Holiness Without the Hype

There is a wonderful French movie from the late 80's that I watched once again yesterday called Au Revoir les Enfants. It is a tremendous little film with all these beautiful, strong and true emotions flowing just beneath the surface of the plot. The story is set in a small, Carmelite Friar's school for upper class boys during the later years of WWII in France.

The Friars, led by their superior, and aided by some of the lay teachers - are hiding four Jewish boys within the ranks of the other students because "what else would we possibly do?" Most of the boys do not know they are Jewish but some, more observant, figure it out.

One gets the impression that the school has become a drab, poor, shadow of its former self, lacking proper food and heat due to the war. Classes are interrupted by air raids and yet are diligently and conscientiously taken back up by the teachers as they huddle with their classes in underground bomb shelters. There is a strong sense of order and tradition being maintained even under such impossible circumstances. But mainly this film is an intimate look into the life of these pre-teen boys and all THAT entails - boys who are completely unaware of how holy the friars are. The superior is tremendous. Courageous and long suffering and patient with the boys. Yet, not afraid to reprimand their rich parents in a hard sermon for not remembering the destitute of their war torn country. He is this solid, no nonsense, completely pure of heart - saint. The boys are clueless of his real heroism until the end.

The friendship and admiration that slowly arises between one of the Jewish boys and a French boy is beautiful and finally heartbreaking, but it isn't sentimental in any way. The kids are real with all the faults boys that age would have... the jostling, merciless teasing, rivalries and fights common to that adolescent species are plainly evident. The patient friars take the boys in stride and do what they can. One scene where one of the boys goes to confession is really moving to me in its simplicity and in the humility of the friar confessing him.

What surfaces from this story is the strength of faith. Faith that trudges through the dull, unexciting crosses of having enough heat, feeding all these boys, keeping everyone safe and running a school on nothing, but never wavering on the teachings of the faith, the commandments and the religious duties. And in the end, a faith that walks off to a sure martyrdom like it was just another thing being asked.

I contrasted this movie with a reel I saw scroll by today. It was a priest's instagram and he was filming himself climbing out of a window to avoid having to talk to someone knocking on his door. It was meant to be funny, but I only felt embarrassment for him. I am surmising that it was just another of those "see, we are just like you" breezy, ‘fun’, priest and nun videos that seem to be popping up everywhere on social media; the motive being, I suppose, to attract the "youth" into becoming priests or nuns. My first instinctive response was this: I don't WANT you to be like me. I want you to be BETTER than me. I need you to be strong and manly and ADULT. And, by the way, so do the 'youth', no matter what you believe to the contrary.

I think there is so much shallow tripe passing itself off as Evangelization in our world today. Evangelization is a word so overused and is simply assumed to be something that must reach vast audiences with hip content that takes all the hard, virtuous, daily difficulty of living out the faith and hides it under a perpetual hype of fun, emotional high and familiarity - like an endless, loud, marketing campaign. Children will see right through that in the end, and they will despise you for it when they realize they have been sold a shallow bill of goods that does not hold up when REAL suffering comes their way.

In reality, isn't evangelization just personal holiness witnessed by others and imitated? This happens one on one and in completely non-flashy ways. Always. A Mass well prayed. Catechism taught and explained, solid advice in the confessional, and giving good, adult example whether you think the kids are watching or not - and certainly whether they think you are cool or not.

My mom told me that when our family moved from West Virginia to St Louis, my dad had to go on ahead and start his job here at a hospital in St Louis, leaving my mom back in WV with all eight kids. It was exceptionally hard for him to do this! But he knew that the parish priest back in WV at St Brendan's Church would help my mom sell the house, do the paper work for her, and make sure she was okay. Fr Doyle was his name and he came through in a big way with a charity and good cheer that my mom never forgot. Solid, giving, and virtuous.

It is holiness that attracts. Most of the time we aren't going to see it - just like all those little French boys didn't really see it in the friars they lived with day in and day out - even making fun of them as boys always do. But when moral courage and faith were asked for, the boys were shocked to find the wonder of having lived with such brave and holy giants all this time and they knew it not.

When the superior is taken away by the Nazi's after having been caught harboring the Jewish boys, he casually waves to the boys assembled on the street as though he is just taking a trip. They all know he is not. He simply calls out with affection: Farewell, my children. Be good. And they all shout back their farewells to him suddenly understanding how much they loved him and depended on him and did not realize it. It was a realization that was to stay with them throughout the rest of their lives.

We don't need memes or programs or relevance, or priests and nuns wasting their time on cringy reels. No flashy anything. We just need good old fashioned, daily, striving holiness based in faith, right teaching and tradition. That is the evangelization that works wonders and lights one fire at a time until the whole world is ablaze.

This movie was so powerful with that message to me.

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull