Brehm Center

1996 was a banner year for angels. Books on the subject and stationary with angelic reproductions filled the shelves of Barnes & Noble. If you needed a weekly fix, you could tune in to CBS on Sunday to watch “Touched by an Angel.”  Over Christmas two box office hit films starring “angels” came out.  Both had their own charm, even if they were somewhat light fare.  But  a third film -- one with neither wings, halos nor angelic claims, portrayed more fully the true stuff of angels, i.e. the love of God.

Michael, starring John Travolta as a less than saintly (and thirty pound overweight) archangel with shedding wings, tells the story of three incredulous reporters sent to investigate Michael for a tabloid.  Besides helping love to blossom miraculously between Dorothy (an aspiring country singer-song writer turned angel expert) and Quinlan (a cynical ex-Chicago Tribune reporter), the benignly irreverent Michael claimed also to have previously invented “standing in line,” “pie,” and “marriage” itself (as well as writing Psalm 85, though he did not “realize it would be numbered and put into a collection”).  At one point he tells the reporters to think of what Peter and Paul said. “Who, the apostles?”  they ask.  “No,” says Michael, “the Beatles.  All you need is love.”  Here is the angelic equivalent of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny – a certain minimal Christian content, even if put into a secular setting. And lots of fun!

Equally fuzzy theology is provided by  The Preacher’s Wife, a Christmas parable starring Whitney Houston as choir leader and the lonely wife of an inner-city preacher, Henry Biggs. Praying for divine intervention to help his struggling ministry (and life!), Henry is sent an angel as an assistant. Played by suave Denzel Washington (almost the antithesis of Travolta’s “Michael”), and described as a dead human who is allowed to return to earth one final time, this handsome, flirtatious, all-to-human angel divinely intervenes to renew Henry’s ministry and rekindle the love and commitment of this beleaguered  clergy couple. Worth the price of admission is the character of the young son, Jeremiah, who narrates the story and himself plays an angel in the church’s Christmas pageant.  Perhaps the movie is overly sentimental, but the music is great and the message of commitment to one’s family and community, relevant.

But it is not to Hollywood’s all too earthy angelic (mis)creations that one should turn if one wants an earthly portrayal of angels. Instead, the film to see is Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story.  Shown in limited engagements in the late fall and projected for ongoing release through winter and spring, the film was produced by the Paulists and takes its title from Hebrews 13: 1-2,  “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (NRSV).

The lives of faithful, just Catholics rarely make the papers or television (Cardinal Bernardin’s life and death being a recent exception), let alone the movies (as in Day’s case). That Dorothy Day was a feisty lay Catholic woman plagued with doubt, makes her quite the contrast to the likes of modern day filmstars and their angelic portrayals.  But Day’s radical commitment to helping the poor in Jesus’ name (and perhaps entertaining angels unaware) is inspiring nonetheless.  Here is a love that is neither sentimental nor miraculous; rather her compassion is grounded in faithful obedience to her Lord.

 Some critics have said that the movie does not capture the complexity of the woman, Dorothy Day.  In fact the movie only covers part of her life. It does not include her own childhood, nor her last years; but it does include her faith conversion and development into the mother, writer, humanitarian, and Christian activist she became.  The road is anything but pretty, showing her early abortion, broken relationships,  poverty, and  the occasional tensions with her daughter. But through it all, the viewer sees a woman driven…by God…by her faith…by her compassion.  After seeing the film, viewers who previously knew nothing of Dorothy Day will want to know more about this modern day saint.

                Two days before shooting began, the executive producer of the Dorothy Day film, Father Ellwood Kieser, C.S.P. said in his homily at a Mass for the cast and crew that they were about to make a film about God.  Indeed they did, for through  one woman’s commitment to the poor, the viewer catches a glimpse of God’s face (and perhaps that of angels).  While the fictitious Michael and The Preacher’s Wife may show us something of God’s love, it is the real life story of Dorothy Day’s love in action that proves the more revealing.