1. 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
rpacatte@paulinemedia.com
PaulineCMS.com
2. Grace
In God we live and move and have our being –
Acts 17:28
One faith, one baptism
3. 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
4. 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)
5.
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. The Spiritual Journey
lasts 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. Sin is homelessness
(aversio)
Alienation
◦ from oneself
◦ from others
◦ from God
In sin we un-do our
history
18. 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)
19. 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
20.
21. 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)
22. 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)
23. 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
24. 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
25. 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.
26.
27. Growing in the Spirit
• Awareness, self-awareness
• Examen of consciousness
• Discernment
• Silence
• Prayer
28. 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
29. 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
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. 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
