Before the Silence

“In December 2016, I watched one of the most emotionally intense and scarring movies of my life on the big screen that had me questioning parts of my faith. This movie was Silence, written and directed by Martin Scorsese. Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence follows two Jesuit Priests, Fr. Rodrigues, and Fr. Garupe, leaving their home in Portugal to bring the Gospel to Japan and to discover the whereabouts of a well-known Priest who committed apostasy. Throughout the film, the themes of silence, despair, and hope appear and reappear. The scene that never left my mind was one during one of Fr. Rodrigues’ prayers.”

Only With Claws

In his Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a young boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb who, through habitual self interest and a careless fixation with a dead dragon’s hoard of gold, becomes a dragon himself. When the dragon-boy encounters the Christ-figure of the novel, the great lion Aslan, Eustace is informed that in order to become ‘un-dragoned,’ he will have to wash off the dragon skin in a nearby well. Eustace sets to work, and begins to scrub layer after layer off of himself, diminishing his dragonish stature until he reaches one final, intractable layer of dragon-skin that scrubbing cannot remove.

A Beginner’s Guide to "On the Incarnation" (Part 1)

Christian Life, Spiritual FormationFr. Hayden ButlerNovember 26, 2022athanasius, st. athanasius, advent, c.s. lewis, theology, incarnation

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