What is the Real Presence for You?
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This major box-office film from Lionsgate should be an eye-opener for critics, some of whom called it “bland,” a “weekly movie.” Viewers, however, voted with their ticket purchases: It placed third in box-office its first weekend. The producers’ projected sales take came in on the first day.
I went to see it with a friend, not expecting anything too sensational. I’d lived through those days, the late 1960s, but wondered what viewpoint this film would take. Would it be a tired documentary? But there it was, staying on at the Regal and Cinemark, which usually make quick work of Christian movies, if they carry them at all.
Jesus Revolution was anything but bland if you know the reality of this story. In fact, this story of a Southern California pastor struggling with dwindling attendance in his congregation, confused by the changes in society that were drawing kids to abandon good families, going in search of “truth” in sex and drugs, hit home.
Dwindling congregations: does that ring a bell? Drugs? Kids looking to sexual identity and expression for meaning? Surely it’s clear that this story is playing out again today!
In fact, for me it hit the nail on the head. Yes, this is a story about a Protestant Evangelical pastor (Calvary Chapel) and his theology and worship, but it’s not really about theology. It’s about Jesus and what happens when people come to see, really see, his reality in their lives.
Jesus Revolution took me back to a time in my life when I was struggling with my marriage and with being a new mother. We were living in Isla Vista, a town just outside Santa Barbara, up the coast from Newport Beach where the movie story took place. Cradle Catholic, always faithful, I took my confusion and anxiety to my parish priest, hoping for an answer. “Count your blessings!” he told me. While that was probably a good idea, it was not an answer for me. I was not sure my Church had the answer.
It was 1970. Our community was full of hippies, people going around preaching love and peace, when our parents were insisting on fighting a war. Men with beards looking a bit like Jonathan Roumie,, who plays Lonnie Frisbee in this film and Jesus in The Chosen, looked to me a lot more like the Jesus I believed in, and voiced thoughts more in line with the Gospel than the leaders of my Church did.
“Jesus, who are you? Where are you? Are you real?” I prayed.
He Was. He IS. By the most unlikely, most circuitous of paths, he brought me, kicking and screaming, to an encounter with him. This encounter led by an equally unlikely route to a Catholic Charismatic prayer group in New Mexico. I’m skipping a lot of stops along that road, but it led ultimately to a mountain valley in Western Colorado, and another charismatic prayer group, and a welling up of the Holy Spirit in our lives that brought us to a much fuller understanding of our own Church and the Mass., giving us a new enthusiasm for our Catholic faith.
Jesus Revolution may tell the story of a single Calvary Chapel pastor and the amazing growth of his denomination., but this same process was going on in many churches, bringing with it the ecumenism that had been hoped for in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. I saw breaches in my extended family, painful differences, melt away, as we could then share our experiences of Jesus and the Holy Spirit without the barricades of doctrine. People came to our group from all over the valley, from other faith traditions, to see what the Holy Spirit was doing. Like Greg Laurie in the film, we had our own local pastors whose churches outgrew their buildings.
The real protagonist in Jesus Revolution is Greg Laurie, a struggling youth from a broken family, who begins to find hope in the Jesus Movement, in Pastor Chuck Smith’s church along with many other youth dropouts. Not to drop a spoiler, but Greg goes on to write the book that was adapted for this screen play. I have the book on order from the library, so I can’t say much about it yet, except that part of its title states, “It can happen again.” That’s the part I want to know. Because I pray every day that it WILL happen again.
No one doubts that our society has lost itself in a vast thicket of secularism, seduced by self-sufficiency and materialism. But why are our churches, including our Catholic Churches, not drawing people back with our attractive offer of Christ present in the Eucharist? Why do our bishops, in fact, have to develop programs to reintroduce Catholics to the Eucharist, let alone those out in the secular world? What have we not seen?
Here’s how this problem struck me when I was a Director of Religious Education, asking myself how I could best convince these children of the Real Presence. How could I convince their parents, lax at mass attendance even then, of the reality of Jesus’ Eucharistic presence? Parents who dropped their kids off for RE class while they went and had coffee, mass not even in the picture.
But why would they even care if Jesus were really present there unless they really knew Jesus? I resolved to make knowing Jesus a key element of our First Communion program. To “”pass” the test before receiving the sacrament, they had to be able to tell us several stories about Jesus. If they didn’t fall in love with him, they at least knew him a bit. (No one ever "failed." We just made sure the kids had a firm goal in mind.)
That’s what the Jesus Movement was about: coming to know Jesus. It was the first step in following the Way. As our popes have told us, evangelization means bringing people into contact, not with a bunch of rules, not with a list of sins, but into relationship with Jesus. That relationship will then take us on the way, when we can learn the narrow path.
The challenge to our Church is to find a way to let Jesus out of the tabernacle and into the streets where he can reach the people that need to hear about him. Oh, wait! But he hitches a ride with us every time we receive him in communion. So, he has to find a way to get beyond us, and that means we need to spread the word of his love. This is your homework. But for a start, you could get some ideas from Jesus Revolution.
Frances Rossi is a seasoned Catholic, product of a practicing faith-filled family and Catholic schools. She has studied Scripture and the documents of the Church, and trained in both liturgy and catechesis. She spent years as a Director of Religious Education as well as serving as music director in several parishes. She is mother to three grown children, and happy grandmother of six. She currently serves as a liturgical musician in a small parish.
She is also active in Democrats for Life of Colorado, a chapter of the national DFLA, Democrats for Life of American, and writes for their newsletter, as well writing letters to the Denver Post.
