Fatima

The film, Fatima (2020), tells the story of the three Roman Catholic children in Fatima, Portugal, who in 2017 claimed to see and hear the Virgin Mary periodically over a period of 6 months. The film centers around Lucia, the oldest of the three children, and, moreover, the question of whether the children really encounter the Virgin, or are lying, hypnotic, or even psychotic. In the film, as well as in “real life,” a miracle is associated with the last visitation. In the story world of the film, the visitation really happens, and the multitudes watching the children come to believe this when the Virgin delivers on a miracle as promised. Historically, believers as well as nonbelievers who were present at the event have testified that the Sun moved around in the sky and even came closer. If this really happened as witnesses have described, then the empirical “proof” in the story world of the film is not the whole story, and the religious truth therein is not limited to the faith narrative, but holds in an empirical, supernatural sense. An implication is that Jesus not only resurrects in the Gospel stories, but also as an empirical event in history. But, then, why have such supernatural events been so rare since the “time” of Jesus?  And, yet, witnesses as far as 40 km away from the visitation of the Virgin reported seeing the miracle of the Sun.

Catholicism is not portrayed in the film without blemish. Lucia’s mother, Maria, which is ironic, believes that if she and Lucia suffer, then Manuel, Maria’s son, will return alive from fighting in World War I. Maria’s assumption that God wants believers to suffer ignores the point of Jesus’ suffering as a vicarious sacrifice to atone for others’ sins and thus close the gap between God and humanity, or at least the House of Israel. Neither the voluntary suffering of Lucia or her mother Maria save souls. Furthermore, Maria’s flawed sense of causation—that if she suffers, then her son will not be killed—demonstrates how superstition can take hold when the human mind enters the religious domain of thought. So in the film, Catholicism is hardly whitewashed. Moreover, the vulnerabilities of the human mind in contemplating religious ideas are not dismissed.

So the need for psychological testing of Lucia and the two other children is presented in the film as reasonable, and indeed it is. The children pass the test, but they could still be lying. So Lucia asks the Virgin to perform a miracle so the bystanders would know that the visitation is real even though only the three children can see the Virgin. The dramatic tension rises as the mayor goes so far as imprison the three children so they would miss a monthly visitation by the Virgin. Lucia’s mother, Maria, goes so far as to repeatedly hit Lucia for lying about the visitations. That a person who presumes to know how to keep her son alive at war—and indeed seems so “religious” in general—would then show her
true colors” in hitting her daughter for having a religious belief (i.e., in the visitations) is not lost on the film’s viewers. And the child shall lead them—not the bishop or the observable “devout.”

The esoteric messages of the Virgin to the children, rather than to the judgmental multitude ruining the family’s crop, the bishop, the mayor, and Lucia’s mother, is justified. “Some people will never believe," the Virgin tells the children. The mayor in particular is a good example. God is like the breeze passing by the mountain, rather than a great fire or earthquake, and it takes a religious sensibility—a sense of presence—to notice the passing of a breeze, metaphorically speaking. It is because of the hostility of the detractors, those to whom Jesus’ message and example of love and mercy has fallen like on hard stone, or hardness of heart, that Lucia asks the Virgin for a miracle.

Like a quiet breeze, the message of the Virgin, that people should stop insulting God by sinning without repentance, should not be lost as the more sensationalistic miracle gains the headlines, both in the film and after the historical event. The miracle is merely a means by which to aid in the quiet message by giving confidence to believers and convert others to not insulting God, which I contend is more important than the Virgin’s admonition to pray more as that is merely a means to the end, which is love. Even so, the miracle of the Sun, both in the film and as a historical event, arguably has momentous significance. In the film, the miracle means that the visitation was real, so Lucia and the two other children are vindicated. Even Maria comes around, though tellingly the mayor still does not. As a historical event, the movements of the Sun while the last visitation was occurring means that religious truth, or meaning, in faith narratives is not the whole story; those truths in faith narratives refer to spiritual things outside of the story world, in the empirical, historical world. It is thus extremely significant that believers and nonbelievers both testified as witnesses in 1917 to the movements of the Sun. Mass hypnosis can thus be eliminated as a possible explanation. The only alternative left is that of coincidence, or else that the reports are erroneous—that the changed colors and movements of the Sun were optical illusions after the heavy rain. The veracity of religious truth in a faith narrative is not affected either way, so I contend that such truth, like a light breeze, should be the object of faith without raising questions of historicity one way or the other.

That is to say, the veracity of religious truth in a faith narrative can be distinguished from, or even more radically does not depend on, historical events or persons. Even so, the matter of empirical events (e.g., the Resurrection) and persons (e.g., Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha) is not inconsequential, and, if answered even more definitively than either the film or the historical event of the Sun moving in the sky, then the modern conception of religion, which disavows any faith narrative correspondence with empirical or historical events and even persons, would be even more severely uprooted. It may be that the miracle of the Sun has already done that, and the film merely reminds or informs people of that, as well as the possibility that, as the Virgin says in the film, some people will never believe, even in the face of a miraculous empirical (i.e., supernatural) event.

Even so, many spurious miracles have been claimed in the history of Christianity, and so perhaps a miracle less subject to being reckoned as an optical illusion is needed before the question of whether the events and characters in the Christian faith narratives correspond to historical events and actual persons. Nothing in such narratives can confirm such correspondences because a faith narrative is not a historical account even if historical events are used (and modified to serve theological points). Fortunately, the ways to enter the Kingdom of God as described and exemplified in the Gospel faith-narratives do not depend on the question of historical correspondences of events and even characters in those narratives.

The value of helping detractors, such as Lucia tries to help her mother in the film, does not depend on whether Jesus was a historical man or merely a character in the Gospels; the truth wherein human nature is expanded, or turned on its head, does not so depend. Whether or not the correspondence holds, a person applying the example and preaching in the narratives will experience the spiritual dynamic. Faith is ultimately in the value of that dynamic. In the Gospels, Jesus says that he came to preach the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The astute viewer of the film, Fatima, transcends the sensationalistic leitmotifs of whether the visitations have a reality outside of the children and whether the Sun really moves in the sky and comes closer to discern the innocent faith of Lucia from the dogmatic, hypocritical “faith” of her mother, who ironically has the name, Maria. Entering the Kingdom of God in humility is like the innocent faith of a child. This esoteric message of the film is, I submit, the most important thing about the film, and yet even a believer could be excused for having a burning urge to know whether the miracle (i.e., not of the laws of physics) of the Sun really happened. We are merely human, after all, and so we have an instinctual urge for finality or certainty even though the human mind can transcend the limits of cognition, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotions). One thing is certain; the religious sphere is not an easy one for the human brain to inhabit.

On transcending even the ethical, see: Spiritual Leadership

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) is known for being the first Hollywood movie in which the face of Jesus is shown. From the standpoint of the next century, the scandal in showing Jesus could only seem antiquated, if not outright silly. Rarely can such perspective on a scandal exist as it is occurring. In its own time, a scandal seems all-important and critically in need of being addressed lest life as we know it would otherwise come to an end. Ten years earlier, Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, had also been controversial, as was the 1988 film of the same name (and based on the novel) because Jesus imagines himself in the sexual act and he may struggle with mental illness. This scandal was more serious than was that which greeted The Greatest Story Ever Told even though the Jesus of Last Temptation ends up rejecting the temptation to avoid the cross and is thus faithful to his Father in the end. The viewer is left, however, without a decisive answer as to whether the film's Jesus suffers from mental fits because the film ends with Jesus dying on the cross. The theological validation of Jesus is made in Greatest Story, though curiously not chiefly in the usual way this is done in narratives about him. I submit that this deviation makes the film highly significant in that it emphasizes religious experience as a reaction.

The two parts of The Greatest Story are separated by an intermission. The climax before it outdoes the one that comes at the end of the film. Ironically, the focus in the first climax is on the disciples' reactions rather than Jesus' face. Jesus walks up a hill to Lazarus' tomb to bring him back to life. Although we briefly see Jesus' face as he looks into the tomb, the chief shot is from the perspectives of the disciples downhill looking up. In fact, we only know that Jesus has succeeded by the reactions of the people watching the event from afar. We never see Lazarus. Seeing the reactions--verbal and nonverbal--is a more powerful way of conveying the significance of the event in religious terms. The astonishment and urgency to tell others we see suggests that the event was not just unusual, but more crucially supernatural and thus sourced in divine power intervening through Jesus. The reaction of the disciples to Jesus' resurrection at the end of the film is muted in relative terms. For viewers who are very familiar with the Passion Story of Jesus, the emotional reaction at the end of the film may also be muted.

In retrospect, some viewers may notice that the reactions of the disciples (and others) at Lazarus coming back to life (as distinct from being resurrected) are not the reactions that are typically seen in Churches during worship. Although in John (20:29) it is written, "Blessed are those who have not seen [me] and yet believe," it is also true that human reactions from witnessing a miracle of the significance of Lazarus would naturally be more intense than from hearing about miracles from the lectern in a church. Indeed, because Christians down through the centuries have not witnessed any such miracles of that magnitude personally, but only through a book, muted reactions have been the norm.  That is to say, relative to the reactions of the disciples and others in the film during the first climax, the intensity of Christians has been less in merely hearing about the miracle. Christians may notice that the miracles that evince a supernatural aspect are believed only in the narrative. This is not to say that the miracles were not empirical (i.e., historical) events; rather, my point is that Christians through the centuries have as their source the Bible, whose inerrancy pertains to belief rather than knowledge. Empirical facts, as from historical accounts written by historians, count as knowledge; belief does not. For such Christians, a miracle can be a literary device because the belief must come out of a book. The device, I submit, lends authenticity to the principles that a religious narrative conveys, rather proffers proof of an empirical event in the past. In short, Christians since the eye-witnesses such as those depicted in the first climax of the film have been dependent on the Bible sans direct experience.

I do not mean to suggest that religious experience from a miracle depends on being an eye-witness. This is where the film has particular value. The narrative device can trigger a distinctly religious reaction (i.e., experience). Watching the reactions from the Lazarus event, which itself was largely hidden from the viewer, the viewer may have a reaction that transcends emotions. Such a distinctively religious reaction, as for instance from feeling the hair raise on one's arms, is itself a religious phenomenon that exists even if miracles are only a literary device without having happened historically. None of us can know whether or not they did.  It is amazing that a mere literary device can trigger such a distinctive spiritual (rather than emotional) reaction. Generally, symbols, myths and rituals can trigger religious reactions. The reaction to a significance of a type that transcends our realm is distinctly religious or spiritual, and thus part of the human experience even if miracles are not. 

In short, the film's visual point-of-view assumes an unusual vantage point as Jesus is performing the miracle on Lazarus by focusing on the onlookers and thus their respective reactions. In contrast, a traditional vantage-point is assumed as viewers look at the raised Jesus talking with his disciples. Containing these two different perspectives in the two climaxes of the film, it points greater attention on the Lazarus miracle than that of Jesus' resurrection. The greater attention is itself distinct because the reactions that people would have to witnessing a significant, empirical miracle are highlighted. As a result, some viewers in turn may have a novel reaction that is distinctly religious and yet does not require that miracles occur outside of being a literary device. The reaction itself may point to the human propensity to transcend the limits of perception, cognition, and even emotions and thus to have a distinctively religious or spiritual experience. Such an experience, rather than major figures, may be the point that religions try to convey.