HOW THE FILM "GRAVITY" REKINDLED MY FAITH

Gravity is a film about weightlessness. On the surface it is about physical weightlessness in the vacuum of space, but in its deepest sense it is a film about the desire for spiritual weightlessness. Too often do we clutter our lives with debris from our anxiety, grief, and fears. Too little do we allow our burdens to drift away from us and very seldom do we “sit back and enjoy the ride” that is our life.

Gravity is a reminder that life detached from God is like trying to live in the ever expanding boundless extent of outer space.   

The Story (SPOILER ALERT)

Gravity is a survival film with a physical and spiritual dimension. On the visual surface, the film follows Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) who are victims of a routine spacewalk gone wrong when the debris of a Russian satellite crashes into their space station. Stone becomes the sole survivor faced with the challenge of making it back to earth before she runs out of oxygen or the satellite rubble orbits back around and collides with her.

On the spiritual surface, the film is about the heaviness of Ryan’s soul in the weightless environment of space and her mission from death to rebirth. Stone discusses the traumatic loss of her four year old daughter as the story develops into a purging process for her grief. The film is not only visually immaculate, but spiritually in tune with anyone going through a dark night of the soul (a form of spiritual emptiness).

Vertigo

Right around the time that Gravity was released in theaters I was going through a serious spiritual battle. Early September I was diagnosed with vertigo caused by an inner ear infection. This wasn’t merely the kind of Vertigo that Jimmy Stewart had in the Hitchcock film, but the kind of vertigo that made me feel as if my own gravitational pull had been stripped from me, numbing my limbs and shortening my breath. The kind of vertigo that induced panic attacks in my car on the drive home from work. The kind of vertigo that drifted me further into the abyss of a spiritual drought. It came upon me suddenly one night as I was drinking a glass of water and then a week later as I was praying my daily rosary in my car. My left leg quickly began to go numb. My right hand started tingling as the calcium built up, the beds of my eyes pulsated stars, and a deep warmth ignited in my chest and spread outward. No matter how loud I prayed, I couldn’t fight my body’s urge to black out on the road. I made it home safely, but the effects lasted for months and I found myself engulfed in frustration with God and a fear of praying. So I stopped. I was so traumatized from the panic attack that I negatively associated praying with blacking out. I was angry that I couldn’t sleep properly, exercise normally, and drive without a fear of crashing.

I really wanted to go see Gravity 3D, but with all of this going on it didn’t seem like a good idea to surround myself with a 7,000 square foot IMAX screen and experience the visual sensations of Sandra Bullock having a panic attack in space. It all felt too close to home. Yet, if I had I known that Gravity was going to be one of the best spiritual film I’d ever seen I might have taken the risk, if not solely to help water the withering flower that was my spiritual life at the moment. Like Ryan Stone, I felt detached from my own self and attached to fear.

Attachments and Detachments

Gravity draws heavily on attachments. Immediately after the first satellite crash, Ryan is forced to detach herself from the safety latch which causes her to spin uncontrollably into the black void. She then has to tether herself to Kowalski, who says, “It’s pretty scary shit being untethered up here.” Without gravity’s constancy they severely bump into the ISS (International Space Station) and the zero -gravity drifts them dangerously apart causing Kowalski to make the decision to detach himself from Ryan in a self-sacrificial Christ-like fashion to avoid pulling her with him into the black. “Learn to let go, Say you’re going to make it,” Kowalski coaches her as he slowly drifts away. Later, Stone must detach the parachute of the escape pod from the space station to make it home…. And so on. Every attachment to something is a detachment away from something. Stone’s spiritual attachment was to her daughter’s death and she allowed that to detach her from fully living. “The Glory of God is the human being fully alive.” – St. Irenaus. I was like Stone, attached to fear and detached from God.

Gravity

The film opens with the text “Life in space is impossible.” In space there is no gravity, no oxygen, no atmosphere… At first it seems liberating, watching George Clooney fly around in the opening scene with his jet pack and the earth as his back drop. Yet very quickly we are shown that without gravity life is dangerous, chaotic, disorganized, and wanders aimlessly without purpose. All of the dangers that are presented in the film are due to the lack of gravity. Zero gravity is the film’s antagonist complicating Stone’s mission back to earth, but it complicates her deeper mission, a mission from death back to life.

In the film, Gravity is God. Gravity draws one closer to life as Christ draws all men to himself. There is a beautiful scene when Ryan Stone believes that surviving is hopeless, she finally gets a radio frequency to work while she is inside the Russian space station. She hears the voice of a man speaking a foreign language, but cannot communicate with him. She then hears a dog barking, a baby crying, and finally the man beginning to sing to a little girl. She listens to the sounds of life soothing her as she decides to try praying for the first time. The father singing to the little girl is like God singing to Ryan. He is calling her again back from earth. There is no life out there in the weightless vacuum of space. Life exists in the weighted earth. Yet it is not the physical weight of Gravity that should bother us but the spiritual weight of our burdens that truly drags us down.  “Come to me all who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” Mt 11:30

In the beginning of the film Ryan Stone mentions that she could get used to the silence of space, mostly because of the noise in her life. Yet even in the silence of space Stone cannot find peace from her grief. While in the Russian space station she begins talking aloud to God and says she was never taught how to pray. In her darkest moment she discovers real silence, “silence” of the heart. She thought she was talking to herself, but God, who listens in silence, sent her a redeemer and she prayed for the first time in her life.

Rebirth

Once she gets to the space station there is a beautiful shot of her in a fetal position as if she were in a womb awaiting her rebirth. The Russian ship however runs out of gas before she can make it to the Chinese stations escape pod. She loses all hope. Giving up, she shuts off the oxygen to drift off to a peaceful death. Her redeemer, Kowalski, appears to her again like the resurrected Christ. His words fill her with purpose and he gives her the escape plan.  

“You can shut down all the systems, turn out all the lights and tune out everyone. What’s the point of living? It’s a matter of what you do now. Sit back enjoy the ride. Start living life. It’s time to go home.” She refutes him saying that she is out of gas, but he tells her to engage the landing process. Landing is launching. In other words, every end is always a beginning.

With one simple choice, her eyes open and she awakens a new woman. Her pessimistic attitude transforms as she speaks to Kowalski’s spirit. “I’m not quitting,” she tells him. You can see the true weight being lifted off of her and she becomes lighter than she has ever been. She speaks to her daughter and let’s go of her grief. She starts the landing gear and launches herself aboard the Chinese station where it takes her home. As the pod enters the atmosphere it begins to burn in high heat, like a spiritual purging, a shedding of her former self that leads her to life.

The pod impacts in the water and she finds herself submerged. She opens the hatch to escape and the water floods the inside of the pod. She swims out and emerges from the water like Christ after his baptism.  The film’s audio changes from the empty radio voicing of space to a full surround sound audio of the sounds of life, buzzing flies, splashing water, and gusts of wind. We see the green grass and dirt of the earth. Life is here. She’s like a newborn as she crawls out of the water onto the earth. Her hands press into the muddy clay. She struggles to get up as she now feels the weight of gravity. Gravity is always there tugging at us, but it is a necessary weight that orients us in the proper direction of our lives. Yet, even the weight that Stone feels as she struggles to stand up, she feels the weightlessness of her soul. The glory of God is man fully alive. Ryan Stone has been reborn.

Conclusion

When we try and escape Him in the silence of the cosmological “Heavens” we find a closer connection to Him on earth and in our hearts where life abounds. Jesus said “The kingdom of Heaven is upon you.” We don’t have to leave Earth to get closer to God. We need only walk a few steps and meet the neighbors or look into the eyes of our children, friends, and strangers. God is there. I allowed my illness to detach me from my gravitational connection to God. I was living without Gravity surrounded by fear and spiritual asphyxiation. God proves that even in the darkest times, life is always beckoning, especially in the hopelessness, despair, and frustrating spiritual battles.

Despite my spiritual darkness, a new light was born in my life, my daughter Imma Bernadette. She was conceived during the highest peak of my vertigo and after her birth this summer my dizziness has disappeared. I have never felt more alive. Even though my responsibilities now weigh more, I am liberated through a newfound spiritual weightlessness.

It took me quite a while to sit down and watch Gravity, but I am so glad that I did because it rekindled a flame in me that was put out for far too long. 

 
THE LIGHT OF THE RESURRECTION


We are still celebrating Easter and the wonderful light of the Resurrection yet death has been on my mind.

My wife and I are having our first child this coming July. A baby girl named Imma Bernadette and we’re very excited. I always wanted a little girl. I’m a fan of the little bows you can put in their hair, their cute outfits and smiles, up until they get interested in boys. Then they’re not so cute...Imma please love me!

Yet death has been on my mind. I begin thinking about Imma's birth, then her graduation, then wedding, then my grandchildren and all of a sudden I see myself old and slipping off to death. It’s scary when you look at your life from its entire timeline. It’s very short! When life begins to blossom within a family, death becomes more apparent, for there is greater loss attached to it. But if there is one thing that Jesus taught us, it’s that life does not end at death.

Remember the Gospel reading for Easter Sunday?

John 20: 1-9

                   On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”


                   So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

Fear of Death

Let’s look at the first half of this scripture. Mary begins walking in the middle of the night to the tomb of Christ surrounded in utter darkness. Not only darkness of night, but a darkness in her heart, one stricken with grief and despair for the loss of her best friend and Master. Death is darkness. When she arrives at the tomb she notices the stone has been rolled away and immediately believes that someone had stolen the body of Jesus. “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.” Mary was fearful of death. Death was final. It was the final period on the long run on sentence of life. Of course she was afraid. If Jesus could be put to death than what hope did anyone else have?

There is another person who was fearful of death. A fictitious character. Very different from Mary.
Yup, you guessed it. It's Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series!

His very name means “Flight from Death”. This was someone who was so obsessed with eternal life and power that he ripped his soul into seven pieces, hiding them in earthly objects, and sought to take control of the Deathly Hallows, the three tools that would make one a Master of Death. What were the deathly hallows again? A cloak of invisibility to hide from Death, the most powerful wand ever created carved from an Elder tree, and the Resurrection Stone, a stone to bring loved ones back from the dead.

We can learn a lot from Voldemort…I mean He Who Shall Not Be Named. His fear of death stemmed from his misunderstanding of love, or rather his complete non-understanding of it. He was an orphan who was obsessed with finding out his own family heritage. Without a family, Tom Riddle (Voldemort’s actual name) could not grasp the concept of love mainly because he was conceived while his father was under a love spell.

At Hogwarts, Tom was obsessed with his heritage. Although he knew since his first year that he was the Heir of Slytherin, he didn't learn the complete story until he tracked down and visited his uncle, Morfin Gaunt. Morfin told him that his father was a Muggle and his mother was a descendant of Slytherin. Tom then murdered his father and grandparents and be-spelled Morfin into confessing to the crime. Morfin was convicted for the murders and sentenced to Azkaban. Tom then stole the Slytherin ring and turned it into a Horcrux (HBP17).

A Horcrux is an object where one hides a ripped piece of their soul after they commit a murder. Horcrux is a word that has similarities to other words that suggest pain and horror. 

Death and pain were all this boy knew. He never trusted people, he never had a family, he only sought after power because his sole motivation was to defy death! "You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one" -Dumbledore (HBP13). Imagine that you were immortal, but never felt love in your life, never had a friend to talk to, never had a mother comfort you, or a father tell you bed time stories or never even confided in someone you trusted.

That is the epitome of darkness and death. That is what Mary is walking in as she discovers the empty tomb. For her, death is a permanent state, just as her grief. She remains fearful of death just as Voldemort remained fearful of it. In Matthew 28 we hear that “Mary ran away from the tomb quickly, fearful yet overjoyed.” The difference is that Mary’s motivation to walk through the darkness was the feeling of love for Christ, while Voldemort’s motivation was his fear of dying.

Resurrection in Culture

Now our story does not end at death. Thank God! Literally!
If Death is darkness then Resurrection is… Light.

Let’s take a look at the other half of that scripture. “For they did not yet understand the Scripture he had to rise from the dead.”

Now John wrote this Gospel and he refers to himself as the “Other” disciple. Both he and Peter listen to Mary’s claim that the body of Jesus was stolen and they bolt like a beam of lightning down to the tomb while it was still dark. John gets there first, but doesn’t go in the tomb. Peter arrives and walks right in probably ready to fight for Jesus as he did in the Garden of Gethsemane where he chopped off Malchus’ ear. They find no body, just two burial cloths. One that covered the body and the other that covered his face. Peter doesn’t understand it, but the moment that John enters the tomb and sees those two cloths he has spark of revelation. For it says “he saw and believed.” What the scripture doesn’t say is how I like to read this passage. That the moment that John stepped into the tomb and saw the burial cloths, a new sun began to rise outside illuminating the tomb. Resurrection is light.

Have you heard of the shroud of Turin? It’s said that it is possible for this shroud to be that same burial cloth

that Peter and John saw. On the shroud is a faint image of what looks like a man, but inverted you see that the shroud is really a picture negative! Nobody has been able to explain how it was formed and how it is a negative! One theory that could explain  is that at the moment of Christ’s Resurrection, a burst of light shot through his body and he vanished from the cloths. The cloths would have been bounded together as was Jewish custom and when John saw the facial cloth separated from the other cloths he knew something had happened.

It’s not surprising to see the resurrection as light, for throughout scripture we continuously hear God’s relationship to Light.

In the beginning God said Let there be Light.

Jesus said "I am the Light of the World."

"Why he said, Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." - Eps 5:14

"In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." - Jn 1:4-5

Now if Darkness is Death and Resurrection is Light where does that leave us with our Harry Potter analogy? Voldemort represents death and who represents light? Harry.
Both Voldemort and Harry grew up Orphans, both were outcasts in many ways, both suffered terrible darkness in their lives, but Harry found his strength from the friend’s he chose and he was protected by something that Voldemort could not kill, his mother’s love. So Harry became the boy who lived, and grew up never knowing his own heritage as Tom Riddle did. He watched as Voldemort regained power, sought out the deathly hallows and finally sought to kill Harry once and for all. If Harry is light then when do we see his resurrection?

Harry realizes that a part of Voldemort’s soul lives inside of himself and so in a Jesus like fashion he must make the decision to sacrifice himself in order to destroy Voldemort completely. We hear Corinthians 5:21 echo in this decision “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Harry was going to sacrifice himself for his friends and ultimately the entire world. 

Just before he meets Voldemort in the Forrest what does he do? He turns the resurrection stone 3 times in his hand and all of a sudden he is surrounded by his family. They give him strength to perform the task he must bear similar to the angels that descend down on Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Harry equips himself with family and love. As he walks to his death, once again Voldemort uses the killing curse on him and strikes him dead. Harry wakes up in King’s Cross station only to find a piece of Voldemort, a decrepit infant like being sent there to die. Harry sacrificed himself and was resurrected to life in order to save the rest of humanity. Well you know how the story ends….death is destroyed.

That is what John realizes in the empty tomb. The resurrected Jesus has destroyed the binds of death. There need not be any more fear of dying if we believe in Love that is God our creator, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Every day we are called to resurrect our lives from the sins that weigh us down and it is our family and friends that help us draw the strength and fortitude to continuously choose love over fear, life over death. Every day we are witnesses to the flowers that die and blossom again, the earth’s continuous destruction and creation of sea floor which is what causes earthquakes, our faithful animal companions who pass away and the new puppies we go goo goo gaga for in the pet store. Resurrection is all around us.

It’s not just in Harry Potter. We saw it in Thor when he sacrifices himself to protect that small deserted town. After he is blasted to death we see a flashback of his father whispering into the hammer “Whosoever holds

this hammer, if he be worthy worthy shall possess the power of Thor.” Then boom he gets his iron clothes back.

We see it in the Avengers when Iron Man flies the bomb into space sacrificing himself for humanity. He gets resurrected.

We see it in The Dark Knight Rises when Batman carries the detonator out to sea and we watch the Bat-Copter explode. But a little later we see him resurrected in France living out his true identity as Bruce Wayne.

We see it in the Chronicles of Narnia after Aslan gives himself up to the White Witch on the Stone Table. He is resurrected after he explains to the astonished girls that there is a Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time: because he was an innocent, willing victim and was sacrificed in place of a traitor, the Stone Table broke and Death worked backwards.

We see it in Star Trek: Into Darkness when Kirk sacrifices himself to save his crew and Spock brings him back to life.

"The resurrection is God’s gratuitous gift – we receive it even before we ask of it. It heals our broken humanity at the same time elevates us to the dignity as his adopted sons and  daughters! A Family! Therefore we can cooperate in this grace in order to share in the Divine Life! St. Augustine said, 'We gave Christ the power to die so that he may give us the power to live!' The resurrection is not just Jesus’ story, it is also ours. A great hero once said that we are worth dying for. A greater Hero, however, the greatest of them all in fact, proved that we are more than worth dying for. The silence of His empty tomb echoes His message with an increasing intensity, even up to this very day: WE ARE WORTH RISING FOR!" - Carlo Enrico Tinio; Pope Saint John Paul II

Death is Darkness and Resurrection is Light. Does that mean that we will never suffer or have to walk in the darkness again? Of course not, but it brings us great hope that we too will live again as Christ does.

We close with Pope Francis who says: “Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey. To those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, his response is that of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light. In Christ, God himself wishes to share this path with us and to offer us his gaze so that we might see the light within it, Christ is the one who, having endured suffering, is ‘the pioneer and perfector of our faith”(Heb 12:2).(Light of Faith).

God cannot guarantee that your life will be free of suffering and darkness, but he can provide you with a Church and family who always remind you of the light. And if your family are the ones that are shrouded in darkness, then today make the decision to start becoming the light that guides them to the resurrected Christ.

MAN OF STEEL - THE DARK SUPERHER

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I used to collect Superman comics when I was a kid. My mom would take me to the comic book store every Saturday, and I would pick out my favorites. Two that I still have in mint condition are The Death and Return of Superman. In Superman #75, an epic battle takes place between Doomsday and the Last Son of Krypton. The comic is filled with blood, tears, and death as both Doomsday and Superman kill one another. Lois Lane cries over the stained and torn cape of her hero. It is a dark comic that captured a lot of attention during the 90s. It opened up the door to "death", you can say, for DC comics, as many other superheroes began journeying towards a death and resurrection storyline after Superman did. Audiences want to see a superhero's dark side. Whether that darkness is portrayed in their opposing villain or whether it comes from the painful depths of their own soul, we enjoy watching a hero struggle with pain.

The new Superman film, Man of Steel, explores the darker side of Superman, just as The Dark Knight explored the darker side of Batman. The story veers away from some of the traditional Superman plots, creating a new sense of intrigue. We get to spend a lot of time in a dying Krypton with Avatar-like creatures rescuing Jor-El (Superman's father) from war. We learn that Kal-El (Superman, AKA Clark Kent) is actually Krypton's first natural birth in years, making him unique in his own planet as well as on Earth. Lois Lane actually meets Superman and discovers his identity long before he dons his disguise as a reporter. We find out a new detail in the death of Jonathan Kent, Clark's foster father. Superman himself is not merely the light-hearted character we have seen in the past, but a troubled outcast trying to identify with humanity. All of these new subplots make Man of Steel worth watching without destroying the essence of the Superman franchise. 

While the movie has many problems, including its shaky, Chronicle-style cinematography, the script makes up for them. We are presented with a superhero who is forced to make a choice between good and evil despite Clark's powers. Superman in this film is the opposite of Dr. Manhattan in director Zack Snyder's Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan chose to abandon humanity because he no longer relates to them. Clark Kent chooses to protect humanity even though he does not need them. Knowing that Superman doesn't need humans, but protects them anyway, is comforting. It evokes a spiritual awakening when watching the film. Superman is often seen as a Christ figure. As the last son of Krypton, he is sent by his father to protect the people of Earth. He spends thirty-three years hiding his true self. In an instant, the whole world turns on him and hands him over to General Zod (another Kryptonian who killed Jor-El). Clark goes willingly to his doom like a sheep before the shearers. Superman's relation to Jesus is obvious. Man of Steel focuses on the essence of a hero, not just self-sacrifice, but also the willingness to bear the burden of the world for eternity. The film sheds light on the sacrifice of Jesus, showing us the darkness that one must swallow to bring back the light. We are reminded of the existence of evil and are challenged to confront it in our own lives.

Darkness

Without darkness, there seems to be no need for a hero. Is that true in reality? I've often asked myself as a Catholic, would we have needed a savior if there had never been Original Sin? Was sin necessary to bring us a savior? "O Happy Fault of Adam that won for us so great a redeemer" – St. Augustine. What would our lives look like if there were no pain, suffering, cruelty, or sin? How would that change the balance of everything we know, the parameters of good and evil? A hero is measured by the evil he vanquishes. Are there any heroes in a sinless world? While I enjoy giving myself a headache over such questions, the truth is that we will never truly know. The chasm between good and evil is infused in humanity, a piece of our genetic makeup. I believe that evil must have existed from the beginning because love existed from the beginning. With perfect love comes the freedom to choose evil. Therefore, evil is an issue of choice. 

Superman's enemy is not General Zod, but evil itself. Zod, in his clueless nature, was not a bad person. He thought his mission was for the greater good of his people. In this film, Superman does not battle Kryptonite, but the demons within himself. The entire movie is reminiscent of Jesus' 40-day temptation in the desert. Kal-El is promised glory, status, and power if he joins General Zod in recreating a new Krypton from Earth's foundation, just as Jesus is promised all the kingdoms of Earth if he chooses to serve Satan. Like Christ, Superman decides to fight for those who turned him over to his betrayer. 

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the Earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." - Mt 10:34

A true hero will create division, enflaming the inner conflict in every human being to choose good over evil. "Man of Steel" is a refreshing reminder that choosing goodness always contains an element of sacrifice.

Don Jon - Catholicism and Pornography

Growing up in northern Jersey, we had neighbors from different parts of the world. Our neighbors across the street were from Portugal. They had a crab apple tree  in their yard that flooded our main street with mini rotten apples during peak season. Our next door neighbors were from India and I used to play with the two girls who lived there that were my age, Farah and Fatima. They lived with their parents and their grandmother. I lived in a fervent Italian Catholic household with a lot of hand signals and curse words.

With so much culture clash there would be a lot of harsh words exchanged between neighbors. When I was five years old, I did something terrible. I wanted to get into Farah and Fatima's backyard to retrieve my tennis ball. Without asking permission, I began hopping their wooden gate. To my surprise, there sat my neighbor's 80-year-old grandmother who started yelling at me in a language I could not decipher. Rather than being respectful, I sucked in a wad of saliva and spit in her face. It is probably the worst thing I have ever done and was actually the first thing I confessed when I made my first communion. Thinking about it now still turns my stomach upside down in horror. How could I ever do something so horrific? I didn't know what I was doing to that woman and didn't really have someone in my life to explain it to me. That wasn't the last time I did something that horrible. My mistreatment of women continued to happen...through porn. I would spit in the face of women every time I watched it and I did it without sufficient understanding of what I was really doing.

In Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrays a devout Italian Catholic from Jersey who struggles with porn addiction (Any clue why I wanted to Blog about it?). The film explores the addiction from a realistic perspective, successfully revealing the secretive lifestyle of the casual porn addict. In Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, he attacks lust embedded in the hearts of men.

“Every man watches porn,” Jon states in his defense.

I used to believe the same statement. I found myself staring into a mirror for most of the film, relating to Jon’s pornography struggle as a Catholic young adult and Jersey native myself. I remembered the compulsive need to watch porn every day, even for a few seconds. I suffered deeply from its desensitizing effects and carried the emotional scars with me for years. While Don Jon succeeds at presenting the seriousness of pornography addiction, it fails in its attempt to accurately describe the recovery process of those addicted, especially those seeking guidance from the Church.

Where the Film Succeeds
Don Jon’s opening credits peruse through a series of film clips showcasing the plethora of sexual stimuli streamlined in the modern media. We see shots of legs, partly dressed models, celebrity wardrobe

malfunctions, and naked actresses in horror films…all in the first 10 seconds. With so much exposure to sexual content it is not difficult to understand how men become addicted to porn. Gordon-Levitt uses real media to make his point, like the scene where Jon and his father obsess over model Nina Agdal as she molests a hamburger on the beach in a real life Hardee’s commercial, which actually aired during the Super Bowl this year…no one gets that excited over a burger! Jon’s father, played brilliantly by Tony Danza, is the first clue to Jon’s addiction. He inherited his addictive personality from his father, who obsesses over football. His rough demeanor and constant verbal abuse towards Jon’s mother is telling in the way that Jon objectifies all women. While the film focuses mainly on pornography, Jon’s real problem is his addictive nature. Like his father, he obsesses over the things he cares about.

“There’s only a few things I really care about in life: my body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls, my porn.”

Jon develops a routine, which is how the film is structured. He picks up a woman at a club, sleeps with her, watches porn, cleans his “pad”, expresses his road rage, goes to confession, has dinner with his parents, and hits the gym. That is the whole movie in constant repetition, with new scenes added throughout. It can be perceived as dull film making as nothing really happens to keep the story going. Yet, it is an intimate reflection of the life of a porn addict. Everything is on a routine that cannot be shifted. One’s life becomes more interesting in the fantasy world of porn rather than reality. So the viewer is forced to sit and watch Jon go through his weekly routine.

There are so many opportunities for Jon to walk away from his addiction, but he has convinced himself that relationships in pornography are real, thus destroying his chances of making it work with an actual girl. He falls in love with Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansen) who is flawed in her own prideful ways, but tries to push Jon into doing something more with his life. He starts going to school, quits the club scene, and falls in love with her. His view on women is so obscured though, that he cannot be satisfied with an actual relationship. So he sticks to porn in secret, watching it on his phone before he goes to class just to get a quick fix. When Barbara discovers his porn addiction after the second time she breaks it off. Confused by her disgust of him watching porn, it sends Jon on a downward spiral of depression, causing him to punch through another driver’s window on his way to mass. The first half of the film is enjoyable as it unravels the internal chaos that pornography stirs up in a person’s heart.

Where the Film Disappoints
The second half of the film disappoints as it attempts to explain how Jon recovers from his addiction….more sex. He begins sleeping with his much older colleague, Esther (Julianne Moore), who makes him aware of his porn addiction and teaches him how to make love instead. She shows him how unrealistic his views are on women and gives him some great words of wisdom about the need to truly see the other person…words of commitment, words of marriage. Magically, Jon is cured from his addiction after learning what it is like to make love to a woman and appreciate her alone. Sadly, this is not the reality of breaking this kind of addiction. Even within a marriage, a spouse can be used as an object for sexual pleasure. Jon goes to confession after this and tells the priest that his sins feel different. It would be a great opportunity for the priest to explain what has happened to Jon’s perspective on women, but all we get is silence.

This is one of the many problems with the film, the way that Gordon-Levitt presents the Catholic


Church. Jon goes to confession every week and confesses a lot of sexual sins, but the priest never discusses them with Jon. The priest never asks questions, provides spiritual direction, or gives any feedback to this young man who is confused by the real power of confession. He doesn’t understand that confession is not a magical wand used to wave over one’s sins and make them disappear. Confession begins in the heart. Jon is not sincerely remorseful of his sins until his final confession, but gets no practical advice. JGL presents the Church as silent on the issue of sexual addiction and I can tell you from my personal experience that the Church is anything but silent.

My addiction began when I was probably thirteen and lasted until I was about twenty four. I was like Jon, not understanding the damaging effects of porn. I, like many boys, collected Playboy magazine at the age of seventeen. They sent me a card in the mail for a 12 month subscription for only a penny an issue. What young boy wouldn’t take up that offer? Those twelve cents costs me years of emotional scarring, objectifying views of women, and an unhealthy addiction. When my girlfriend found my collection of magazines she was so devastated. I, like Jon, could not understand why. It was just porn, everyone looks at it right? That is the lie. My healing began after I started attending mass and through the sacrament of confession. Thankfully I had great priests who guided me along the path to recovery through resources like Theology of the Body. I started being attentive at mass, reading scripture, volunteering my time, caring for others rather than myself, and started taking classes to make my Confirmation. The Church helped me recover, not shut me out as in Jon’s case.

I think Don Jon is a great start for Joseph Gordon-Levitt as it presents serious themes that need to be addressed in our machismo/animalistic culture. I think he could have done away with the excessive amount of porn clips shown throughout the movie as it does not help those suffering from this addiction, but rather fuels it. Also, having a real porn site pay you for using their name in the movie doesn't help the overall message of the film. I would have loved to see more details of the emotional addictions presented in Johansen’s character. It would have made it a film about modern relationships and use rather than just porn addiction. Men and women use each other for different reasons, we don’t get to see the female side of the coin in Don Jon.

The person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end.
The person is the kind of good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love (Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility).

A person can never be used as a means to an end, in fact the only proper response towards another human being is to love them. Pornography is not just in direct opposition to Catholicism, it opposes humanity.

 

Here are a few resources I recommend for those struggling with porn addiction or having addictive personalities.

Love and Responsibility

Theology of the Body for Beginners

Good News about Sex and Marriage

CatholicHack

Sr. Helena Burns also wrote a great review on Don Jon
Another review from the Catholic standpoint: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/joseph-gordon-levitts-don-jon-uses-the-catholic-church-as-comedic-fodder?page=1#blogPostHeaderPanel

I was reading through a few tweets the other day and came across a comment someone sent to Pope Francis.

@Pontifex If you do sincerely have a daily relationship with God, why does a showy hour on Sunday matter?

I would like to address this question as a Catholic if I may, comparing that “showy hour on Sunday” to the Divine Liturgy, a mass.

First of all, everyone is called to a personal relationship with God. Opening up daily communication with Him is necessary in strengthening the bond between Father and child. Any human relationship will suffer if no communication exists. Merely attending weekly mass or service is like doing the bare minimum to keep a relationship alive. How can we possibly imagine spending an eternity with God if we can’t communicate with him every day? So yes, a daily relationship with God is a must. However, let’s not think that we are the center of attention and dismiss our “showy hour on Sunday”. That hour is about family. We use that hour to gather as a community, sharing our weekly struggles, joys, successes, and failures. We are invited to a family dinner where we are united with our earthly and celestial family. God is both the banquet host and the meal to be consumed.

What is a meal?

Let’s face it, we love to eat. Food has become more than nutrition to us, it is about the shared experience with others. A good meal can brighten our mood, boost our energy, and overall provide us with tasteful pleasure. Food is what sustains our natural bodies. It is essential in every culture and acts as a focal point of gathering. The Japanese have a poem about the importance of rice in their community.

Rice is the symbol of our life. We eat rice daily. There are different kinds of rice, but we are one as the rice eating community. Rice is the symbol of celebration. We express our joy of harvest with it. There are many sufferings in Asia, but we anticipate the time of cosmic celebration.

The Japanese depend on rice for it is a symbol of who they are as a community of people. This is what is offered to us at mass and why it is more than just an appearance. We are showing up for a meal, but a particular meal that sustains our spiritual life. We consume the very body and blood of Jesus, the bread of life. This is not a mere symbol, but the real thing. So often we become indifferent to the true value of food, especially our spiritual food.

Indifference

 While food provides us with great satisfaction, we often forget its ultimate purpose, nourishment. How often do we stuff our mouths full of turkey, hand mixed mashed potatoes and Pumpkin Pie on Thanksgiving? We eat like we've never seen food before. Too often are we like Emile from Ratatouille, shoving the food in and becoming indifferent to its real taste. We need to be more like Remy who chews slowly, appreciating every morsel and opening himself up to the rich flavors within.

We can also be in different to the Eucharist, snatching the bread from the hands of the Eucharistic minister, leaving mass directly after, and never saying a prayer of thanksgiving. We shove the Eucharist in to fill ourselves with a sense of duty rather than fill ourselves with the source and summit of our existence. You could consume the Eucharist every day for forty years, but never once taste its divine flavor.

We look to the Israelites in the Book of Exodus who after only a month of departing from Egypt complained of their hunger. They reminisced of the good o’le days of slavery where they could have their fill of meat and bread, even though shackled to Egypt.
“The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our kettles of meat and ate our fill of bread! But you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine!” (Exodus 16:3).

God heard their cries and rained down Manna, bread from heaven, and quail to feed his people. Yet, the Israelites were still unsatisfied. They ate the Manna to nourish their bodies, not their souls. It wasn't long after this that they all abandoned God and started worshiping a golden calf. They became indifferent.

Now flash forward to Jesus in the Gospel of John. After Jesus fed the group of 5,000 people he crossed the sea in the middle of the night. The people woke up the next day freaking out that Jesus was gone. They sought him out and crossed to Capernaum looking for him.

“And when they found him across the sea they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ Jesus answered them and said, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not
because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled” (Jn 6:25-26).

And a little later he explains…

“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living
bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:48-51).  

Jesus addressed them about their first meal, the Manna. Now he gives them the main course, his own body. The Manna was meant to nourish the physical bodies of the Israelites in preparation for the Promised Land,a land flowing with milk and honey, and the Eucharist is now meant to nourish our souls in preparation for eternal life, a wedding banquet.

True Hunger

It all comes down to whether we are truly hungry. Having a daily relationship with God is a great thing, but we cannot think that that alone is enough. God wants to feed us with his own body not just every Sunday, but every day. There is always a mass going on around the world. The sacrifice of Jesus is constantly being commemorated and his body continues to be broken for us so that we can journey through the desert of our life circumstances. Jesus is offering to satisfy the hungriest parts of our soul, the despair, doubt, and hurt, but what are we truly hungry for? Are we going to Christ to be fed or do we look for alternatives? Jesus offers us a grand feast at a wedding banquet and many times we turn to the dumpster.

Mass as the “showy hour on Sunday”

“When we eat natural food we change the food into us, when we eat the Eucharist its Jesus changing us into him.” – St. Augustine

Jesus wants to feed us as a family. When we consume the Eucharist we are uniting ourselves not only to Him, but to each other. Think about it, the Eucharist was established at the Last Supper, but as the first Thanksgiving. Eucharist means "thanksgiving". It was prepared for the Apostles on Passover. Jesus consecrated the bread and the wine for them and they all ate together. Later he would give up his body on the cross and act as the sacrificial lamb that was to be slaughtered and consumed at every Passover. The consecration of the bread and the wine would forever be the Sacrament that would feed all his children with his very flesh and blood, sustaining one’s spiritual life.

The mass is an anticipation of the heavenly banquet that awaits us. We are called to attend, participate, and consume “Thanksgiving” itself. That “showy hour on Sunday” is so much more than what it is given credit for.

“We all eat the one bread, and this means that we ourselves become one. In this way, adoration, as we said earlier, becomes union. God no longer simply stands before us as the One who is totally Other. He is within us, and we are in him. His dynamic enters into us and then seeks to spread outwards to others until it fills the world, so that his love can truly become the dominant measure of the world.” (Benedict XVI, Homily at Marienfeld, Twentieth World Youth Day [August 21, 2005])

Our Community

What would our poem look like if we took the Eucharist seriously as Christians?

The Eucharist is the symbol of our life. We eat the Eucharist daily. There are different rites of Mass, but we are one as the Eucharist eating community. The Eucharist is the symbol of celebration. We express our joy of harvest with it. There are many sufferings in the Church, but we anticipate the time of cosmic celebration...the wedding banquet!

That “showy hour on Sunday” is our true Thanksgiving Day. We gather our families and eat a meal prepared for us by our heavenly Father. We do not need to over eat because God knows exactly what we need to be filled.

                 Not buying the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? 

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So AMC’s “The Walking Dead” had its Season 4 premiere this month. The show’s success is not that surprising seeing as zombie flicks have captivated audiences for generations. I have been fascinated by this show since the pilot. The art design is incredible, providing cinematic visuals to chaos and destruction. There are character stories hidden in the set designs fueling the interest of the observer. The horror is displayed on two levels; human and zombie. Creator Frank Darabont is a master at revealing the inner revulsion of a human being consumed by fear. The surviving characters become intertwined in a struggle for power, leading to brutality, corruption, and injustice among a civilization ruled by the dead. In many ways, each character is challenged to face their own morality, some choosing good and many choosing evil.

The second element of horror comes from the zombies. These revolting mindless drones driven only by the desire to feed provide for effective nightmares…I've had several. There is something purely horrific about human bodies becoming reanimated after death. As a culture we are fascinated by it. Why? I believe it’s because a zombie represents a person’s greatest fear. Not bodily death, but eternal death.

In the show, several characters go through a denial process when a loved one “turns”, becomes a zombie. Morgan fights against his inability to kill his zombified wife, Andrea struggles to cope after she is forced to kill her “undead” sister, and the Governor keeps his daughter chained up in his closet after she has “turned”. Zombie grief is much different from regular grief. Regular grief consists usually of denial, anger, depression and acceptance. You may attend a funeral, visit a grave-site pray often, and continue to talk with the departed after their gone. There is usually no time limit.

The process of zombie grief consists of all those, but within a matter of minutes with the possibility of having to shoot a temporally resurrected body in the head. Recognizing that the spiritual element of a person no longer exists in their body is horrific in itself. Many of the kids in this current season begin naming the zombies because they can’t understand what they are.

"The Walking Dead" reveals some interesting Christian themes. The scariest part of  a zombie is the lack of a soul.  A zombie is a visual representation of eternal death, as presented in the Book of Genesis.

“The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” Gen 2:16-17

Adam was commanded not to sin or else he would suffer death. How was Adam to understand death, when death did not exist yet? Furthermore, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree, they didn't physically die? Why not? It seems God was speaking of a spiritual death, not physical death. A zombie is the perfect visual for what spiritual death can look like. Without dying physically, one can die spiritually due to sin.

"Sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness." - Rom 6:12-14

Christianity presents Jesus as the second Adam who absorbed this kind of death and redeemed mankind for those who freely accept it. Jesus's resurrection is the proof of eternal life and is offered to all. Death, in this case, does not have to be scary anymore; however, I believe there is a commonality in humans of a deep understanding of this spiritual death, having been passed down from our first ancestors. It is from this wellspring of fear that causes our fascination with zombies. Seeing a reanimated body subconsciously reminds us of what we have lost. It's kind of like that person who constantly brings up your shortcomings in front of others. You are filled with shame and fear. Yet, there is hope.

“The Walking Dead” presents us with a great opportunity to put together our own escape plan. Not to escape a real life zombie Apocalypse (Although it could happen…read here), but to escape a life of spiritual death.

What’s your escape plan?