Doxos

Snuff Saints

So the boys were watching some creepy snuff film where kids get sold to the highest bidder who can then torture them and kill them with impunity. A young girl, gagged and bound, is hanging up-side down over a bathtub whilst the purchaser, a middle-aged Eastern European woman, lays in the tub, surrounded by rose petals and candles and, naturally, a glass of wine. While the girl moans and whimpers the woman abuses her body with a scythe. Then, the woman slices off the gag and thoroughly enjoys listening to the girl scream and beg for mercy while parts of body are sliced off, blood flowing over the woman in her bath.

I left the room and spend several days in a bit of revulsion. And I wondered what was wrong: yes, it is repulsive and yes, it is sadly quite believable. And this one film was not the only one: there are quite a lot of films out there (such as the Saw series) that serve no other purpose to to render glory to the dark one in his many human forms. Think of the Friday the 13th films or Halloween.

But where have I heard these stories before?

The Martyrology is filled with such snuff stories: there are differences, certainly. But read the daily entry in St Nikolai’s Prolog or pick most any day in the Roman Martyrology. Any day is filled with stories of splinters under the fingers or being toasted alive while grinning evil people watch and poke fun.

So what would it be like if the whimpering co-ed in the snuff film, instead screams and moans, had started out with “Steadfast protectress of Christians…”? What would it be like if Jason’s target sang out “O Lord, save thy people…”?

AS I played those scenes over in my head I began to really wonder about this idea: the main issue with horror movies is the lack of faith. Look at the classic Jack Palance version of Dracula or the original Dark Shadows and compare it to True Blood or American Horror Story. All that’s good is evil and all that’s evil is, at best, scary: not evil, or any more repulsive than the good. It’s just all gross.

We do not even allow ourselves to tell religious stories about the greatest martyrdom of our time: the Holocaust is, of course, about the Jews, but where are the openly religious stories? Synagogues filled with praying Jews arrested on Shabbat, the victims dying with “Sh’ma Israel…” singing out? These must have happened – someplace in all those sad losses and pitiful victims must be martyr. But we don’t talk about it. We just want to talk about the death.

This culture of death in which we live and move and deny our being… I think it’s always been so, to be honest. The ancient idols offered not much more. Only in denying the idols as well as he who came to liberate us from them we’re left with a boring no-faith that needs gore for stimulation and fear instead of love.

Love is the Stairway

Yesterday we celebrated the birth in time of our eternal King. Today we celebrate the triumphant suffering of his soldier.

Yesterday our king, clothed in his robe of flesh, left his place in the virgin’s womb and graciously visited the world. Today his soldier leaves the tabernacle of his body and goes triumphantly to heaven.
Read on…

A Reading from The Letter to Epictitus By St Athanasius

For the Synaxsis of the Most Holy Theotokos

The Word took to himself descent from Abraham, as the Apostle says, and therefore it was essential that he should in this way become completely like his brothers, and take a body similar to ours. That is why Mary is really part of his plan, so that he may take this body from her and offer it up for us as something that is his own. Accordingly, Scripture mentions his birth, and says: She wrapped up in swaddling clothes; the breasts that suckled him were called blessed; sacrifice was offered because he was the first-born. Gabriel announced the good news to Mary with all clarity: he did not say simply: ‘what is born in you’, in case it might be thought that the body had been introduced into her from outside; he said: what is born of you, so that it would be accepted that what she gave birth to, came from her in the natural way.
Read on…