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The Movie: You know which one.
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Nicodemus: You have a very wise priest. I loved this : "Every
other spiritual experience is emotion that, however
sincere and heartfelt, will not save in the long run,
unless we have genuine repentance."
I have been reading Fr. Seraphim on this very topic. Astute observation, and very profound.
I do still want to see the movie this weekend. But I have a much more subdued attitude toward it, after reading everyone's posts here. Christ is not tabloid material and we should never treat him so casually.
other spiritual experience is emotion that, however
sincere and heartfelt, will not save in the long run,
unless we have genuine repentance."
I have been reading Fr. Seraphim on this very topic. Astute observation, and very profound.
I do still want to see the movie this weekend. But I have a much more subdued attitude toward it, after reading everyone's posts here. Christ is not tabloid material and we should never treat him so casually.
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Isn't there a saying something like..."Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."Suzannah said:
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Photini! Yes, I think it's in Proverbs! If it isn't, we Irish have lots of proverbs that will do as wellGod prefers prayers to tears.
If you dig a grave for others you may fall into it yourself
There never came a gatherer but a scatterer came after him.
Everyone feels his own wound first.
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TW,
I mainly refer to the writings of the Saints such as in the Philokalia. Also such as The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St John of the Ladder, Journey to Heaven by St Tikhon of Zadonsk, My Life in Christ by St John of Kronstadt, Unseen Warfare as revised by St Theophan the Recluse...etc. The spiritual life is developed gradually and carefully and I do not see where "shock therapy" with it's sudden ups and provoking of emotions plays into that. I am not condemning the movie, or saying it's bad. According to these Fathers, true repentance is born through much toil. "We fail to realize that he who seeks to see Christ should look not outside himself, but within himself, emulating Christ's life in this world, and becoming sinless in body and soul, as Christ was. His intellect should apprehend everything through Christ." ~St Peter of Damaskos
{edited: because of my wordiness.}
I mainly refer to the writings of the Saints such as in the Philokalia. Also such as The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St John of the Ladder, Journey to Heaven by St Tikhon of Zadonsk, My Life in Christ by St John of Kronstadt, Unseen Warfare as revised by St Theophan the Recluse...etc. The spiritual life is developed gradually and carefully and I do not see where "shock therapy" with it's sudden ups and provoking of emotions plays into that. I am not condemning the movie, or saying it's bad. According to these Fathers, true repentance is born through much toil. "We fail to realize that he who seeks to see Christ should look not outside himself, but within himself, emulating Christ's life in this world, and becoming sinless in body and soul, as Christ was. His intellect should apprehend everything through Christ." ~St Peter of Damaskos
{edited: because of my wordiness.}
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A
athbibleboy
Guest
nicodemus said:
please don't be. everyone has their own opinion, so just go see it and come away with your own opinion of it.
i was so moved by what our wonderful Lord went through, just for us.
Thank you Lord Jesus, for the gift of eternal life.
God Bless you all
Atnu
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A
athbibleboy
Guest
Suzannah said:
that is true. i had posted earlier that this film is NOT a witnessing tool. its not going to win anyone to Christ.
but as a Christian already, it does allow us to appreciate what our Lord did to give us our wonderful gift.
God bless you all
Atnu
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Oblio
Creed or Chaos
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John David Powell
The Sunday of Forgiveness * 2004
Houston, Texas
Listen closely and you will hear the hoary hounds of Hell howling their hatred of an event that has not occurred. They cry out not at war or famine, not at injustice or crime. They bare their teeth over entertainment, a film, an interpretation of the last hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
I have tried with small success to avoid the hype and hysteria preceding the release of Mel Gibsons "The Passion of the Christ". It was my hope to see the film free of self-serving influences. Alas, that will not be the case.
.
.
.
An anti-Mel/anti-Christian email prompted the column you now read. The email was a copy of an article carried by the online magazine Salon (www.salon.com). It is a classic example of leftist speech and godless commentary, written for the satisfaction of the types of folks Lenin called useful idiots.
.
.
.
Complete column can be read at Orthodoxy Today
---------------
BTW, I heard on NPR what I think was the Salon opinion that prompted the column piece. All I can say to the NPR piece is
The gem in this column (all possible inaccuracies & misplaced emphasis in The Passion aside) is:
The Sunday of Forgiveness * 2004
Houston, Texas
Listen closely and you will hear the hoary hounds of Hell howling their hatred of an event that has not occurred. They cry out not at war or famine, not at injustice or crime. They bare their teeth over entertainment, a film, an interpretation of the last hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
I have tried with small success to avoid the hype and hysteria preceding the release of Mel Gibsons "The Passion of the Christ". It was my hope to see the film free of self-serving influences. Alas, that will not be the case.
.
.
.
An anti-Mel/anti-Christian email prompted the column you now read. The email was a copy of an article carried by the online magazine Salon (www.salon.com). It is a classic example of leftist speech and godless commentary, written for the satisfaction of the types of folks Lenin called useful idiots.
.
.
.
Complete column can be read at Orthodoxy Today
---------------
BTW, I heard on NPR what I think was the Salon opinion that prompted the column piece. All I can say to the NPR piece is
The gem in this column (all possible inaccuracies & misplaced emphasis in The Passion aside) is:
Linked Article said:
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countrymousenc
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From the article at Orthodoxy Today:
For some reason, this brings to mind a saying -
What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
For some reason, this brings to mind a saying -
What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
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MariaRegina
Well-Known Member
Just a thought ...
With all these millions of people viewing the Mel Gibson film The Passion, we should boldly proclaim our faith so that the unchurched will find a church. I've talked to a lot of angry ex-Christians who were evangelized by Christian Crusade (CC) and who left Christianity and Christ because they were never pastored, they never found a "home" in Christianity.
I guess the release of this film will cause an increase of hungry visitors to CF.
This film is profoundly disturbing:
To separate Christ from His Teachings, His Holy Mysteries, and His Church is dangerous. These "shocked" people need to find a Church home or they will turn against Christ. Mel Gibson couldn't put the Church in his film for obvious reasons. This separation of Christ from His Holy Church is the tremendous disadvantage of the film. You cannot separate the Bride (His Holy Church) from the Bridegroom (Christ).
With all these millions of people viewing the Mel Gibson film The Passion, we should boldly proclaim our faith so that the unchurched will find a church. I've talked to a lot of angry ex-Christians who were evangelized by Christian Crusade (CC) and who left Christianity and Christ because they were never pastored, they never found a "home" in Christianity.
I guess the release of this film will cause an increase of hungry visitors to CF.
This film is profoundly disturbing:
To separate Christ from His Teachings, His Holy Mysteries, and His Church is dangerous. These "shocked" people need to find a Church home or they will turn against Christ. Mel Gibson couldn't put the Church in his film for obvious reasons. This separation of Christ from His Holy Church is the tremendous disadvantage of the film. You cannot separate the Bride (His Holy Church) from the Bridegroom (Christ).
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MariaRegina
Well-Known Member
JAMES CARROLL
Christ's real passion was life
By James Carroll, 2/10/2004
JERUSALEM
CAN A PIOUS Christian make too much of the passion of the Christ? Can the suffering of Jesus be remembered as too bloody? Or too unique, for that matter? Can the crucifixion be made too central to Christian faith? Indeed, can that faith be distorted by an overemphasis on blood and cruelty into a perversion of the message Jesus preached -- or even into a source of new cruelty? These are questions in my mind as I sit outside the small chapel that marks the place where Jesus died. Sensational news stories and a clever publicity campaign lead me to associate Golgotha with Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ." I am aware of the danger of prejudgment, having not seen the film, yet Gibson's many comments and selective screenings of excerpts, which I have seen, are enough to have me thinking of it here. The possibility that the film levels the old "Christ-killer" charge against Jews prompted my first concern.
But an afternoon's meditation at the place where Christians have remembered the death of Jesus for 1,600 years raises the question of whether we have more broadly misused that memory. This shrine memorializing Golgotha is, in fact, a kind of side chapel in a much larger church that gives overwhelming emphasis to the memory of Jesus being raised from the dead. One sees that in the fact that the church is called the Holy Sepulcher by Latin Christians, indicating the tomb, not the execution place, and even more in the fact that Eastern Orthodox Christians call it the Church of the Resurrection. A celebration of the joy of resurrection trumps the grief of crucifixion in every way here.
In the first centuries of the church, the bloody crucifixion had little hold on the religious imagination of Christians.* Scratched on the walls of the ancient catacombs, for example, one finds drawings of the communion cup, the loaf of bread, the fish -- but rarely if ever the cross.
Early Christians revered the death of Jesus, of course, but they evoked it metaphorically, not literally, more with the image of going down into the waters of baptism than with nails and blood. The cross comes into the center of Christian symbolism only in the fourth century, with Constantine and his mother, Helena, who is remembered as having discovered it here, only yards from where I sit. But even then, the cross was taken more as a token of resurrection than of brutal death.
It was only in the medieval period that the Latin church began to put the violent death of Jesus at the center of faith, but that theology was tied to a broader cultural obsession with death related to plagues, millennialism, and the carnage of the Crusades. Grotesquely literal renditions of the crucifixion came into art only as self-flagellation and other "mortifications" came into devotion. Good Friday began to replace Easter as the high point of the liturgical year. And God came to be understood as so cruel as to will his son's agonizing death as the only way to "atone" for the sins of fallen humanity.
Such is the piety into which many Christians, including Catholics of my generation, were born. From all reports, it is the piety on display in Mel Gibson's movie. But in nothing have the reforms of the Second Vatican Council been more significant than in a rejection of that piety and a return of the Resurrection to the center of faith. That is why, in the Catholic Church, white vestments replaced black at funeral services, why Easter rites have been reemphasized, why the cross itself, in church architecture, is downplayed.
All of this is to say that death was not the purpose of Jesus' life but only one part of a story that stretches from incarnation at Bethlehem to life as a Jew in Nazareth to preaching in Galilee to a courageous challenge to Roman imperialism in Jerusalem to permanent faith in the God of Israel whose promise is fulfilled in resurrection. In this full context, the death of Jesus can be seen as a full signal of his humanity -- and more.
In being crucified, Jesus was not uniquely singled out for the most extreme suffering ever inflicted but was joined to thousands of his fellow Jews who said no to Rome -- and who suffered similarly for it.
Leaving aside questions of taste, or even of prurience in displays of graphic violence, any rendition of the death of Jesus that attributes sacred meaning to suffering or cruelty to "God's will," not to mention special guilt to Jews, is a betrayal of the real passions of Christ -- which were for truth, for love, and for life. Life, as he put it, to the full.
_______________________________________________________
James Carroll is a member of the Catholic Church.
_____________________________________________________
*This could have been said better by the author. The early Christians used the symbol of the Cross and it was not rare, but it was mostly a symbol of victory and not with Christ's body depicted on it. Before his conversion Saint Constantine asked his advisors the significance of the Cross the told him that it was, "the symbol of immortality and the victory over death that the Christ of God had recently accomplished."
Christ's real passion was life
By James Carroll, 2/10/2004
JERUSALEM
CAN A PIOUS Christian make too much of the passion of the Christ? Can the suffering of Jesus be remembered as too bloody? Or too unique, for that matter? Can the crucifixion be made too central to Christian faith? Indeed, can that faith be distorted by an overemphasis on blood and cruelty into a perversion of the message Jesus preached -- or even into a source of new cruelty? These are questions in my mind as I sit outside the small chapel that marks the place where Jesus died. Sensational news stories and a clever publicity campaign lead me to associate Golgotha with Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ." I am aware of the danger of prejudgment, having not seen the film, yet Gibson's many comments and selective screenings of excerpts, which I have seen, are enough to have me thinking of it here. The possibility that the film levels the old "Christ-killer" charge against Jews prompted my first concern.
But an afternoon's meditation at the place where Christians have remembered the death of Jesus for 1,600 years raises the question of whether we have more broadly misused that memory. This shrine memorializing Golgotha is, in fact, a kind of side chapel in a much larger church that gives overwhelming emphasis to the memory of Jesus being raised from the dead. One sees that in the fact that the church is called the Holy Sepulcher by Latin Christians, indicating the tomb, not the execution place, and even more in the fact that Eastern Orthodox Christians call it the Church of the Resurrection. A celebration of the joy of resurrection trumps the grief of crucifixion in every way here.
In the first centuries of the church, the bloody crucifixion had little hold on the religious imagination of Christians.* Scratched on the walls of the ancient catacombs, for example, one finds drawings of the communion cup, the loaf of bread, the fish -- but rarely if ever the cross.
Early Christians revered the death of Jesus, of course, but they evoked it metaphorically, not literally, more with the image of going down into the waters of baptism than with nails and blood. The cross comes into the center of Christian symbolism only in the fourth century, with Constantine and his mother, Helena, who is remembered as having discovered it here, only yards from where I sit. But even then, the cross was taken more as a token of resurrection than of brutal death.
It was only in the medieval period that the Latin church began to put the violent death of Jesus at the center of faith, but that theology was tied to a broader cultural obsession with death related to plagues, millennialism, and the carnage of the Crusades. Grotesquely literal renditions of the crucifixion came into art only as self-flagellation and other "mortifications" came into devotion. Good Friday began to replace Easter as the high point of the liturgical year. And God came to be understood as so cruel as to will his son's agonizing death as the only way to "atone" for the sins of fallen humanity.
Such is the piety into which many Christians, including Catholics of my generation, were born. From all reports, it is the piety on display in Mel Gibson's movie. But in nothing have the reforms of the Second Vatican Council been more significant than in a rejection of that piety and a return of the Resurrection to the center of faith. That is why, in the Catholic Church, white vestments replaced black at funeral services, why Easter rites have been reemphasized, why the cross itself, in church architecture, is downplayed.
All of this is to say that death was not the purpose of Jesus' life but only one part of a story that stretches from incarnation at Bethlehem to life as a Jew in Nazareth to preaching in Galilee to a courageous challenge to Roman imperialism in Jerusalem to permanent faith in the God of Israel whose promise is fulfilled in resurrection. In this full context, the death of Jesus can be seen as a full signal of his humanity -- and more.
In being crucified, Jesus was not uniquely singled out for the most extreme suffering ever inflicted but was joined to thousands of his fellow Jews who said no to Rome -- and who suffered similarly for it.
Leaving aside questions of taste, or even of prurience in displays of graphic violence, any rendition of the death of Jesus that attributes sacred meaning to suffering or cruelty to "God's will," not to mention special guilt to Jews, is a betrayal of the real passions of Christ -- which were for truth, for love, and for life. Life, as he put it, to the full.
_______________________________________________________
James Carroll is a member of the Catholic Church.
_____________________________________________________
*This could have been said better by the author. The early Christians used the symbol of the Cross and it was not rare, but it was mostly a symbol of victory and not with Christ's body depicted on it. Before his conversion Saint Constantine asked his advisors the significance of the Cross the told him that it was, "the symbol of immortality and the victory over death that the Christ of God had recently accomplished."
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Chanter, I cant help but think your going a little overboard in your negative attitude toward the film. The Church as Christ's family of believer's are represented well in the film (as is the Eucharist for that matter) and is lead by the Blessed Virgin who is always referred to as "Mother"
Also the victory of the Cross is well represented in the film. The driving theme is that Satan is defeated by Christ's suffering self giving love. One of the films best scene's
shows Satans defeat in Hades after his death. The Ressuerection follows immediately after.
Have you actually seen the film yet?
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MariaRegina
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TWells said:
True the First Eucharist is mentioned, but what about all the seven Holy Mysteries - these really cannot be depicted on film anyway: Baptism, Chrismation (occurred at Pentecost), The Divine Liturgy (Eucharist), Holy Confession, Matrimony, Holy Order, Holy Unction. Do you see what I mean? Mel Gibson did not truly represent the Bride of Christ and the early Christian Church as a lived experience. This is the problem.
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Matrona
Lady Godiva Freedom Rider
Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I felt like I should put in my two euros somewhere, now that I finally saw The Movie last night.
It was, well, it was a movie. And I thought it was for the most part very well-done. I did cry at two points during the movie: when Christ said to His Mother, after she helped Him up, "See, Mother, how I make all things new..." and later on, during one of the flashbacks, when He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life..." After that I held it together until the end of the movie, and we had walked out to the car, and I started weeping again as soon as I sat down. (Thank heaven for all the tissues I brought with me.)
Oh, it really upset me when the woman was giving Him a cloth to dry His face (Holy Napkin!) but when she gave Him a drink of water, it was kicked away from Him by that stupid Roman soldier. You know, for some reason I had this really strong feeling that the woman handing Him the water was St. Photini. Hey, it sounds like something she'd do, since He had once offered her a drink of Water, remember?
I don't know why the scourging itself did not bother me. I guess from all the hype this movie got, I wasn't shocked by actually seeing it. It was like I wasn't really seeing it. Until they showed how part of His ribcage was exposed from all the beatings. And that was when I almost passed out right there in my seat. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
There are two things that bother me, though, and in my mind they sort of spoil the film:
The first being, the Harrowing of Hell isn't really given enough attention. I know I'm not a professional, but I am a film student and I've made films before. I would have showed Christ trampling down death, and have Him say something to the effect of, "I'm the Author of Life; death can't hold Me" and gone from there.
The second is, of course, the Resurrection. Wow, was that ever anti-climactic or what?! A naked guy walking out of a cave! Well, whoopdeedoo! I'm sorry if this sounds too flippant, but really, that wasn't anything approaching what Pascha is for me. A naked guy walking out of a cave is nothing approaching that! Where are the myrrh-bearing women? Where is the angel saying "Why seek ye the Living among the dead? Why mourn ye the Incorruptible amid corruption?" Where's the "Pascha, ransom from sorrow!"?! CHRIST IS THE LIGHT THAT CAN NEVER BE OVERTAKEN BY NIGHT!
It was, well, it was a movie. And I thought it was for the most part very well-done. I did cry at two points during the movie: when Christ said to His Mother, after she helped Him up, "See, Mother, how I make all things new..." and later on, during one of the flashbacks, when He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life..." After that I held it together until the end of the movie, and we had walked out to the car, and I started weeping again as soon as I sat down. (Thank heaven for all the tissues I brought with me.)
Oh, it really upset me when the woman was giving Him a cloth to dry His face (Holy Napkin!) but when she gave Him a drink of water, it was kicked away from Him by that stupid Roman soldier. You know, for some reason I had this really strong feeling that the woman handing Him the water was St. Photini. Hey, it sounds like something she'd do, since He had once offered her a drink of Water, remember?
I don't know why the scourging itself did not bother me. I guess from all the hype this movie got, I wasn't shocked by actually seeing it. It was like I wasn't really seeing it. Until they showed how part of His ribcage was exposed from all the beatings. And that was when I almost passed out right there in my seat. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
There are two things that bother me, though, and in my mind they sort of spoil the film:
The first being, the Harrowing of Hell isn't really given enough attention. I know I'm not a professional, but I am a film student and I've made films before. I would have showed Christ trampling down death, and have Him say something to the effect of, "I'm the Author of Life; death can't hold Me" and gone from there.
The second is, of course, the Resurrection. Wow, was that ever anti-climactic or what?! A naked guy walking out of a cave! Well, whoopdeedoo! I'm sorry if this sounds too flippant, but really, that wasn't anything approaching what Pascha is for me. A naked guy walking out of a cave is nothing approaching that! Where are the myrrh-bearing women? Where is the angel saying "Why seek ye the Living among the dead? Why mourn ye the Incorruptible amid corruption?" Where's the "Pascha, ransom from sorrow!"?! CHRIST IS THE LIGHT THAT CAN NEVER BE OVERTAKEN BY NIGHT!
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countrymousenc
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Matrona said:
I haven't seen "The Passion" yet, but I like your suggestion about the Harrowing of Hell. The Resurrection scene I'd like to have been included would be Mary Magdalene asking Jesus (not yet recognizing Him) where the body had been taken, and Jesus saying her name, and the look on her face as she realized the truth. That must have been, well, indescribable. I love to think about it!
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Great review Matrona! Thanks!
I had to reschedule my "attendance"....so hopefully will try to go over the weekend.
I had to reschedule my "attendance"....so hopefully will try to go over the weekend.
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