There is hope for the hopeful, folks, it's official: God IS officially located in almost every possible corner, every fragment of this earth that we could EVER possibly seek Him(!!)
While it is a lot EASIER to see Christ at Church, as He is DIRECTLY and FULLY present in the Eucharist, it is also possible to find Him if we look long and hard at the movies, music, artwork, books, and television of our culture. Yes, it's true that a lot of violent, sex-infused, and just plain strange pieces of culture out there, but one also has to remember (I say "has to" because one NEEDS to remember) that our culture is ALSO one that desperately yearns for Christ, and manifests that yearning in ways that are sometimes difficult to understand. But, the important thing is that this yearning EXISTS and is REAL.
Take the movie Pirates of the Caribbean 3, for example. I was sort of watching it the other day while ironing (anyone noticing a theme?? :) ), and kept thinking to myself, "hmmmm, interesting the relationship between Davy Jones and Calypso - he cut out his heart and placed it into a wooden chest, kind of like Jesus gave up His heart - His entire body, for that matter - for the Church." Now, maybe you are sighing right now, thinking, "this girl is crazy - overanalyzing EVERYTHING to represent the Church." But, if it were not an endlessly fascinating and mind-boggling mystery, why would the single most important act in the history of the earth (aside from its creation in the first place) have captivated the hearts and minds of man since it first occurred? (I say first because it is re-created every time that we celebrate the Mass).
So many movies, songs, books, and artwork concern themselves with the subject of sacrificial love. Harry Potter, beloved hero of the famous set of novels with his name, is the PERFECT example of this: Christian values imprinted on a children's (and mature adults', because of the themes) book. His parents died in order to save him, and this love protected him from the "evil one," Voldemort. Without giving anything away, Harry's bravery is completely sacrificial - in order to save the world from the evil one, he uses courage, a "holy daring," if you will, his friends, and knowledge as his tools. We would be well-equipped for our own battles against the Evil One who-shall-not-be-named if we were to carry those same tools with us into the spiritual battles that take place on the very battlegrounds of our souls - courage and faith in God's Will, that we might take heart knowing that the Lord's kindness will follow us wherever His Will leads us, friends who we might love as God loved us, that we might understand, as social human beings, the true love of Jesus Christ, and knowledge, that we might understand the ways of loving, the ways of fighting, the ways of best serving God as He intended for us, to know ourselves and to know God are the best tools against Satan in his never-ending quest to confuse our knowledge of who we are, God's Will for us, and how we are meant to achieve God's Will.
But Harry Potter is not the only Catholic success story. "Secular" artwork and photographs, such as Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (I learned about this photo in a class I took on Protest Literature), also bear significant witness to the Virgin Mary in all her sufferings, love, and glory. This image was my desktop background for a long time, before I realized that the reason why I was so equally captivated and inspired by it was because it was representative of Our Dear Mother Mary, representative of the beauty and dignity of her suffering, the humanity of her suffering as a loving mother. Her selflessness, her hope in God, her trust in Him - the list goes on forever.
But, since a picture says a thousand words, here is a link to the photo:
http://www.1adventure.com/archives/images/dorothea-lange-migrant-mother-ver1a.jpg
Lange said of the experience of photographing this mother: "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."
Talk about appropriate - don't we feel the same way approaching the Virgin Mary?? Don't we feel as though we are attracted to a magnet, this beautiful creature of love and humility? Don't we appreciate the fact that her love, which is a reflection of the very love of God Himself, bears all our faults, carries us through our weakness, mothers us into the very arms of Jesus Christ himself? Allows us the privilege of calling ourselves the brothers and sisters of Christ, raised under the same mother, nurtured by the same "woman" of God's perfect creation?!
So, let us be impassioned by the Holy Spirit through pop culture. Rather than denouncing all that surrounds us as evil, let us LOOK for Christ in the world around us - just as the woman who lost her gold coin searched for it throughout the entire house until she found it (Luke 15:8-10), let us not give up on our culture as a way to see Christ's love and to show others Christ's love!!!
Pope Benedict, in his recent encyclical "Caritas in Veritate," wrote that, "Discernment is needed regarding the contribution of cultures and religions, especially on the part of those who wield political power, if the social community is to be built up in a spirit of respect for the common good. Such discernment has to be based on the criterion of charity and truth. Since the development of persons and peoples is at stake, this discernment will have to take account of the need for emancipation and inclusivity, in the context of a truly universal human community. 'The whole man and all men' is also the criterion for evaluating cultures and religions. Christianity, the religion of the 'God who has a human face,' contains this very criterion within itself." In his writing on the essential nature of human social relationships, we must take to heart the fact that we need to discern our culture as much as we need to discern ourselves, performing a triage, if you will - what can be kept as is, what can be kept but needs alterations, and what needs to be thrown away. But, in order to perform this triage, we first need to find the God in our culture, which sometimes requires a bit of a search!!!
But if, as Catholics, we are down for anything, it is most certainly a search for Jesus Christ - what could be better than knowing Him and loving Him fully?!?!?! :) He is manifested in so many ways all around us - in nature, in culture, in people and places, in the news (which is not always bad news - sometimes it's AMAZING, CHRIST-FILLED news, in fact: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526120,00.html), in everything that is good, true, and beautiful!!
Where can we find Him, then? EVERYWHERE!! :)
Fides, Spes, et Caritas Christi Per Mariam,
Christina :)
I definitely agree that our culture hungers and yearns for Christ and that this hunger is often manifested in unexpected and surprising ways. It is also quite true that, as you said, there are many ways in which our culture "gets it right" so to speak and sends profound, meaningful and true messages for those who are ready to see and accept them. However, I think the example from Pirates of the Caribbean 3 might be a bit of a stretch, although I'm not convinced either way. I would be curious to see what exactly the implications of such an analogy are.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to an earlier point, it is important to recognize these gems in our culture as well as its short-comings, especially those things that it so obviously yearns for and sometimes reaches toward but can never grasp or accomplish because it is only when we have such an understanding of our culture that we can properly speak to those immersed in it and lead them to something greater and more fulfilling.
Just to clarify, my comment about leading those immersed in our culture to something greater and more fulfilling was not meant to contradict in any way what you're saying in this post, but rather to affirm it. As you so rightly said, there is a great need to sift through our modern culture, keeping some things, modifying others, and discarding what remains.
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