Cinema divina is based on lectio divina and involves a “divine viewing” of a movie while also reflecting on a Scripture passage related to the story.
I was waiting for a Zoom meeting to start along with other participants and someone asked me about my documentaries. I usually don't take folks interest very seriously in moments like that as I always think they are just making polite small talk, but for some reason this time was different. I told them about the two documentaries and I had completed and my plans for the next...and then I told them that these biblical documentaries were not mere movies...NO! They are an audiovisual exegesis. It was then that I "heard" the words Cinema Divina.
“Beyond the written word, the giant visual image of the modern movie screen may provide the impetus for an authentic lectio.” (“The Contemporary Spirituality of the Monastic Lectio,” Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977). Benedict Auer, OSB, takes this a step further in his 1991 article, “Video Divina: A Benedictine Approach to Spiritual Viewing” (Review for Religious, Mar/April 1991): “Video [cinema] divina requires a set disposition which says ‘This evening, I wish to get closer to God so I think I’m going to watch this film which might give me better insights into myself or why my neighbor acts as she or he does….’”
The National Directory for Catechesis (USCCB, 2005) addresses the influence and role of media and popular culture comprehensively: Especially in the U.S., ‘the mass media are so influential that they have a culture all their own, which has its own language, customs, and values. Heralds of the Gospel must enter the world of the mass media, learn as much as possible about that culture, evangelize that culture, and determine how best to employ the media to serve the Christian message…
Thus, we are called to engage critically with the media using our faith lenses and discern the media—the movies—we consume. This means an examination of, faith formation, life experience, and expectations that we bring to the cinema story. To engage is the operative word here because this is how we will grow and develop spiritually. To engage with movies does not mean to accommodate them. It means to make informed choices; to watch what we choose mindfully; and to reflect and enter into dialogue, prayer, and action about the cinematic experience.
The stories in the Bible invite us to see our journey as an opportunity to do the story, embodying the truths of the great God Story in our lives and cultivating a life of virtue through cooperation with the work of the Spirit in our lives. Through our lives and our witness, we share the story, faithfully narrating to others the story of a God who comes. However, cinema divina, requires a positive yet critical attitude toward media—in this case movies—a willingness to emerge from our cultural comfort zone to "love the world" today (Jn 3:16), and the disposition to embrace cinema as a spiritual experience according to the model of lectio divina.
Through spiritual practices, individually and in community with the faithful, we learn the story (biblical characters, ours, our neighbors, and God's) through regular formative encounters with the biblical text as we read for formation. And, in celebration, we eat the story as we share the Eucharist together, thereby becoming absorbed right into the heart of the great God Story (1). Spiritual formation and story belong together. Together they form the “life-weave” for all who are Storied Ones.
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Gordon Lynch and David Willows, Telling Tales: Narrative Dimension of Pastoral Care and Counselling (Contact Pastoral Monograph) 8, (Edinburgh: Contact Pastoral Trust, 1998), 32–34.
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