From among many others that might be highlighted, I have chosen six films released in the past 20 years that demand more than passive gazing from us as viewers and which promise to draw us into a wider space of realistic imagination. For Catholics, these are the kinds of films that beckon us toward a deeper engagement with the world as it is or as it might be. These are films that urge us to reckon with ourselves and the mystery of being human. These are also the kind of films that can forge bonds of communion between religious persons and nonreligious persons, who together may ponder and question the deeper significance of who we are, who we have been and who we might become.
This Easter, accept your call to mission
Christ did not rise from the dead so we could gorge ourselves on marshmallow Peeps. We knew that even before spending most of the weeks of Lent quarantined in our homes during global pandemic. After all, gorging is an act of singular enjoyment, and if we have learned anything together these past several weeks it is just how perilous actions can be when “I fill myself with what I want.” We are perhaps more prepared than ever before to accept the true measure of Easter joy, which is the degree to which the disciples of the risen Lord indulge in the good of others. The celebration of Easter is ordered to communion, so much so that Easter works centrifugally through Christ’s disciples: We move the joy outwards.
