The Surest Sign

In the summer of 2010, I read The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin, SJ.

I was in the increasingly humorous loop of yes, it would be nice to be a part of communal prayer and song … but I’m not going back to a Catholic Church (we’ve talked about this, o God) … and no, I’m not going back to a Christian Church if it’s not Catholic (that doesn’t feel right either) … but yes, it would be nice to be a part of communal prayer and song.

But at one point in his book, Martin describes the First Principle and Foundation of Ignatian Spirituality (best thought of as one of the many spiritual currents in the tributary of Catholicism in the great river of Christianity) as: We are created to live in God’s Love and Life for eternity.

All kinds of joyous bells went ringing in me — finally!! After all these years, a system of spirituality that made sense and expressed what I had thought Catholicism was supposed to be about. And, after all these decades of the God volume going to zero on entry into any church, now it was maxed out like starting a car with the radio volume left on high!

And, the joy trips out in to the explorations of Creation — how wonderful life is when we see the beauty of our world, cherish it, know it, and offer gratitude and praise together and in sole devotion. All is part of the symphony of Love.

The hallmark of the Italian neorealism genre is to take the ordinary and evoke feelings to believe in the meaning of our lives as they are, rather than create belief in our fantasized endings to stories.  The film offers a poignant example of the every day sacredness that Fr Dennis so often tried to share with us in film and poetry. 

The film director, Vittorio DeSica, once again went with “real” people, rather than actors — in fact, one potential funder wanted Cary Grant to play the lead character, the father/husband, Antonio Ricci.  Instead, a working man and a newspaper boy from the Rome streets, both amateurs, were cast as the father-son combination to great effect.  The actor who played the wife/mom worked in the arts, though she also acted in three films total. The young boy grew up to be a math teacher!

You may recall in 2014, we watched Fellini’s LA STRADA (1954), which broke from the strict social reality foundation of Italian neorealism.  THE BICYCLE THIEF was filmed and released in 1948, closer to the consequences of WWII and hews more tightly to the characteristics of the genre.  Fellini’s creativity tended to cross, blend, and defy genres.

I’ll offer my thoughts below on some of my favorite or standout moments of Eucharist, reconciliation, and more couched in the everyday affairs of a struggling Italian family.

The French Jesuit, Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, once wrote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”

My experience bears out this insight, and I find seriousness of purpose obscures my relationship with God. The self-importance of undertaking a purpose and identity as a “human doing” weighs down the joy and relationship with God as a “human being.”

In Genesis 3:8-9, God is walking in the garden of Eden at “the breezy time of day,” expecting Adam and Eve (3:9, “Where are you?”). Such a tender thought that God most enjoyed walking about Creation with the Created!

So with some theological reflection, humor, poetry, film, and other arts, I hope to renew my presence in God, with the surest sign, joy, in its many forms. My hope is that this site might be the same for your spirit, too.

“Infallible sign” seemed a little high falutin’ for me, even if it was just right for Fr Chardin! So … “the surest sign,” it is!