Wise Words On Wednesday: Michelangelo
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
– Michelangelo
"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
– Michelangelo
We are living at a great time for faith-related films. Virtually all of my trips to the cinema this year have been to see movies in which Christianity has played a positive part in the storyline. Last week I reviewed Warrior and today I’d like to say a few words about my most recent cinema outing to see The Way…
The Camino de Santiago is a 500-mile pilgrimage route from the town of St. Jean Pied de Port in France to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The story begins with the death of a pilgrim, Daniel Avery, shortly after beginning this pilgrimage. His father, Tom, who had a strained relationship with his son, travels from America to France to identify his son’s body and return him home.
When Tom arrives in France, he meets a policeman who explains to him about the pilgrimage his son was undertaking. Shortly before Daniel left America he asked his dad to go on a trip with him, but his father declined the offer.
Now that his son is dead, he decides to honour belatedly his son’s request. He resolves to walk the Camino in his son’s place and take Daniel’s ashes along with him, scattering them along the way (you’re not actually allowed to do this).
Tom is extremely single-minded in his journey. In many ways, the audience is left to guess at what is going on inside the head of this stoic figure, as he doesn’t exactly wear his heart on his sleeve. Tom is played expertly by Martin Sheen who, incidentally, was inspired to take his screen name from our beloved Grandpa Sheen. He gives a great performance as Daniel’s father.
I had to share this video which I saw on a recent post by my friend Nelson over at Ramblings of a Byzantine Catholic:
I’m going to start trying to make these Sunday Lectionary posts a little bit shorter, both so that I get more of my weekend back and also so more people read them!
The Readings this week focus around the “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of our faith, how we love God and how we love our neighbour. This finds its simplest and clearest expression in today’s Gospel passage when Jesus is asked which is the greatest of all the commandments…
“Therefore the first commandment teaches every kind of godliness. For to love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good.
The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself.
The kind of person who fulfills these two commandments experiences all the commandments.”
– St. Cyril of Alexandria, Early Church Father, 5th Century
Anyone who’s ever come to the JP2 Group, after introducing themselves to the group, will have been asked by me the following question:
“If you could be any superhero or have any superpower, what would it be?”
Last week I wrote a short post saying that I was soon going to try and tackle a question I often hear asked among my female friends:
“Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”
I wrote that blog entry announcement partially to ensure that I didn’t chicken out! The subject of relationships and dating is tricky and it’s inevitable that many people would not agree with my conclusions. I’ve tried to do this series a couple of times before but I always managed to find something else to do instead. By publicly saying that I’m going to do it, I’m making sure that I actually will…
I’ve got a meeting today at the Diocesan Center and Bishop Brom is going to be in attendance. This got me to thinking…
How do you address a bishop?
Okay, I just checked… It appears that I have two options. I can either address the Bishop as…
“Bishop Brom” …or… “Your Excellency”
Phew! Social faux pas narrowly avoided!
Now I’ll be able to engage him in conversation and finally find out if it’s true that he can only move diagonally…