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Whenever we encounter God, and recognize the reality, we are challenged. Christ always nvites us to grow, to sacrifice, to serve and to love where we didn’t think we needed to go. It’s why I suspect the new film Cabrini is good. It demands we look at the reality of a life of faith –having a relationship with God doesn’t shield one from harm or struggle, but it does open one up to recognizing miracles in real time. Submission to His will means we become vessels through which the world encounters healing it didn’t think possible or needed. I’m going on Friday, and I’ll let you know what I think.
I admit to always being a tad wary around Catholic films, because I worry they will either be syrup or life without the cross –which makes for a boring story that no one believes. Which brings me to the other movie I want to see. Most people don’t like Flannery O’Connor because her story feel like nails, thorns, splinters and scourges. She lets us see just how broken and fallen and deluded and wrong we can be.
It looks good too. As I said, I am wary of films depicting raw Catholicism, because a good film is hard to find.
Going back to the main point emphasized in the trailer, and voiced by many who read and want to “enjoy” her stories but find they don’t. Her stories ought to make one uncomfortable, in the same way, the Gospel if we recognize ourselves in all the roles we like to pretend we aren’t, would make us feel ill at ease with ourselves. God is not a tame God, but a wild lover of our souls, desiring us to be what we were created to be –which sin and our proclivity to deny the reality of our sin, prevent us from being. We’re supposed to wrestle with God, and more importantly, with our own need for Him and the only way to win with God, is to surrender.
Lent works the same way. Until we recognize that “winning” at Lent means recognizing our own weakness, we will wander in the dessert, despite miracles, despite all the signs and wonders, despite all the direction God gives us.
If you’ve bombed on your Lenten resolution, rejoice that you have discovered your will is weak and you need God’s grace because your own power is insufficient. If you’ve succeeded thus far with your Lenten resolution, rejoice in having cooperated with God’s grace and beg for the gift of humility to always remember, it is through God that we do any good. Give thanks and keep giving thanks every time you succeed, by recognizing the source and summit of all your strength and all your gifts, indeed, your very life.
I keep restarting, hoping, today I’ll do it right. Lent keeps reminding me, doing it right is not the point. However, I also keep forgetting. God however, is kind to his forgetful sheep. Thank goodness. Thank God.
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