‘There be dragons’

NOW in the rounds of premiere showings—in Cebu, it will be on October 16 at the Ayala Theatre—the movie depicts the story of St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, with some fiction to highlight and encapsulate the Christian message that while nothing much can be done toward the past, a lot can still be done in the future.

It’s a drama of hope and redemption extracted from a deep morass of skepticism, hatred, envy and many other forms of human weakness. Director Roland Joffe, who also wrote the script, managed to weave an absorbing story with a happy ending that’s won at a great and painful price.

‘There be dragons’ ably reflects the drama of our life, of our history. The film starts with images of a primitive mapamundi where only the then-discovered lands could be sketched, and the outlying areas--the unknown world--are designated as the dark place of the dragons.

The image can refer to the unknown and mysterious parts of our life which events and circumstances can unravel to us, and can provoke different reactions depending on where we anchor our heart and mind on.

If one is led by faith, then the darkness of life cannot fully erase its guiding light. But if one is simply led by his own reasoning, and worse, by his own emotions and passions, then life can only take us to unavoidable perdition.

No matter how bright and clever one might be, without God, he can never grasp the true meaning and essence of life.

In fact, what is likely to happen is to use one’s powers to destroy himself. And this can be done through a complicated process that is guided by brilliant but deceiving and false lights produced by those powers.

The movie plays out this phenomenon very well. Two friends who were very close to each other in childhood started to take different paths as they grew and encountered more or less similar events and circumstances.

The differences later became big and seemingly irreconcilable. But St. Josemaria persisted in his faith that flowered in charity in its most mature of stage of compassion and forgiveness. That faith and charity would eventually win back his friend who took a different route.

The story of St. Josemaria reminds us that it is only with God that we can somehow assume a comprehensive view and understanding of life, in spite of the riddles and mysteries, the strange twists and turns embedded in it.

God shares this knowledge by giving us faith that has to be lived in hope and in charity. The mysteries of faith can somehow be fathomed, even if they cannot be expressed in words, when they are pursued with hope and charity, with goodness of heart no matter how awkward and imperfect that charity and goodness may be.

Charity, the ultimate law and guiding light of our life, the full blossoming of our faith, is what can conquer all--our doubts, fear, cynicism, hatred, resentment, etc. St. Paul precisely affirmed it when he said: “Charity bears with all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity never fails…” (1 Cor 13,7-8)

But, alas, this is a truth that I’m afraid is still unknown by many of us. It’s still in the outlying areas designated for ‘dragons’ in our life. That is why, the movie somehow also reminds us that we need to wage serious and constant battle against our weakness and the temptations around.

Again this is something to be encouraged in all of us. Interior struggle is an integral part of our life here in this world, which is a life of discovery, of trial, of making the ultimate choice of whether we are for God or for ourselves alone.

In this lifetime struggle, which we try to do with naturalness, we should do all we can to win. All is fair in love and in war, though we have to understand that we can wage effective war only in a moral way. Let’s remember that we are ranged against powerful ‘dragons.’

We need to identify our spiritual enemies at the moment—our laziness, lust, greed, lack of faith, etc.--then craft an adequate strategy, then off we go, doing those spiritual combats that are necessary in this life.

For as long as we are willing to stretch our faith into charity, and our charity into its real source and power which is God’s love as revealed, lived and taught to us by Christ, then all will be ok. Victory is assured!