It’s
easy to see the parallels between the movie title, Father James’ predicament
and his journey of seven days. Father James’ “road to Calvary ”
takes a week to complete and is filled with the flotsam and jetsam of
encounters with a variety of unruly, unappealing and often unlikable
parishioners. Father James deals with
each of them with a mixture of patience, righteousness, humor and even,
sometimes, anger. Needless to say, this parish priest is respected, but is not
popular.
Father James’ isolation in relation
to his parishioners caused the recovering English teacher in me to focus on two
moments in the film which paralleled scenes in Shakespeare’s play Julius
Caesar and Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn (hang in there). With respect to the former parallel, there’s
a scene in the film where the Pub owner, smarting from a losing encounter with
the priest, says to one of his customers: “(Father James) needs to be taken
down a bit.” His words reminded me of Cassius - who had his own issues with
Julius Caesar - when he said to Brutus:
“Why, man he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus, and we
petty men / Walk under his huge legs and peep about.”
Later in the
film, having acquired a gun for the purpose of defending himself on the seventh
day, Father James wrestles with his conscience - he had just chastised a
parishioner for thinking there are exceptions to the fifth commandment - and
pitches the pistol into the stormy waters of the Atlantic ocean, thus
committing himself to the final confrontation with the man who intends to kill
him. That scene echoed the words of Huck Finn - “All right then, I’ll go to
hell” - when he commits himself to freeing his friend, Jim, the slave. I won’t act as a spoiler for the rest of the
film, should you decide to see it; but I do want to comment on the theological
and ethical elements in Calvary which should,
I think, resonate with what we try to do here at La Salle
for the students entrusted to our care.
The word and the place of Calvary are synonymous
with the Christian understanding that Christ’s death represents the sacrifice
of an innocent man in order that the sins of the many can be forgiven. I’ve always struggled with the cause and
effect of this core element of our Christian faith. It seems so incredibly
outsized as to be incomprehensible. And yet, having watched Calvary, the
priest’s belief that he will be able to convince his potential murderer to
abandon his malign goal makes sense to me (especially after he throws the gun
into the sea). In short, innocence forms its own moral compass. The film
reinforces this point when, in a debate with one of the other characters about
the difference between recrimination and forgiveness, Father James blurts out
this blockbuster:
“We have too much talk about sins
… and not enough about virtues, I think forgiveness has been highly
underrated.”
It is all too easy for organized
religion to dwell on sin more than on virtue - we see this played out in the
news headlines on a daily basis, it seems. Rarely, though, do we devote as much
time to the Gospel virtue of forgiveness…hence Father James’ comment. This is
particularly problematic during the stormy adolescent years of high school.
Confrontation - not forgiveness - is often the dominant social paradigm among
teenagers. At La Salle , we seek to tilt the
scale towards forgiveness by surrounding our students with adults who are also
on a journey towards becoming more forgiving.
We don’t always get it right, but we know that our goal to produce good
students and good people necessitates that we keep trying - just as Father
James kept trying to win over his recalcitrant parishioners to more fully
embrace Gospel values.
I suppose I will always wrestle
with the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice; but in watching Father James’ journey
to Calvary , I have a better idea how to
encourage our students to imitate Christ’s example, who, at the time of His
Calvary, forgave his persecutors.
