Thursday, July 28, 2011

ALPHA & OMEGA (by Father Robert McGuire, S.J.)


   Never, never in the history of civilizations has any nation been made the reluctant and, agonizingly so, custodian of the world. Since the Spanish American war, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and now the Terrorist war we have lost over 400,000 of our young men and women. Their sacrifice can be seen in the pensive yet awesome array of stones of remembrances in France, Italy, Sicily, England, Africa, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor and Arlington. Yet we have not claimed any land from these sacrifices. What an amazing country!
   What makes us great, yet so tragically human? It is that we are a nation under God with liberty and justice for all... and that God is Jesus Christ.
   We have been and hopefully will continue to be a nation by the people, for the people and of the people. Our forefathers defined it. Let us hope that we can maintain that identity.
   And to quote Father John Hardon, S.J. -
   "Unless we recover the zeal and the spirit of the first Century Christians-- unless we are willing to do what they did and to pay the price that they paid, the future of our country, the days of America are numbered."



Thursday, July 14, 2011

CINEMA FOR PHILOSOPHERS, THEOLOGIANS, PSYCHOLOGISTS AND ARTISTS


   Not since Stanley Kubrick's, 2001: a space odyssey, has a film said so much by saying so little.  
   The latest work of philosophy professor turned film maker, Terrence Malick, opened this month to very mixed reactions. Stunning cinematography and gorgeous music punctuate "The Tree of Life," but like Kubrick's 2001, all the dialogue could probably fit on one page... and yet, as Kubrick's vision was of a cold and technological world, Malick envisions a world full of love, beauty and hope.
   After seeing it twice I only wish I had seen it with the students of the London School of Theology at their private advance screening. I'm sure it would have been followed by intelligent and vivacious banter. The close of both showings I attended were punctuated by thunderous applause and an equal amount of booing and cat calls. The audience mingled in the lobby afterward discussing the movie, which is something I've never seen before. Some loved it. Some hated it. No one was neutral. A few walked out a half hour into the film while others (myself included) sat on the edge of their seats, enthralled, for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes.
   If your idea of a night at the movies includes guns, sex, blood,  adultery or fast cars, stay away! But if you want to contemplate your very existence, or ponder, like one of the characters in the film, "God... where are you?" then you may well love The Tree of Life.
      As far as story line, the plot is fractal and impressionistic, with cracks, breaks and vast expanses of time and space, interwoven with the microcosm of a small family, of no real import, living in Waco Texas. If I was to sum it up, all I could say was, "It's about the smallness of single individuals compared to the vastness of eternity and their eventual merger."
   Steve Parker, a student at the London School of Theology said, "The Tree of Life is not an easy film to watch, we're not sure what's real and what's imagined sometimes... Is it going to be a moneymaker? I doubt it, but I'm glad it was made... It's fuel for the soul. If you want entertainment, go and see something else. If you'd like to explore, wonder, marvel, feel, question, and think, it's the film for you."
  
Official movie website;  http://www.twowaysthroughlife.com
  

Monday, July 11, 2011

THE CURIOUS CASE OF MY MISSING IDENTITY


   How do we find ourselves? Do we ever pose the question,
"Who am I?" And who are we asking anyway?
   When I attended school this seemed to be the prevailing question that all the great thinkers were asking and now that I have been away from those institutions of learning for many years, I feel that I should know the answer. But I'm no closer now than I was then.
   In a way, I think I'm still being born. Still struggling to break out of the shell. Still yearning to be fully human... fully alive. Like Benjamin Button, it's as though I began my life as an old man and am moving backward inevitably toward my birth.
   Perhaps my true Birthday will be the day that I draw my final breath. I always found it interesting that the Feast Days of Catholic Saints are not celebrated on the day they were born, but on the day they died. It was then that they threw off the shell of this world,
to be born anew into the eternal one.
   To find oneself is to find heaven, which was within us all along.
And to find heaven is to find the One that can
truly answer the question, "Who am I?"
   "You are my child.
Come to me. I have been waiting for you."