It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s Hollywood!” With the increasing number of superhero films coming out every year, one is led to think that Hollywood is already running out of creative ideas for their movies.
Of course this isn’t true. For commercial reasons, Hollywood will always have stories to stretch and weave into films. Moreover, man is a creature –with his God-given intellectual powers– who will never run out of stories because his soul constantly opens him to seek the ever-enriching realities of truth, love and beauty.
Still, why so many superhero movies when this genre of film offers a very predictive plot with little, if at all, any redeeming value? Answer: because they’re big and fast-earning productions fueled by a huge market of a comic fan generation excited to see how faithfully their favorite 2D heroes come alive in the silver screen or in 3D.
Among these are some who have a ‘knack’ of not distinguishing between the movie they have watched and reality. Fortunately, there are very few Walter Mittys who get lost within the movie of their imagination and manage to be slapped back into reality on time.
Unfortunately, however, there are still more individuals who are unaware or reject the truth that God has gifted them with the grace of becoming more than the fickle and fragile imaginary comic book superheroes. This grace is the capacity to become a saint.
A saint can be considered the antithesis of a superhero. He doesn’t go around wielding special weapons, radiating colorful aural powers and much less constantly battling enemies of varying forms, dimensions and malice. Disappointingly, a saint can be someone common, simple, sickly, weak and even boring.
What is important here is not so much how they are, what they know or what they have achieved. What is essential is what they can be and have become when they allowed God to take possession of their destiny.
In an Angelus discourse, Pope Francis observes: “The saints were not supermen, nor were they born perfect. They are like us, like each one of us. They are people who, before reaching the glory of heaven, lived normal lives with joys and sorrows, struggles and hopes. (November 1, 2013)”
Their power rested not so much in what they humanly possessed or accomplished. Rather, as the Pope adds: “When they recognized God’s love, they followed it with all their heart without reserve or hypocrisy. They spent their lives serving others; they endured suffering and adversity without hatred and responded to evil with good, spreading joy and peace. This is the life of a saint. Saints are people who for love of God did not put conditions on him in their life. (Ibid.)”
When man aspires to become a ‘superhero’ he is quite aware that it is only imaginary. It was all in his mind, a happy and funny thought, a psycho-emotional comfort pill that wears off as soon as life’s challenges face him again. But this is not so for one who aspires to become a saint.
Being a saint is something real! It is part of God’s original plan for every man and woman. Our Lord Himself invited His disciples, as well as us, to be ‘perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect.’ St. Paul in his letters constantly reminded the first Christians about the divine truth that God had deigned, since eternity, to call everyone to holiness.
What is needed is our faith and confidence in our Lord’s words that ‘nothing is impossible with God’. Thus, it is more impossible to become a superhero than to become a saint. And if there are few saints around, it is because many Christians have very little faith that would allow God to turn them into masterpieces of His love, sacrifice, patience and sometimes miracles.
St. Josemaría taught, “This is the secret of the holiness (…) God has called on all of us to imitate him. He has called you and me so that, living as we do in the midst of the world –and continuing to be ordinary everyday people!– we may put Christ at the top of all honest human activities. (Friends of God, no. 58)”
So instead of waiting for Superman to ‘solve the world and our personal problems’ let us put St. Paul’s words into action: ‘To gird our loins in truth, cloth ourselves with the breastplate of righteousness…take the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit’ as we march with other saints into the daily battles against evil, in forging our spiritual life, in sowing God’s word and peace in the hearts and noble ideals of men.
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