Emotion and Holiness
Greetings from the great beyond. I hope your travels have found you well, and that your perusing this page will bring you a greater awareness of relevant topics, or at the very least entertain you in the slightest.
No introduction post for this blog. Let's jump right into the good stuff.
The title of this post is Emotion and Holiness. A weird title, right? You'll understand what I mean the further you read.
The germ for this blog began with my showing my younger brother a trailer for an upcoming movie called, "Last Days in the Desert" starring Ewan McGregor. (For those of you who need a little memory jog, he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III.) The said McGregor plays both Jesus and Satan, in what is called by the filmmakers "an imagined chapter" of Jesus' journey through the desert before He began His ministry which would lead, ultimately, to His death on the Cross.
(You can view the trailer, and a lot of other cool stuff here: Last Days in the Desert)
What was so striking about this trailer (and if you want to get the most of this post, I would highly suggest watching it before you continue reading) when I first saw it was how REAL Jesus' emotions were. He was shouting, screaming, crying out in the desolation he was encountering in his journey through the desert, and it was as if a light had shone in the dark midnight I had known of Jesus portrayals. Watching it, I felt a crack in the religiosity and sanitized Christianity I am not only accustomed to, but am also quite sick of.
What do we do with those whom we admire, in holiness, in virtue, in truth?
We put them on an unreachable pedestal, cleaning up the muck of their lives (which so many of them lived in) and put a cold smile on their lips to look down upon us in judgement from their plaster statues.
How many times have I looked at statues of the Blessed Mother, and wanted to see her face human, lifelike, smiling, joyous, or weeping, sorrowful. But so often, because we need something sanitized, up on a nice, neat shelf away from everything else, we take away from her life all the muck and mire she had to wade through in her life to do the Lord's will.
Let's remember here: she was 14 when the archangel Gabriel came to her, announcing that she would be the mother of God.
Let me repeat that: SHE WAS 14.
She could have been stoned, whether or not Joseph, her husband betrothed, had married her. A pregnant 14 year old says that an angel appeared to her and said she was now carrying the Son of God in her womb isn't exactly something you hear every day, now is it?
Now, let's fast forward 33 years. This same woman is put through the ultimate of horrors (and any mother will attest to this fact), watching her only chid tortured, humiliated, and murdered in one of the most heinous ways imaginable.
I don't want to know a Blessed Mother who doesn't understand agony, the grief of sorrow, the joy of love and the joy of knowing God. A real, life-changing, ground-breaking, soul-shattering joy. The kind of joy that takes your breath away and leaves you gasping for more.
(For such an example of this portrayal in film, check out Mary of Nazareth. This movie was so amazing it cracked my top ten movies of all time.)
Now, I don't want to be misunderstood: there is a place for reverence. It is our duty, our calling, to revere and venerate that which we know is above, holy, true. But to use that reverence as a block to actual, true devotion and love for Our Lady and the Lord is what gets my goad and makes me venomously angry. How can we truly love if we have to sugar-coat and sanitize ourselves and everything around us first? And not only that, but we take that protocol and turn it on the figures we venerate, sugar-coating and sanitizing their lives until they are unrecognizable, unrelatable, hopelessly distant and, more often than not, almost inhuman.
And here is where I go back to Last Days in the Desert. After showing my brother the movie trailer, and begging him to come with me, he said something that really struck me (because I felt the same way). He said that the Jesus in that film, even from just watching the trailer, was different. He was HUMAN.
Jesus being human. What a thought!
This is not to mock those portrayals of Christ in other films (some of the best, in my opinion, being in The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Passion of the Christ, and Mary of Nazareth) which all bring a little more to the overall vision of Christ, revealing in a small way Who He was, and of course, God can use anything, and does use anything, to show us more and more of Himself.
But how often do we listen? Especially when it's uncomfortable?
There is something to be said for these portrayals of Christ. There is a level of holiness none of us will every fully understand, and very few will ever even conceive of, that comes to those who have a union with God beyond our ultimate comprehension (i.e. the Blessed Mother). Take that to another infinitely higher level, to God Himself Incarnate in Christ Jesus, and we have a whole other ball of wax.
How are to understand Him?
Can we understand Him?
How should we portray Him?
How should we imitate Him?
Can we imitate Him?
The list of questions goes on and on. But as mysterious that inner life of Christ is and always will be, one thing cannot be denied: Our Savior was HUMAN. Which means He had, and felt and experienced, the truest emotion ever experienced.
Let's think about this: we are fallen, corrupted by original sin and constantly fighting temptation, and we feel what can often be an overflow of emotion, to the point of it being overwhelming.
Take this to another level: God Himself, creator of emotions and of ourselves, becomes fully human, while still remaining fully God. Any and every emotion experienced by Him, Who is pure, incorrupt, untouched by that original sin and fallen nature we all know so well, would be infinitely more acute and intense. There would be nothing preventing such an experience of emotion; no dead tissue so to speak to prevent that kind of sensory emotion within Him and His Heart.
I want a Jesus that not only knows the emotion I feel, but has felt them Himself. That same Jesus who wept for Lazarus at his tomb. Who, in a fit of rage (righteous, zealous anger, it's a real thing) cast out money-changers and sellers from His Father's House, the holy temple. The Jesus Who, casting Himself down on the cold ground one night in a garden called Gethsemane, felt emotion so intense His sweat was blood.
If that is not the experience of true emotion, than I don't know what is.
Dearest Reader, Christian or not, this is something we all need to understand:
Emotion is not a hinderance to growth, to change, to new life and a new beginning in that life.
Whether you believe in Christ or not is irrelevant to understand my point; this is a truth universal to all, and is a desire that all know and many struggle with (myself included), whether subconsciously or not.
These emotions that we find so cumbersome, so overwhelming, and more often than not, so painful, are gifts from God. Guess why? Because He experienced them too, and is living them with you RIGHT NOW. Even in this very moment.
It is a natural human reaction to not want to feel pain, especially emotional pain. But what if those emotions that are painful bring us an awareness of something greater?
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (an amazing cardinal who will *fingers crossed* be someday canonized as a saint) once said, "Sometimes God has to break a heart in order to enter it."
And we often forget in the midst of such harrowing pain that, guess what?--there's a light at the end of that tunnel. That pit, that hell hole, that place where your darkest and most painful emotions are. To be able to feel emotional pain also grants us the ability to feel the good emotions, the joyous ones, the ones that only the word ecstasy can capture: your heart's racing after your first kiss, your first slow dance, your first love letter, your first true encounter with something (or Someone) Infinite, the first time you ever felt God or knew He was in your heart.
Emotion and Holiness: they're not mutually exclusive my friends. So let us applaud those who are wiling to be brave and break those molds that we place Christ in, and give such portrayals a chance.
(And if you want that link again here it is ;) Last Days in the Desert)
With much love,
Jenn
No introduction post for this blog. Let's jump right into the good stuff.
The title of this post is Emotion and Holiness. A weird title, right? You'll understand what I mean the further you read.
The germ for this blog began with my showing my younger brother a trailer for an upcoming movie called, "Last Days in the Desert" starring Ewan McGregor. (For those of you who need a little memory jog, he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III.) The said McGregor plays both Jesus and Satan, in what is called by the filmmakers "an imagined chapter" of Jesus' journey through the desert before He began His ministry which would lead, ultimately, to His death on the Cross.
(You can view the trailer, and a lot of other cool stuff here: Last Days in the Desert)
What was so striking about this trailer (and if you want to get the most of this post, I would highly suggest watching it before you continue reading) when I first saw it was how REAL Jesus' emotions were. He was shouting, screaming, crying out in the desolation he was encountering in his journey through the desert, and it was as if a light had shone in the dark midnight I had known of Jesus portrayals. Watching it, I felt a crack in the religiosity and sanitized Christianity I am not only accustomed to, but am also quite sick of.
What do we do with those whom we admire, in holiness, in virtue, in truth?
We put them on an unreachable pedestal, cleaning up the muck of their lives (which so many of them lived in) and put a cold smile on their lips to look down upon us in judgement from their plaster statues.
How many times have I looked at statues of the Blessed Mother, and wanted to see her face human, lifelike, smiling, joyous, or weeping, sorrowful. But so often, because we need something sanitized, up on a nice, neat shelf away from everything else, we take away from her life all the muck and mire she had to wade through in her life to do the Lord's will.
Let's remember here: she was 14 when the archangel Gabriel came to her, announcing that she would be the mother of God.
Let me repeat that: SHE WAS 14.
She could have been stoned, whether or not Joseph, her husband betrothed, had married her. A pregnant 14 year old says that an angel appeared to her and said she was now carrying the Son of God in her womb isn't exactly something you hear every day, now is it?
Now, let's fast forward 33 years. This same woman is put through the ultimate of horrors (and any mother will attest to this fact), watching her only chid tortured, humiliated, and murdered in one of the most heinous ways imaginable.
I don't want to know a Blessed Mother who doesn't understand agony, the grief of sorrow, the joy of love and the joy of knowing God. A real, life-changing, ground-breaking, soul-shattering joy. The kind of joy that takes your breath away and leaves you gasping for more.
(For such an example of this portrayal in film, check out Mary of Nazareth. This movie was so amazing it cracked my top ten movies of all time.)
Now, I don't want to be misunderstood: there is a place for reverence. It is our duty, our calling, to revere and venerate that which we know is above, holy, true. But to use that reverence as a block to actual, true devotion and love for Our Lady and the Lord is what gets my goad and makes me venomously angry. How can we truly love if we have to sugar-coat and sanitize ourselves and everything around us first? And not only that, but we take that protocol and turn it on the figures we venerate, sugar-coating and sanitizing their lives until they are unrecognizable, unrelatable, hopelessly distant and, more often than not, almost inhuman.
And here is where I go back to Last Days in the Desert. After showing my brother the movie trailer, and begging him to come with me, he said something that really struck me (because I felt the same way). He said that the Jesus in that film, even from just watching the trailer, was different. He was HUMAN.
Jesus being human. What a thought!
This is not to mock those portrayals of Christ in other films (some of the best, in my opinion, being in The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Passion of the Christ, and Mary of Nazareth) which all bring a little more to the overall vision of Christ, revealing in a small way Who He was, and of course, God can use anything, and does use anything, to show us more and more of Himself.
But how often do we listen? Especially when it's uncomfortable?
There is something to be said for these portrayals of Christ. There is a level of holiness none of us will every fully understand, and very few will ever even conceive of, that comes to those who have a union with God beyond our ultimate comprehension (i.e. the Blessed Mother). Take that to another infinitely higher level, to God Himself Incarnate in Christ Jesus, and we have a whole other ball of wax.
How are to understand Him?
Can we understand Him?
How should we portray Him?
How should we imitate Him?
Can we imitate Him?
The list of questions goes on and on. But as mysterious that inner life of Christ is and always will be, one thing cannot be denied: Our Savior was HUMAN. Which means He had, and felt and experienced, the truest emotion ever experienced.
Let's think about this: we are fallen, corrupted by original sin and constantly fighting temptation, and we feel what can often be an overflow of emotion, to the point of it being overwhelming.
Take this to another level: God Himself, creator of emotions and of ourselves, becomes fully human, while still remaining fully God. Any and every emotion experienced by Him, Who is pure, incorrupt, untouched by that original sin and fallen nature we all know so well, would be infinitely more acute and intense. There would be nothing preventing such an experience of emotion; no dead tissue so to speak to prevent that kind of sensory emotion within Him and His Heart.
I want a Jesus that not only knows the emotion I feel, but has felt them Himself. That same Jesus who wept for Lazarus at his tomb. Who, in a fit of rage (righteous, zealous anger, it's a real thing) cast out money-changers and sellers from His Father's House, the holy temple. The Jesus Who, casting Himself down on the cold ground one night in a garden called Gethsemane, felt emotion so intense His sweat was blood.
If that is not the experience of true emotion, than I don't know what is.
Dearest Reader, Christian or not, this is something we all need to understand:
Emotion is not a hinderance to growth, to change, to new life and a new beginning in that life.
Whether you believe in Christ or not is irrelevant to understand my point; this is a truth universal to all, and is a desire that all know and many struggle with (myself included), whether subconsciously or not.
These emotions that we find so cumbersome, so overwhelming, and more often than not, so painful, are gifts from God. Guess why? Because He experienced them too, and is living them with you RIGHT NOW. Even in this very moment.
It is a natural human reaction to not want to feel pain, especially emotional pain. But what if those emotions that are painful bring us an awareness of something greater?
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (an amazing cardinal who will *fingers crossed* be someday canonized as a saint) once said, "Sometimes God has to break a heart in order to enter it."
And we often forget in the midst of such harrowing pain that, guess what?--there's a light at the end of that tunnel. That pit, that hell hole, that place where your darkest and most painful emotions are. To be able to feel emotional pain also grants us the ability to feel the good emotions, the joyous ones, the ones that only the word ecstasy can capture: your heart's racing after your first kiss, your first slow dance, your first love letter, your first true encounter with something (or Someone) Infinite, the first time you ever felt God or knew He was in your heart.
Emotion and Holiness: they're not mutually exclusive my friends. So let us applaud those who are wiling to be brave and break those molds that we place Christ in, and give such portrayals a chance.
(And if you want that link again here it is ;) Last Days in the Desert)
With much love,
Jenn
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