laughter tears spiritual journey

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Laughter, Tears & Cinema Divina What movies and television can teach us about the spiritual journey Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP Director, Pauline Center for Media Studies [email protected] PaulineCMS.com

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Page 1: Laughter tears spiritual journey

Laughter, Tears & Cinema Divina

What movies and television can teach us about the spiritual journey

Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSPDirector, Pauline Center for Media Studies

[email protected]

Page 2: Laughter tears spiritual journey

Grace

In God we live and move and have our being –

Acts 17:28

One faith, one baptism

Page 3: Laughter tears spiritual journey

Let us pray

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding

and my entire will,

All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me. St. Ignatius of Loyola

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What’s your drama?

• What challenges have brought you here today?

• What values guide your life?

• What values have you internalized?

• Character: human formation

• Who is God for you?

• What role does conscience play in your life?

• The spiritual is built on the human (character education)

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Page 6: Laughter tears spiritual journey

The classic stages of the spiritual journey include

• Self-awareness

• Reflection

• Dialogue

• Discernment

• Decision and action

• Find God in all things

• Following the Spirit

• Collaboration with Jesus

• Ordering relationships

• Living in true freedom

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Spiritual movements of the soul

• The connection between the artist's personal spiritual journey, vocation

• Living in continual discernment can add meaning to the artist's life and work

• Attentiveness/awareness to the flow of one’s interior moods, desires, feelings, and the thoughts that accompany them

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Spirituality

• Need for vigilance because we are being influenced all the time for the good and what is not good; evil, that which takes us away from God is within and without through persons, culture, etc.

• Spirituality, living in relationship with God and others, isn’t magic but will sustain us when things fall apart and we can respond with interior freedom and love

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The Spiritual Journeylasts a lifetime: the arc

• We choose God (moral integration)

• It’s going well … then … (has God abandoned me when I am trying so hard?

• The more we walk in God the more light we receive (grace, help, inspiration)

• Living in grace, love, good because our fundamental choice is for God

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Who is god for you?

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The glory of God is the human person fully alive

Things only make sense when we are focused on God

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Your Values:empathy

Overarching ideals that guide your life

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Clips

• Millions

• Amazing Grace

• The Mission

• Desperate Housewives

Page 14: Laughter tears spiritual journey

Conscience

Conscience is the locus of decision making, the place in which we are confronted with our own moral identity

More precisely: conscience is(1)the experience of (2)responding to the moral call (3)in freedom

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FIRST DIMENSION OF CONSCIENCE:EXPERIENCE

Experience from the Latin experior, to journey (the Greek root is peiros, trial)

Conscience is not a thing, a static, fixed dimension in the person, but something that grows with us, better in us, in our personal history and the world we create for ourselves and others around us

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EXPERIENCE:Conscience is being “at home”

Conscience is “being-at-home-with-oneself” (Thomas Aquinas, reditio ad seipsum)

Conscience is knowing about oneself (scire) most deeply

Where we discover our deepest sense of moral identity: we do not have a conscience, we are our conscience (Klaus Demmer)

Slides on conscience kindness of Prof. R. Dell’Oro, LMU

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DIGRESSION ON SIN

Sin is homelessness (aversio)

Alienation ◦ from oneself◦ from others◦ from God

In sin we un-do our history

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SECOND DIMENSION OF CONSCIENCE:A RESPONSE TO A CALL

Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths (Gaudium and Spes, 16)

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A RESPONSE TO A CALL

Conscience is not a monologue with oneself, but a coming to oneself out of a dialogue --con-science → cum-scire

Response to a moral call◦ There is an objectivity to conscience◦ We are not constructors of the good, we are

summoned to obedience by it

Response to God himself ◦ Hearers of the Word (Karl Rahner)

Slides on conscience kindness of Prof. R. Dell’Oro, LMU

Page 20: Laughter tears spiritual journey
Page 21: Laughter tears spiritual journey

THIRD DIMENSION OF CONSCIENCE: FREEDOM

On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience.

In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience faithfully, in order that he may come to God for whom he was created.

It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience

(Declaration on Religious Freedom, 3)

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FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

Conscience is autonomous: not an external constraint, but an intimate voice◦Difference between super-ego and

conscience

Conscience presupposes freedom◦Difference between legal and moral norms

We can never act against our conscience◦Even the invincibly erroneous conscience

is binding (Thomas Aquinas)

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Who are you?

How do I build a fundamental and primary option for God in my choices?

Does this choice before me make me grow in the fundamental choice I have made for God?

The real dilemma: between minimalistic observance and complete commitment to God

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Growing in the spirit

The connection between the artist's personal spiritual journey and vocation

Moral integration

Things only make sense when we are focused on God

Page 25: Laughter tears spiritual journey

God is the still point in the turning world

- Discernment of spirits asks us to stop and listen, to discriminate how God is calling.

- Where do you find energy, excitement, and life as you think about what you want to do?

- By inviting God into the process of decision making, you come to know that what you most deeply want is what God wants for you.

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Page 27: Laughter tears spiritual journey

Growing in the Spirit

• Awareness, self-awareness

• Examen of consciousness

• Discernment

• Silence

• Prayer

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Discernment of spirits

• Discernment of spirits is the interpretation of “motions of the soul.”

• These interior movements consist of thoughts, imaginings, emotions, inclinations, desires, feelings, repulsions, and attractions. 

• Spiritual discernment of spirits involves becoming sensitive to these movements, reflecting on them, and understanding where they come from and where they lead us.

• Reference: Discernment of Spirits

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Consciousness Examen

• Recall the presence of God

• Look at your day with gratitude

• Ask the Holy Spirit to help you review your day and understand your choices, actions, feelings

• Review your day • What did I do today?• How did I feel?• What challenged me?• How did I overcome that challenge?

• Reconcile and resolve

• OUR FATHER

• Reference: Consciousness Examen

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Fullness of charity

Love God and do what you want

Cinema divina

Lectio divina

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To live in God

The Goal of our life is to live with God forever.

God, who loves us, gave us life.

Our own response of love allows God's life

to flow into us without limit.

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To live in God

All the things in this world are gifts from God,

Presented to us so that we can know God more easily

and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we appreciate and use all these gifts of God

Insofar as they help us to develop as loving persons.

But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives,

They displace God

And so hinder our growth toward our goal.

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To live in God

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance

Before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice

And are not bound by some obligation.

We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,

Wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us

A deeper response to our life in God.

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To live in God

Our only desire and our one choice should be this:

I want and I choose what better leads

To God's deepening his life in me.

St. Ignatius of Loyola