‘Fatima’ Movie Faithfully Depicts Fear Overcomes by Hope

National Catholic Register, 13 October 2020

If the children, so engagingly acted in the current film, can overcome their fear with faith, why not adults, too?

The recent Fatima movie, favorably reviewed here, reaches its climax with the Miracle of the Sun, which took place at the final apparition on Oct. 13, 1917. The first (May 13) and last apparitions are now the principal commemorations of Fatima, the former being the feast day, the latter falling suitably in the month of the Holy Rosary. 

The Fatima movie highlights one aspect of the apparitions that is often overlooked, as major attention is understandably given to the message of Our Lady and its historical context. Yet in highlighting how the children and their families experienced the apparitions, Fatima reminds us of something that is before us in every book of the Bible, namely that to be in the presence of God is a fearful and disruptive thing. The eruption of God in our lives disrupts everything else.

Christians living long after biblical times are shaped in large part by the comforting image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and innumerable serene images of the Madonna and Child. The idea of God’s presence being in some measure awesome and awful is can be startling. We sometimes speak of the “awful grace of God” — it comes from Aeschylus, who lived long before Jesus presented himself as the Good Shepherd — but it is not how we customarily think.

Some years ago in his Catholicism series, Bishop Robert Barron reminded us of this by presenting the figure of Jesus in light of Mark 10:32, which tells us that the disciples were “amazed and afraid” in his presence.

Bishop Barron reminded us that in the Scriptures this is the usual reaction to the Divine Presence, though often enough people are just afraid, not amazed. 

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