or Gospel of St. John, or inspirational stories based on true stories. These will be safe choices because you will encounter nothing that goes against long-held traditional Christian beliefs or doctrines.
Or like me you can expand your choices to include films that are not overtly Christian but have themes or messages that make the message of the Gospels come even more alive.
Echoing the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton, true faith lies in being completely open to every manifestation of God’s love. What we call material or worldly goods should in themselves never be an obstacle to true faith, to contemplative reflection on how God works on us and in us.
I have long found out that there are a few filmmakers who have somehow mastered the art of mining powerful messages in the midst of breathtaking, hair-raising action sequences and goofy unheroic characters.
The collection of movies I have accumulated through the years is like an informal class on spirituality with lively and varied lessons. Even films from non-Christian countries like Iran, Nigeria or Turkey are full of values that echo what we Christians have been taught to espouse and to live by. You just need to know what to look for.
Just to cite an example. Two of my favorite films, Tokyo Story and Postmaster are about devotion and selfless service. In Tokyo Story, the daughter-in-law who chooses to be devoted to her aging in-laws in spite of the fact that their son, her husband, has long been dead. Her devotion is even much greater than that shown by the biological sons and daughters who are visibly irked and stressed by the presence of their visiting parents. The story struck me as similar to the story of Ruth in the Old Testament. I find it uncanny because the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, was not even a Christian.
The other film Postmaster is part of a trilogy by the acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray who was a Hindu. It depicts the story of a young girl who serves the new postmaster coming from the city and now assigned to a remote little village. The girl, apparently an uneducated orphan, is an unpaid go-fer who cooks for him, washes his clothes, prepares his bed, showing utmost dedication and devotion to him. Upon learning that she does not know how to read and write, out of impulse and to while the time, the postmaster teaches her the rudiments of reading and writing, which totally delights the girl. Later when the man contracts malaria and becomes delirious, the young girl nurses him back to health, watching over him day and night, helping him drink the herbal concoction prepared by the village medicine man, cooling his fever by putting wet cloth on his forehead.
Spoiler alert, both films have endings that will break your heart. They are not overtly Christian films, yet their depiction of devotion, selfless love, and gratitude is so straight out of the Gospels, they will leave you with seeds of contemplation to ponder, to nurture and cultivate for the rest of your life as a Christian.
Just again to belabor my point, I have been bingeing on Iranian films the past few weeks. So far I have watched Children of Heaven, Cold Day, Wings of a Dream, 21 Days Later and My Father’s Bicycle. While again these were by filmmakers of another faith, they all convey Christian and biblical messages of family unity, respect for the wisdom of elders, devotion to God, modesty, humility, self-less devotion to the family, parental obedience, compassion for the weak and sickly and others.
You may also want to watch Japanese animes. One of them, Graveyard of the Fireflies is especially moving because it is suffused with Christian lessons on the true meaning of sacrifice, perseverance and love.
Love, forgiveness, compassion, redemption. These are just some of the teachings that Jesus espoused in the Gospels as well as by other revered leaders of other faiths. They are vividly depicted in films that you can watch not just this Holy Week but throughout the year to help nourish and deepen your spiritual life.
For in these movies, you can find individuals like you and me struggling to be free, to love others, to cherish every moment, to honor their commitments, to endure, persevere, and survive, trying to rise to the challenge. These characters could be your spiritual mentors.
Let me end with the case of a colleague and a friend who for whatever reason had written off religion and dropped religious observance after college. His faith was non-existent for a time. But at some point he felt an enormous hunger for spiritual grounding.
Rather than advise him to go back to the sacraments or a priest, which would have turned him off, I broached the idea of watching movies to get some kind of spiritual nourishment.
Soon enough, we were discussing spiritual lessons we’ve perceived from movies we’ve both watched. This became the catalyst that helped his exiled heart to come home.
One time he told me: “Watching movies is my way of coming to church. I like it that movies don’t preach at you. They let you experience God’s message for yourself. You know I never felt so close to God before or since. I was spiritually adrift. Movies pulled me back.”
God’s message is revealed not as an inaccessible mystery but as something very near to you, as near as the movies you’ll be watching this Holy Week through a spiritual looking glass.