PROJECTION OF THE FILM "MARY OF NAZARETH"

WORDS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Clementine Hall
Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Dear Friends,

Thank you for this moment which through the images and dialogue of the film “Maria di Nazareth” invites us to reflect. I thank in particular the RAI with its Director General, Ms. Lorenza Lei, and the other representatives, as well as Lux Vide, the Bernabei family and the production staff.

I cordially thank the Director of Bayerischen Rundfunks, Prof. Gerhard Fuchs, Producer Martin Choroba of the Tellux-Film-Gesellschaft of Munich, as well as all the collaborators, the actors present and the cameramen for this screening in the Apostolic Palace.

I also thank the representatives of Telecinco of Spain.

It is not easy to outline the figure of a mother because it contains richness of life difficult to describe; thus this task is more challenging when the figure is Mary of Nazareth, a woman who is the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God made man.

You have based the film on three female figures whose lives intersect but who make profoundly different decisions. Herodias stays closed in herself, in her own world. She does not succeed in lifting her gaze in order to read God’s signs and does not escape evil. Mary Magdalen has a more complicated story: she succumbs to the appeal of an easy life, based on material things, and uses various means to achieve her goals, until the dramatic moment when she is judged and confronted with her life; here the encounter with Jesus opens her heart and changes her existence. However, at the centre is Mary of Nazareth, in her there is the wealth of a life which was a “here I am” to God: she was a mother who had the desire to keep her Son always at her side, but knows that he belongs to God; her faith and love are so great that she accepts his departure and fulfills his mission, it is a repetition of her “here I am” to God, from the Annunciation to the Cross.

Three experiences, a paradigm of how one can arrange one’s life: based on selfishness, on closing oneself in; on material things, allowing oneself to be guided by evil; or on the meaning of the presence of God who came and remains among us and who waits kindly if we fail and he asks us to follow him and to trust him.