The Media Redeemed

It’s a statement of the obvious that we’re now on the threshold of remembering, in a life giving way, the sacrificial moment and mystery that redeemed the world. Liturgically, Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday is one uninterrupted moment. It grace-fully reminds us that, though won for us centuries ago, salvation redeems every ecstatic or tragic moment of our lives until we give each one back to God at the end, ready for it to burst open in the full flowering of that salvation.

Literature and drama also speak of redemption. Think of any great book, movie, poem, or play. Through a chain of events and choices, their flawed heroes even half-heartedly live the story of personal—and universal—redemption. In a talk at the City of Angels Film Festival in L.A. five years ago, screenwriter, producer, and director Randall Wallace (“Braveheart,” “The Rookie”) applied this literary device to the sphere of revelation when he said, “God redefines our identity; that’s what redemption is.” God doesn’t turn a blind eye to sin, sweep it under the carpet, or cover it over, but buys back, recreates, starts over.

Not just spiritually either. Everything human, including social structures and culture, is redeemed too. That’s why in the Pauline Family our hope for media is irrepressible. How that redemption is played out is the great drama of life.

On March 11, the Pauline Family in New York held a Lenten retreat for friends and acquaintances that was also meant to reintroduce them to this hope as we Paulines envision it. (See blog post of March 14.) Brother Aloysius Milella, SSP, gave the following talk, linking sanctity and media in the way the Church witnesses to the Gospel:

“One of the constants in the talks, audiences and writings of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, is his oft repeated recommendation that as believers and Christians, we develop a relationship with Jesus, a communion with him, one-on-one in prayer. We know and learn about him in reading the Gospels and Scripture, but there is no substitute for relating to him as the companion of our journeying through the space we give him in prayer. Throughout his long and extraordinarily active life, our founder, Father James Alberione, was a singular example of this.

“I begin sharing this quotation:
‘What have we to gain from meeting the saints?  Two things: relief from monotony, and contact with vitality. Relief from monotony: people in their essential personalities can be very different, but sin blots out the distinctions and reduces the diversity. Sin drains out the color of the person (which is his or her own and inimitable) and replaces it with the color of sin which is common property.
All sinners look less like themselves and more like one another. Saints instead, are intensely themselves. Second: contact with vitality. Sin, being a following of the line of least resistance inevitably lessens vitality. It takes no more vitality to go with the stream of inclination than with any other stream. But to go against, as the saint does, demands immense vitality. If by chance you think saints are saints because they lack the energy for wrongdoing...try to know some of them and the incredible energetic accomplishments of human caring they achieved in Jesus’ name in their lifetimes.’

“That is an excerpt from the introductory remarks of Frank Sheed in Saints Are Not Sad, his classic collection of forty essays about the saints, published this year by Ignatius Press.

“Over the centuries in the history of our faith, we have  come to learn so much about God and of his Son come to live among us—perhaps not as much through theological studies as through the remarkable ways the saints incorporated the life and teachings of Jesus into their deeper selves.  This would often translate into an array of marvelous applications of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy for the benefit and service of the Lord’s people whenever and wherever. Apart from unique nudges of grace, their charisms nearly always grew out of intuitions and inspirations matured through a perceptive grasp of the Scriptures. It happened more often than not that their lives appeared as something akin to new, walking translations of the Word of God.

“All of this is by way of introducing some reflection on the founder of the Pauline Family, Father James Alberione—Blessed James Alberione.*  His Family is made up of five religious congregations:
   SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL
   DAUGHTERS OF ST. PAUL
   SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
   SISTERS OF JESUS THE GOOD SHEPHERD (PASTORELLE SISTERS)
   SISTERS OF MARY, QUEEN OF APOSTLES (APOSTOLINE SISTERS)
and four secular institutes:
   JESUS THE PRIEST (diocesan priests)
   ST. GABRIEL THE ARCHANGEL, or GABRIELITES (single men)
   MARY MOST HOLY OF THE ANNUNCIATION or ANNUNCIATIONISTS (single women)
   THE HOLY FAMILY (married couples),
plus the PAULINE COOPERATORS (lay associates and sharers in Pauline spirituality and mission).  

“As mentioned, every one of the saints shadows a linkage with Scripture, for example, Francis of Assisi with ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ Faustina with Jesus’ ministry of mercy in the Gospels, etc. If we were asked to locate Father Alberione in a particular area of the Scriptures, asking which part he fits into, it would likely be in the Acts of the Apostles, especially in its second half, which recounts everything about St. Paul. Paul was his huge hero. His relentless apostolic outreach and total dedication, in tandem with ‘the whole Christ that ever grew within him’ grabbed profoundly at the founder’s soul. 

“The Christ who never stayed static would influence Fr. Alberione all his life long. The same for Paul’s sense of romanità—thinking always in the broader scope of the ‘empire’ rather than in confined geographical zones.

“Until St. Paul’s entry on the apostolic scene, the preaching of the Gospel was in great part carried out in the area of Jerusalem. There was valid reason for this. But it is St. Paul who, under the impetus of the Spirit, launched the nascent Church into its missionary dimension, opening the saving message of the Gospel to the peoples of the then-known world. For him, the Gospel had to be brought to every culture and find its home in it. The Gentiles, the outsiders, those with no standing, no citizenship, were to know of it, especially those without any identity of faith, like the Athenians whom Paul evangelized (Acts 17:16ff.).

“Father Alberione’s commitment and passion for transmitting the Gospel throughout our contemporary world in a linguistic variety of cultures, stands out in faithful imitation of the great Apostle, and as one of the admirable achievements of his religious Family. It was for this reason that Pope Paul VI publicly commended him for giving ‘the Church new ways and instruments for expressing itself.’ For this reason also, in his homily during the Mass of Father Alberione’s beatification, John Paul II authoritatively referred to him as the ‘First Apostle of the New Evangelization.’

“From the very beginning, at its earliest stage, Father Alberione placed a fundamental emphasis on living and interiorly integrating the Gospel on all who aspired to join the Pauline Family’s consecration to the Gospel. This would effectively complement the substance and urgency of its enterprising media use. ‘There is no apostolate without an apostle,’ was an early axiom of his.    

“Now as all of us are aware, our world has not felt the full, exhilarating impact of the Gospel’s Good News. When it hopefully does, it will be transformed. For the present, it goes about dazed and somewhat confused by its own hunger for the something it cannot define: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Love. And the secular media, as we know it, is largely its blatant platform. 


 In her Eucharistic, liturgical, and priestly service,
Sr. Ann, a Sister Disciple, works and prays
for the redemption of the media.

 “Along with a concern for the times we live in, and the way to best confront the world’s groping and widespread hurting, the Pauline Family—with our mission of principally serving through the media and reaching out in faith, hope, and healing—is to pray and encourage the media’s broader redemption. In our Family tradition, this has always been a special dimension of the spirituality attached to the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master as well as to the Brothers of the Society of St. Paul.

“To effect this redemption, that is, to realize the potential and right use of today’s ingenious media forms, Father Alberione ever insisted that we join prayers to the sacrifices and self-spending inherent in living our vocational charism. There is an enormous responsibility and enormous urgency in making of the information instruments in this digital age a service in truth to humanity.

“Some years ago during a community retreat, I remember a veteran confrere observe that like St. Paul, the Founder had also known a Damascus-type experience (Acts 9:1-22). The observation drew halting ‘how’s that?’ skepticism. But as he began to elaborate and place it in perspective, what seemed altogether obscure proved insightful. He situated the Alberionian ‘Damascus’ within the well known lengthy Eucharistic adoration that a young James Alberione was effecting in the Cathedral of Alba during the critical night separating the nineteenth century from the twentieth. As his nocturnal adoration went on, surges of light and purpose impelled and stirred him profoundly. Beyond himself, the young seminarian’s response became an overriding commitment ‘to do something for the men and women who would people the new century.’ Not unlike the piercing beam that so transformed Paul, this nighttime illumination in the presence of the living Eucharistic Christ would—as  he verified time and again—impact all of Fr. Alberione’s remarkable and prolifically graced Pauline life.”

* Today would have been Fr. Alberione's 128th birthday.
Photo credits: Sr. Roberta Christine Hummel, FSP, Br. Xavier Lee, SSP, Sr. Margaret J. Obrovac, FSP. Alberione: file photo.

Praying With the Media

One of our sisters tells of a survey she once conducted for a media literacy project not too long ago. Among other questions, she asked people if they ever thought of God while they watched movies. One woman’s answer was more than honest: “Never! What kind of a question is that?”

I wonder if she thought of God in any other settings in her life outside of church. Paul VI commented that the divorce between culture and faith is one of the great tragedies of our time. That applies not only to haute couture, but to pop culture as well. On the upside, a growing number of people are searching for a reconciliation of the two, with the hope that faith-life will become more credible and culture will maintain its soul.

Two initiatives that have grown in response to this yearning in various parts of our U.S./Toronto province are the Movie Bible Nights and a related initiative we call “Cinema divina.” They follow similar formats. A Movie Bible Night pairs a Hollywood flick with the Gospel reading for the nearest Sunday, suggesting one or two points for conversation after the viewing of the film. Cinema divina, a spin-off of Lectio divina, the time-honored monastic practice of contemplating the Word, also focuses on a Scripture text through the lens of a parallel film, but aims at the heart: It allows people to prayerfully hear God’s personal message to them, then share aloud how they think God is calling them to live that message. In a Movie Bible Night, people can expound on how various characters or techniques highlight this or that concept in the Word of God. Or they can keep it simple, commenting on how the film gave them a new insight into the Word. Cinema divina makes space for quiet, individual reflection and spiritual conversation. Two approaches, two very powerful encounters with culture and the Word of God.

I first experienced the Movie Bible Night in Hollywood’s backyard—at our PBM (Pauline Books & Media) Center in Culver City. Depending on the film, the event typically draws 20 to 30 participants monthly. Many, though not all, are employed in the movie industry—reflecting 30% of L.A.’s population—or in the Church as faith formation leaders. Guidance for the reflection and conversation comes from Sr. Rose Pacatte’s three books, Lights, Camera…Faith! that cover every Sunday of the Lectionary’s three-year cycle. The year before last, Sr. Hosea started a similar initiative for intermediate-age children, Meeting Jesus at the Movies for Kids, which gathers a small group of about ten each month on the same day as the adults' meeting. Happily, their parents stick around for the film and the dialogue afterward. Sr. Hosea was able to test ideas for her new book on them, How To Watch Movies With Kids, with promising results. It might work at home, too, this summer: “Mom! There’s nothing to do!”

From September to June this year a Cinema divina evening was set aside each month at our place in Boston. Attendance really varied, from five to twenty-six. Word spread, though, and we received an invitation to conduct it at Boston College one evening this spring. Eighty students signed up to attend, and they still kept coming. People were turned away, because the rooms couldn’t legally hold any more. Since then, the Paulist Center downtown and the religious education director in Providence, R.I., have expressed interest in replicating the experience on their turf.

Usually four hours are set aside for the entire experience: dinner, introduction and a brief explanation of how we proceed, the reading of the Gospel text, the viewing of the film, a break with simple refreshments, and about 20-30 minutes of shared prayerful reflection. A simple leaflet that recaps the film connects it with the Gospel and adds a prayer or a commentary to assist viewers in applying both of these to life. The last one before summer will take place June 10. The movie: The Blind Side. If you're in the Boston area, sign up on Facebook.

In small ways both initiatives attempt to explore new possibilities for promoting a vibrant faith via communication. Clearly these go beyond simply moralizing about films and nudge us toward the deeper places in our lives where God can be found.

Yet one more approach to media is just as God-oriented, and I bet most of us do it at least once in awhile: praying with the news. How often we read an item or catch some striking broadcast—often tragic—and invoke God’s mercy on those involved. For those who go to Mass, this is often included in the General Intercesssions. Unlike the Movie Bible Night or Cinema divina, with their shared reflection or shared prayer, this kind of prayer is individual and private, yet paradoxically it opens us outward onto a broader reality. The classic example is found in the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. At the age of 14 she sneaked a peak at the newspaper, which she was forbidden by her father to read, and was appalled at the condemnation of the criminal Pranzini, who was apparently unrepentant. She became his prayer partner, and at the last moment before his execution, he asked for a crucifix and kissed it.
 

Staff at KENS5 news station,
San Antonio, TX


Our Pauline version of praying with the news also prays for those who “make” news at any phase. Like all media messages, "the news" is constructed reality, and carries a message even in the way it’s packaged. So we pray for producers, writers, artists, technicians, and disseminators, as well as for those who consume the news, and at times continue its stories. This is a prayer of the will and heart, that unites us in solidarity even with those who seem least deserving of our companionship in faith and love. Placing ourselves in God’s presence, reading, watching, or listening with God puts both massive world events and smaller local notices in the hands of Love itself.

It shakes its head at the incredulity behind a question from this woman who watched Into Great Silence, the startling cinema verité portrayal about Carthusian hermits in Europe: “How could such a rigid, controlled, isolated life have anything to do with the life of grace?” Immerse yourself in the poet's answer: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson).

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