This document discusses storytelling and cinema from a theological perspective. It argues that stories and films can reveal spiritual truths and invite viewers to have deeper empathy for humanity. Movies can lead viewers beyond just what is seen and heard to understand the deeper meaning and implications for faith. Some examples of films that showcase redemption, mercy, and revelation are discussed. The document also references Thomas Merton's idea of cultural mysticism, where encountering stories and art can transport people to other places and help them see beauty in other people.

1. Night at the Oscars
Catechesis + Care for God’s Creation + Intercultural
Focus
Dare + Lead+ Innovate
NCCL
May 2016
Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

2. 2015 Liturgical Press

3. 2016 Amazon

4. My All American

5. Behemoth 'Beixi moshuo'

6. Matthew 13
• And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You
speak to them in movies?” Jesus answered them, "To you
it has been granted to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been
granted.…
• This is why I speak to them in movies, though seeing they
did not see, though hearing they did not hear…
• Listen then, to what the movie means
• Jesus told parables, stories about something else to make
a point about some truth or reality.

7. Parables
• 39
• Most are in Luke
• None are in John
• Weeds, treasure, pearl, fishing net, workers, money,
sons, wedding feast, unforgiving servant, wheat, owner
of a house, servants, friends at midnight, unjust judge,
good Samaritan, Pharisee and tax collector, rich fool,
lost coin, lost son, lost sheep, forgiven debts,
unproductive fig tree, yeast, soil, mustard seed, wicked
tenants, faithful servants
• 11 of the 39 parables are about money

8. Silence
What you are doing
is so noisy
I cannot hear
what you are saying.

9. Salve Regina (skateboarding friar)

10. The shortest distance
between the truth and
the human person is a
story
Anthony de Mello

11. Spotlight

12. The Lady in the Van

13. Storytelling
The history of grace within
the heart of the world

14. Room

15. How Wolves Change Rivers

16. Sacramentality of cinema
• Making invisible realities
visible
• Grace
• Mercy
• Calling us to be cultural
mystics

17. Cultural Mystics
• “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and
Walnut, in the center of the shopping
district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with
the realization that I loved all these
people, that they were mine and I theirs,
that we could not be alien to one another
even though we were total strangers. It
was like waking from a dream of
separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a
special world. . . .

18. • This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was
such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed
out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a
member of a race in which God Himself became
incarnate.
• As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human
condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what
we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But
it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling
people that they are all walking around shining like the
sun.

19. • Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their
hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor
desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their
reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.
• If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If
only we could see each other that way all the time. There
would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty,
no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed
and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
• ― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a
Guilty Bystander

20. Stories invite us to be cultural
mystics
• Empathy for humanity revealed in cinema
• Cinema brings the joys and pain of all human living
• We find transcendence and grace through the
encounter with these stories when they are
authentic;
• Our senses are engaged through the gift and work of
the artist,
• Our imagination set afire when we are transported
to another time and place to walk in the footprints
of others, and finally, our spirits enriched especially
when the resolution, if there is one, is true.

21. Love & Mercy

22. Redemption of the Prisecutor

23. Facing Fear

24. Revelation
• God’s loving self-communication through Word and
Sacrament; through the action of grace in the world

25. Dostoevsky
• The world will be saved by beauty

26. • Storytelling reveals meaning
without committing the error of
defining it.
Hannah Arendt

27. • Storytelling is at the heart
of sharing faith:
evangelization
To find God in everything

28. McFarland, Mad Max Tomorrowland

29. In the Heart of the Sea

30. Parables: “The cinema has
always been interested in
God” Andre’ Bazin
• Leads us beyond what we see and hear to ask
• What the movie means to faith and life – to the life of faith
• What do films tell us about God? The search for God?
• What is truly human is truly of the Gospel and what is truly of
the Gospel is truly human (cf. Gaudium et Spes)

31. Why do we love stories
(movies, television, literature
– video games)
• To experience the ineffable

32. Of God and Men (Swan lake)

33. Catechesis + Care for God’s Creation + Intercultural
Focus
Dare + Lead+ Innovate NCCL
May 2016
Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

34. References
• deacondigest.com/home/cinema-of-
mercy-the-face-of-mercy
• * A Sacred Look: Becoming Cultural
Mystics a Theology of Popular Culture, by
Sister Nancy Usselmann, 2015, thesis for
Master of Arts in Theology degree.
• This article was published originally in
English, spanish and French in SIGNIS
Media, No. 1/2016, Brussels: “The Art of
Storytelling.” Click here to download the
entire issue on the topic.