The Last Temptation of Christ
When I was young at 16 going on 18, I was suffering to become legal. To be officially permitted by my parents to do things my way. Sometime when the going gets tough at the university I wouldn’t be compelled to hear mass on Sundays. My weekends should be reserved for me to do some making up to whatever I think is necessary. It would be my own freewill whether to attend church. They wouldn’t think as if, I’m sacrilegious when I couldn’t make it. I thought that part of my struggle is profoundly normal, and as parents they should understand me and love me even more. I’d assured them of the hope they pinned on me.
What this has got to do with Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ? Well, they said, we all have our crosses to bear. I’d got the book The Last Temptation…actually it was loaned to me by a professor at my creative literature class. The novel seemed to me the effort of an ordinary man to understand Christ’s sacrifices as an insider and to experience it as his own. In order to speak to us, Jesuses or Jesi (?) since he only become Christ after crucifixion, must be made to bear the infirmities of modern times-the doubt, the angst, the fear and trembling, the existential dread, and yes, even the sexual obsessive-ness. At this age of complacency Christ must be tempted not only by evil desires but by the possibility of a life of ordinary pleasure as well-not only by extravagance but also by the life of middle-class satisfactions.
As it was customary in my family to eat together every Sunday after hearing mass, they reiterated the sermon to me since I was absent, as usual. They told me that the officiating priest berated a movie, The Last Temptation of Christ (I’m writing a separate review on this). They said the priest also told them that the author of the book from where the movie is adapted was excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. As Roman Catholics, even if I pointed out that they couldn't be because we're Filipinos they still insisted to be called as such, they warned us not to watch the movie. They’re infuriated even more when they saw me reading it, they implicitly understood me, and, they hated me? I said to myself that the controversy was somehow helping to make it a bestseller.
I knew that their reaction was temporary since I knew they couldn’t forsake me for so long. I was constrained to read the novel to the finish. It seemed astonishing though that in this time of too much self-assertion and spiritual greed, of increasing list of rights and escalating demands for titles, the theme of self-sacrifice should be so clearly presented, without regret, without disdain, without trivializing. I and many readers of the book have shared these experiences to some extent and it could seem odd that Christians (I’m inactive at that time) should want to condemn the works that brought that about.
What this has got to do with Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ? Well, they said, we all have our crosses to bear. I’d got the book The Last Temptation…actually it was loaned to me by a professor at my creative literature class. The novel seemed to me the effort of an ordinary man to understand Christ’s sacrifices as an insider and to experience it as his own. In order to speak to us, Jesuses or Jesi (?) since he only become Christ after crucifixion, must be made to bear the infirmities of modern times-the doubt, the angst, the fear and trembling, the existential dread, and yes, even the sexual obsessive-ness. At this age of complacency Christ must be tempted not only by evil desires but by the possibility of a life of ordinary pleasure as well-not only by extravagance but also by the life of middle-class satisfactions.
As it was customary in my family to eat together every Sunday after hearing mass, they reiterated the sermon to me since I was absent, as usual. They told me that the officiating priest berated a movie, The Last Temptation of Christ (I’m writing a separate review on this). They said the priest also told them that the author of the book from where the movie is adapted was excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. As Roman Catholics, even if I pointed out that they couldn't be because we're Filipinos they still insisted to be called as such, they warned us not to watch the movie. They’re infuriated even more when they saw me reading it, they implicitly understood me, and, they hated me? I said to myself that the controversy was somehow helping to make it a bestseller.
I knew that their reaction was temporary since I knew they couldn’t forsake me for so long. I was constrained to read the novel to the finish. It seemed astonishing though that in this time of too much self-assertion and spiritual greed, of increasing list of rights and escalating demands for titles, the theme of self-sacrifice should be so clearly presented, without regret, without disdain, without trivializing. I and many readers of the book have shared these experiences to some extent and it could seem odd that Christians (I’m inactive at that time) should want to condemn the works that brought that about.
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