12/7/15

At tonight's Discipleship Training group, Fr. Bill had us do a gospel testimony, asking us to pick out and discuss a passage that was meaningful to us in some way. I was paired up with Dominique, who went first and used the parable of the sower from Mark, which was suggested by The Way. That passage didn't really speak to me, however, and I had trouble thinking of a single passage off the top of my head that did, so I ended up talking about the Gospel of Matthew as a whole, about how I'd read bits and pieces from the Bible before but it wasn't until I decided to sit down and read the Gospel of Matthew all the way through that any of it became meaningful to me.

While it was obvious that the gospel was written for a predominantly Jewish audience and trying to legitimize Jesus as the coming Messiah, I was quickly impressed by the content, which on the face of it seemed rather simplistic but also contained a depth I was eager to explore. From the sermon on the mount to Jesus' warnings about being a spiritual hypocrite, I was inspired to continue reading. And the more I read, the more I was inspired to learn about Christian spiritual life, to live as Christ did, and to be a lamp of skillfulness for others to see. I saw the meaning underlying the stories, the truth/Dhamma reflected in them that I'd somehow missed all these years.

I also shared with her my appreciation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Matthew, which itself is a testament to the power of the gospel. After reading all four of the gospels all the way through, Pasolini was inspired to make one into a film. And despite being a Marxist and an atheist, and whatever political motives he had for doing it, Pasolini succeeded in making one of the most faithful and reverent film adaptations of a gospel narrative ever made. Apparently the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano even goes so far as to describe it as "the best film about Jesus ever made in the history of cinema." That's quite the praise.