The Pope watches
a film on Mary
Yesterday afternoon, the Holy Father watched the TV film MARIA DI NAZARET jointly produced by Italian, German and Spanish TV channels and first presented on Italy's state TV RAI last Palm Sunday.
The film depicts the 'intertwined' lives of three women in the New Testament: Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas; Mary Magdalene; and Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
[The film's major historical license is to imagine that Mary the mother of Jesus knew Mary of Magdala before the events that changed her life.]
Here is a translation of the Pope's multilingual remarks after watching the film:
Dear friends:
He began in Italian:
Thanks to all for this moment that invites us to reflect on the images and dialog we have seen in the film MARIA DI NAZARET. Special thanks to RAI and its Director General, Madame Lorenza Lei, and its other representatives, to Lux Vide and the Bernabei family, as well as the production staff.
In German he said:
My sincere thanks to the director of the Bayreishe Rundfunk (Bavarian state broadcasting agency) Prof. Gerhard Fuchs, the producer Martin Choroba of Tellux-Film-Gesellschaft of Munich, all your collaborators, as well as the cast members present and the camera crew for this presentation at the Apostolic Palace.
And in Spanish:
Likewise my thanks go to the reprecentatives of Spain's Telecinco.
He spoke the rest in Italian:
It is not easy to portray the figure of a mother because it contains a richness of life that is difficult to describe. This is even more challenging when it has to do with Mary of Nazareth, Mother of Jesus, the Son of God made man.
You have built the film around three female figures whose lives cross but who make distinctly different choices. Herodiade remains closed in herself, in her world - she cannot lift her sights enough to read the signs of God and therefore does notescape from evil.
Mary Magdalene has a more complicated life: she experienced the fascination of an easy life, based on material things, using various means to attain her ends, until the dramatic moment when she is condemned for her sins and is forced to face her life. Her meeting with Jesus opens her heart and changes her existence.
But in the center is Mary of Nazareth - in who we find the richness of a life with was a 'Here I am' to God. She is a mother who would have wanted to have her own Son always with her, but she knows that he belongs to God. She has a faith and a love so great that she accepts her mission to give birth to a child. Her life is a repeated "Here I am" to God, from the Annunciation up to the Cross.
Three experiences - a paradigm of how one can structure one's life. Whether it is to be on selfishness, on being closed in on oneself and on material things, letting oneself to be led by evil; or on the sense of the presence of God who came to us and remains among us, who awaits us with his goodness even when we err, who asks us to follow him, to trust in him.
Mary of Nazareth is the woman of the full and total 'Here I am" to divine will, and in her Yes, repeated even in the sorrow of losing her Son, she finds full and profound beatitude.
Thank you all and a good evening.
The roles of Mary and the adult Jesus are played by a couple of German actors, 21-year-old Alissa Jung, who has appeared in various TV series; and Andreas Pietschmann, a boyish 42-year-old stage and TV actor from Berlin who auditioned for the role of Joseph, but one look at him and the director said, "No, you are Jesus!"