Finding God in Music and Movies

Good art has a way of changing our emotions, sparking our imaginations, touching our souls, and moving us to action. Think about how powerful your favorite movie was the first time you saw it, or how you feel when you get to watch it again. Think about how the right song can stop you in your tracks, lift you up, or completely change your day. Art, especially in the form of movies and music, is a powerful medium of expression and persuasion.

So, then, as Christians, what do we watch? What do we listen to?

Some choose to watch and listen to it all. “If it’s popular, I’ll see it!” This may not be our best option. Turn on the tv, go to the movies, or play a few songs on the radio and you are bound to find terrible language, un-Christian themes, gratuitous sex and violence, and really poor writing. The Christian is sometimes left wondering what to watch.

As a result, some have chosen to only watch and listen to things produced by the Christian industry, geared to created “positive and encouraging” entertainment for the whole family. Christian music and movies are uplifting, wholesome, appropriate for all ages, and even informative about our faith. Given what’s on regular tv and radio, some believe that this is all a Christian could ever need.

But, as I’ve written before (Franciscan Film Society) I’m not a huge supporter of the Christian industry. While I don’t find reason to discourage people from it, I often find the message simplistic, the situations far from reality, and the quality of production distracting. Sure, it may have a nice, wholesome message, but it does not challenge me or stimulate my imagination. For me, the Christian industry is not bad, it’s just safe. It does not take risks, does challenge or unsettle, and does not cause the viewer to come to his/her own conclusions. It comes up with a clear, comfortable message, and builds a story around it.

Not all art is so neat and tidy. Not all problems have an easy answer. Not all situations have a happy ending. Not all of life is G-rated.

For me, there is much more fruit for a critically minded Christian in secular movies: The best movies portraying the journey of a Christian to the heart of God are often found in the secular world. With better acting, larger budgets, more creative and skilled writing, and, frankly, more of a grasp on the way the world works, secular movies and music offer greater artistic value and stimulate our imaginations in a way that many (not all) Christian movies simply do not.

What I suggest in this month’s podcast with Rob is that a trip to the movies or a turn of the radio dial can be a prayerful experience, even if the content is not itself explicitly Christian. While there are certainly things that are probably not beneficial to anyone (there is bad art in every segment of the population), a Christian with an incarnational spirituality and a critical eye can experience God, redeem what they see, and be moved to be a better Christian, even in the secular world.

For those on email, click here for the video.

 1 Comment

 Posted on December 1, 2015 by

 Prayer, Theology

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Time to Start Again

Each year on New Year’s eve, we celebrate the year that was and anticipate the year that will be. As the ball drops and the clock adds another year at midnight, we sense something significant: it’s a new year. And despite the fact that time is relative and the moment is completely arbitrary… there are feelings of elation, catharsis, inspiration, and regret. The changing of the year offers us a clear break from past and future, and opportunity to move on and live better. With each turning year is a chance for a “fresh start.”

It’s no wonder, then, that it is a time for resolutions. “This year, I’m going to …” People focus on losing weight, working harder, improving relationships, eating better, quitting smoking or drinking, traveling more, or just being a better person. It’s a time of motivation, determination, and achievement of feats one didn’t know possible.

So why do I write about this now on November 28th, a full month ahead of time? Am I that organized and forward thinking? Ha! (Maybe there’s a New Year’s resolution somewhere in there…) No, the reason I write today is because today is actually the final day of the Church calendar. As the sun sets this evening and the evening masses begin, Ordinary Time will end and Advent will begin.

Like the Gregorian Calendar, there is a sense that this is an arbitrary change; since the events we celebrate (Christmas, Easter, etc.) were not recorded by exact date nor do they “happen” again each year, we could have chosen to celebrate them on any day and set any day as the start of the new year. And yet, unlike the Gregorian Calendar, there is great significance to the progression of the year: we begin with anticipation and hope for something better during Advent, experience the joy of the Incarnation, our hope fulfilled, at Christmas, begin our Christian journey in Ordinary Time, call to mind our times of failure in Lent so to prepare ourselves for the fullness of life and salvation during Easter, to finally be sent out to make disciples of the world in Ordinary Time again. In a year, we capture the experience of our salvation, from our humble beginnings to our triumphant salvation.

The beauty of it all, at least to me, is that it is by its nature cyclical. It happens again and again and again and again. The seasons of the year are not things to be completed or perfected so as to move beyond them. So it is with our life as Christians. Our experience of salvation history and the stages of our own Christian growth are not things that can be simply completed like years of high school or the items on a checklist. Just because we have been a Christian for many years does not mean that we have graduated from the anticipation of Jesus’ coming, the excitement of a new faith, the sorrow of a forgotten one, or the call to spread it abound. The seasons and celebrations we commemorate throughout the year, models for salvation history, do not always progress in our lives like a ladder, moving forward to never return; they are like a spiral staircase, always returning to where we once were but with new perspective.

This evening as Advent begins, we will find ourselves at the beginning once again, an opportunity for a “fresh start.” It is a time to return to our roots, to focus on what is most essential to us as Christians and to remember the feelings of hope and anticipation we once knew when we first accepted the faith. It is a time for us to recommit ourselves to the journey of salvation. I say, it’s a time for resolutions. On New Year’s eve, we set resolutions to make our year better than the last one. We focus on our bodies, our money, and our careers. Why not set a resolution to focus on what really matters, to commit ourselves to making this year better for our spiritual lives than the last? Prayer. Donations. Service. Sacrifice. For years we may have been doing these things very well. Maybe we haven’t.

Today, we have an opportunity to start again on our journey. What will you do better this year?

 2 Comments

 Posted on November 28, 2015 by

 Discernment, Prayer

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The Franciscan Humility Challenge

With the passing of Halloween, it is officially Christmas season… at least for department stores, television advertisers, and Franciscans. That is an odd combination, I will admit, and some of you may be singing the Sesame Street song “One of these things is not like the other…” Are Franciscans also invested in the commercialism of Christmas? No, not exactly.

I mentioned in passing last year that Christmas was probably the most important celebration for St. Francis. While Easter celebrates the Resurrection of our Lord and the fulfilled hope of our salvation—a pretty big thing to celebrate for sure—Christmas marks the end of our waiting and the beginning of the fulfilled promise. As Simeon says in the Gospel of Luke, “My eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32). The Incarnation for Francis was the height of human history: God became human. What a marvel. What a miracle. What a joy of our faith.

So what does this have to do with beginning the Christmas planning on November 1st like those needing to sell us something? Well, because it was such an important feast for St. Francis, he exhorted his friars to prepare for it to an even greater extent than the Church required in the season of Advent: “Let them fast from the Feast of All Saints until Christmas” (Rule of St. Francis III.5).

For us, fasting doesn’t have to mean the literal use of the word, that is, to abstain from food or drink at certain times; fasting can mean abstaining from luxuries more broadly, or even being more intentional with our time so to do something more purposeful, like prayer.

This year, I have come up with something new, and I would like to invite anyone who is interested to try it with me. We all know that humility was probably the highest desire of Francis’ life, that he wished to always be the lowest and least important. We also know that one of his chief reasons for loving this virtue so much was in fact the Incarnation, the humility of God to become human, to be born in such an insignificant way, and to be presented to shepherds, among the dirtiest and least important people of society. For this reason, I will be taking the newly created and aptly named “Franciscan Humility Challenge.”

The purpose of this challenge is to actively seek opportunities to give up control and to be humbled every day. What do I mean by this? Well, so much of our lives is working to get our own way. In our jobs, relationships, families, and interactions with strangers, we find ourselves in conflict with others who want something different from us: Who is in charge? What movie should we watch? Where should we go? Whose turn is it? Who gets to make the decision? Conflicts can range from inconsequential decisions like which station to listen to on the radio in the car, to significant decisions like which car to buy.

For me, what I see in these situations is an opportunity… an opportunity to exercise my ability to be humble like Jesus. The practice of letting go of my will and letting others make decisions, humbly assenting to the desire of someone else, is not just nice pleasantries to keep people happy. It is an active decision to imitate the will of our Lord Jesus, “who humbled himself even to the point of death, death on a cross,” and to put into practice what I pray every day in the Our Father: “Thy will be done.” It’s no coincidence that these words follow immediately after “Thy kingdom come”: the true reign of God’s kingdom is the complete submission of our wills to the will of God. The Kingdom of God is trusting in God above all else.

But how can we expect to do that, a great task, if we struggle to give up our wills in even small situations? Like anything that is difficult, we need practice and preparation to be ready. Why not do so now as we prepare for Christmas, the celebration of God’s great act of humility?

If you feel up to the challenge, I feel a need to clarify two things. The first is that humility cannot be confused with being a doormat, that is, letting others cause us harm because we are unable to stand up for ourselves. Submitting our will to another must always be done willingly, and from a position of privilege and self-assurance. It is our very confidence in our situation, in who we are and who God is, that allows us to give up our will and accept the consequences. If it is done out of fear, under compulsion, or desperation, this is a different situation. There is a huge difference between humility of will and allowing ourselves to be abused, and we need to make sure we know the difference.

The reason for this is the second point, and ultimately the whole point of the challenge: we are doing this to imitate Jesus and so share in the Father’s joy. If we submit our will to another but in doing so feel angry or hold resentment towards the other, we have missed the point. The point is to be free of our need to be in control, and to take joy in the fact that God is in control. This is the great joy of our Christmas celebration, and the truth that we hope to make true in our lives.

 Posted on November 6, 2015 by

 Poverty, Prayer

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For All The Saints

This weekend, we celebrate the lives of all the saints in the history of the Church. In my humble opinion, the communion of saints is one of the greatest gems our Church has to offer. We are not individuals finding our way on a journey for the first time; we walk in the footsteps of those great men and women who have gone before us. The saints offer us an example of how they lived in the past as well as providing intercession for us now in the present.

Recently, I was asked who my favorite saint was… besides Francis. With two thousand years of incredible men and women to choose from, how could I choose just one? So I didn’t. In this week’s Ask Br. Casey video, I decided to pick my top three inspiring saints (apart from St. Francis). It was still a difficult decision to make. Anthony of Padua, Thérèse of Lisieux, Patrick, Augustine, Jerome, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory the Great, Blessed Mother Theresa, and Pope John XXIII have all inspired me in one way or another to become a better Christian. But none of them made the cut.

I hope the three saints I picked give you as much inspiration to live the Gospel as they have given me. Who would you pick in your top three? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to ask your own question! Thanks to Marc for this one! (Watch the video here.)

 1 Comment

 Posted on October 27, 2015 by

 Prayer, Video

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Who is the “Real” St. Francis?

St. Francis is probably the most popular, widely recognized, and most misunderstood saint in the Church’s history. It’s not that people don’t know a lot about him, it’s the opposite: since there have been so many stories written about him over the past 800 years, everyone knows something, but it can be difficult to separate fact from folklore.

As someone who has studied the early sources of his life, it can be frustrating sometimes to see how his name is used or what people are saying about him. Take the “Prayer of St. Francis.” It’s a nice prayer, but those who have read Francis’ actual writings know that it sounds absolutely nothing like him. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that it was a prayer for peace written during World War I.

Francis preaching to the birds is another example. Did Francis preach to the birds in a literal sense? Maybe. We do have one or two references to it in his early biographies. But what’s interesting is that so many other saints before him were also said to preach to animals, and that, for some, the birds represented the many types of people of the world. And besides that, he did and wrote about many other things; preaching to the birds is something he never mentions, and is really insignificant to all of the other more important things he said and did. And yet, he is the man of the birdbath.

These are just two examples of the many ways the image of Francis has been misunderstood throughout the years, and it’s no wonder that he can be found promoting such vastly different causes. Once, for instance, our novitiate class was forced to attend an etiquette because, as the friar hosting it said, “Isn’t this what Francis would have done?” An etiquette workshop. Right.

That’s the feeling that Rob Goraieb, OFS had a few weeks ago when we were preparing for the feast of St. Francis, coming up this weekend. How could we deal with this frustration in a positive way? Like the 40 minute video we filmed a few months ago about vocations and church in the modern world, we decided to just sit down and talk about it on camera. What things frustrated us? What aspects of Francis’ life are often overlooked or forgotten? What do we as Franciscans want the world to know about St. Francis?

We sat for about an hour on camera and we hardly scratched the surface of what we wanted to say. In fact, both of us were initially left dissatisfied with what we had done. The fact of the matter, as we realized, is that there is no way to totally encapsulate the inspiration of the life of Francis, and in some ways, we didn’t even want to try. But we did want to share with you what we found most essential to Francis’ life and what it might mean to follow Francis today.

Happy Feast!

For those on email, the link is here.

 1 Comment

 Posted on October 2, 2015 by

 Discernment, Favorite, Fraternity, Ministry, Poverty, Prayer, Video

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Breaking In The Habit

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