By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – While giving money to charity is a good thing, God expects Christians to do more by giving of themselves to help others, Pope Leo XIV said.

“It is not simply a matter of sharing the material goods we have, but putting our skills, time, love, presence and compassion at the service of others,” the pope told thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square Aug. 10 for the recitation of the Angelus prayer.

Commenting on the day’s Gospel reading, Luke 12:32-48, the pope focused on how Jesus invites his followers to “invest” the treasure that is their lives.

“Everything in God’s plan that makes each of us a priceless and unrepeatable good, a living and breathing asset, must be cultivated and invested in order to grow,” he said.

“Otherwise, these gifts dry up and diminish in value, or they end up being taken away by those who, like thieves, snatch them up as something simply to be consumed.”

“The works of mercy are the most secure and profitable bank” for investing those treasures and talents, the pope said, “because there, as the Gospel teaches us, with ‘two small copper coins’ even the poor widow becomes the richest person in the world.”

Pope Leo urged people to be attentive so that no matter whether they are at home or work or in their parish they do not “miss any opportunity to act with love.”

“This is the type of vigilance that Jesus asks of us: to grow in the habit of being attentive, ready and sensitive to one another, just as he is with us in every moment,” the pope said.

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
God’s presence inside us and in our world is rarely dramatic, overwhelming, sensational, impossible to ignore. God doesn’t work like that. Rather God’s presence is something that lies quiet and seemingly helpless inside us. It rarely makes a huge splash.

We should know that from the very way God was born into our world. Jesus, as we know, was born into our world with no fanfare and no power, a baby lying helpless in the straw, another child among millions. Nothing spectacular to human eyes surrounded his birth. Then, during his ministry, he never performed miracles to prove his divinity, but only as acts of compassion or to reveal something about God. His ministry, like his birth, wasn’t an attempt to prove his divinity or prove God’s existence. It was intended rather to teach us what God is like and how God loves us unconditionally.

In essence, Jesus’ teaching about God’s presence in our lives makes clear that this presence is mostly quiet and under the surface, a plant growing silently as we sleep, yeast leavening dough in a manner hidden from our eyes, spring slowly turning a barren tree green, an insignificant mustard plant eventually surprising us with its growth, a man or woman forgiving an enemy. God works in ways that are seemingly hidden and can be ignored by our eyes. The God that Jesus incarnates is neither dramatic nor flashy.

And there’s an important lesson in this. Simply put, God lies inside us, deep inside, but in a way that is almost unfelt, often unnoticed, and can easily be ignored. However, while that presence is never overpowering, it has inside of it a gentle, unremitting imperative, a compulsion, which invites us to draw upon it. And if we do, it gushes up in us as an infinite stream that instructs, nurtures, and fills us with life and energy.

This is important for understanding how God is present inside us. God lies inside us as an invitation that always respects our freedom and never overpowers us, but also never goes away. It lies there precisely like a baby lying helpless in the straw, gently beckoning us, but helpless in itself to make us pick it up.

For example, C.S. Lewis shares this in explaining why, despite a strong affective and intellectual reluctance, he eventually became a Christian (“the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom”). He became a believer, he says, because he was unable to ultimately ignore a quiet but persistent voice inside him which, because it was gentle and respectful of his freedom, he could ignore for a long time. But it never went away.

In retrospect, he realized it had always been there as an incessant nudge, beckoning him to draw from it, a gentle unyielding imperative, a “compulsion” which, if obeyed, leads to liberation.

Ruth Burrows, the British Carmelite and mystic, describes a similar experience. In her autobiography Before the Living God, she tells the story of her late adolescent years and how at that time in her life she thought little about religion and faith. Yet she eventually ends up not only being serious about religion but becoming a Carmelite nun and a gifted spiritual writer. What happened?

Triggered by a series of accidental circumstances, one day she found herself in a chapel where, almost against her conscious will, she left herself open to a voice inside her which she had until then mainly ignored, precisely because it had never forced itself upon her freedom. But once touched, it gushed up as the deepest and most real thing inside her and set the direction of her life forever.

Like C.S. Lewis, she too, once she had opened herself to it, felt that voice as an unyielding moral compulsion opening her to ultimate liberation.

This is true too for me. When I was seventeen years old and graduating from high school, I had no natural desire whatsoever to become a Roman Catholic priest. But, despite a strong affective resistance, I felt a call to enter a religious order and become a Catholic priest. Despite that strong resistance inside me, I obeyed that call, that compulsion. Now, sixty years later, I look back on that decision as the clearest, most unselfish, faith-based, and life-giving decision I have ever made. I could have ignored that beckoning. I’m forever grateful I didn’t.

Fredrick Buechner suggests that God is present inside us as a subterranean presence of grace. The grace of God is “beneath the surface; it’s not right there like the brass band announcing itself, but it comes and it touches and it strikes in ways that leave us free to either not even notice it or to draw back from it.”

God never tries to overwhelm us. More than anyone else, God respects our freedom. God lies everywhere, inside us and around us, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored, a quiet, gentle nudge; but, if drawn upon, the ultimate stream of love and life.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

FROM THE HERMITAGE
By sister alies therese
As in a responsorial psalm, repeat after me: God is in the obstacle.

Or so they thought. Or so they said. However, for some, in that desert, after a little while, when the buzz quiets, something else takes over – a kind of resistance, acedia. It is not just monks and nuns who suffer this; married people, singles, anyone can fall prey.

Kathleen Norris, in her exceptional book “Acedia & Me,” tells how the word itself has gone through a myriad of definitions since the earliest writings in “The Praktikos” of Evagrius Ponticus (345–399). Some are: “Acedia: the deadly sin of sloth; or spiritual torpor and apathy,” according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “accidie” as heedlessness, torpor … a non-caring state. The Online Medical Dictionary describes “acedia” as a mental syndrome whose chief features are listlessness, carelessness, apathy and melancholia.

Repeat: God is in the obstacle.

When the seeker would ask about this struggle, Abba Poemen would advise: “Watchfulness, self-knowledge, and discernment. These are the guides of the soul,” according to “Desert Fathers and Mothers” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.
Isadore of Pelusia offered this: “Many desire virtue, but fear to go forward on the way that leads to it, while others consider that virtue does not even exist. So, it is necessary to persuade the former to give up their habitual idleness, and to teach the others what virtue really is.”

Amma Syncletica said there is an asceticism determined by the enemy and practiced by his disciples. She asked, “How are we to distinguish between the divine and demonic tyranny?” Her answer was: “We must arm ourselves in every way against the demons. For they attack us from outside, and they also stir us up from within; and the soul is like a ship when great waves break over it, and it sinks because the hold is too full,” as recorded in “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” by Benedicta Ward. And you ask, how is God in the obstacle?

Amma Theodora, renowned for her wisdom, tells us it is good to live in peace, practicing perpetual prayer. “However,” she says, “you should realize that as soon as you intend to live in peace, at once evil comes and weighs down your soul through accidie, faintheartedness and evil thoughts. It also attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees and all the members. It dissipates the strength of the soul and body, so that one believes one is ill and no longer able to pray,” also from “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.”

Yes, you’ve had this experience. You sit down to pray, feeling quite good, knowing you will talk with God … when you remember your shopping list, calling your mother or watering the plants. It will only take a minute, so you do that thing. Then the phone rings, the TV goes off, the kids pack in from school … and it keeps happening. Those little demons of distress wiggle into your soul, and it seems there’s not much you can do about the indifference, weariness, lax intentions or dryness that grows.

Cassian wrote that “if we are overcome by sloth or carelessness and spend our time in idle gossip, or are entangled in the cares of this world and unnecessary anxieties, the result will be that a sort of species of tares will spring up and occupy our hearts, and as our Lord and Savior says, wherever the treasure of our works or purpose may be, there also our heart is sure to continue.”

Sloth is a culpable lack of physical or spiritual effort; acedia or laziness. One of the capital sins, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sins are called “capital” because “they engender other sins or vices.” (1866) This spiritual effort manifests itself mainly during prayer and in the life of one given to God; this is a disaster. “Someone said to Antony, ‘Pray for me.’ The old man said to him, ‘I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort,’” writes Benedicta Ward from Carrigan’s “The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.”

Acedia in full bloom looks like frustration or weariness, experienced as sadness – “sadness in relation to a spiritual good … a retreat from the divine good itself,” as St. Thomas Aquinas says in “Summa Theologica.” I just don’t care. I can’t be bothered.

Kenneth Russell, in his article in “Review for Religious,” writes that “acedia is a gray morning’s inclination not to intensify the original yes to God, community or spouse … choose to swim no further. … What they really opt for is some means of control over their own comfort. … The victims of acedia tread water and console their anxieties with sleep or attempt to dissipate them in one distraction after another.”

David of Augsburg (d. 1272) described “accidie” in three kinds: the first is bitterness of mind that cannot be pleased by anything cheerful or wholesome; the second, a kind of indolent torpor loving sleep and comfort; and the third, “a weariness in such things as belong to God, praying without devotion, rushing through, thinking of other things as not to be bored.” Chaucer’s “Parson’s Tale” notes that “envy and anger cause bitterness, which is the mother of acedia, and takes from a man the love of all goodness. Then is acedia the anguish of the troubled heart; as St. Augustine says, ‘It is the sadness of goodness and the joy of evil.’”

How can God be here?

It has been a very hot summer; maybe your prayer is distressed? Think of the Noonday Devil, as acedia is often called – for at the height of noon the sun beats down, the pray-er is hungry, nothing is going right, and one could not be convinced God is in these obstacles. Give up. But I was meant for this – this community, this vocation, this spouse. Or was I? The demon of doubt squeaks in. This is where my talent lies – the very one given to me by God, you try to think. Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, quipped: “Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing we can control, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list.”

Finally, Abbot Jean-Charles Nault, OSB, sums it up when he writes that “acedia is the enemy of spiritual joy … a profound withdrawal into self to save one’s freedom at any price … no longer any room for an abandonment to the other or for the joy of gift. What remains is sadness or bitterness … distancing oneself, separated from others and likewise separated from God,” as he wrote in “Enemy of Spiritual Joy” in Communio journal.

What to do: Intensify your prayer. Don’t look for distractions. Be vigilant. Don’t settle for being less than you can. Don’t refuse responsibility. Do for others. Search for God in the obstacles. Life in God is not a spectator sport.

“And should our branches be broken off by negligence, carelessness, disdain or ruin, may these reckless prunings carry even more significance as symbols of peace in a broken world,” wrote Sister M. Guider, OSF.

God is in the obstacles.

God has found you.

Blessings.

(sister alies therese is a canonical hermit who prays and writes.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Does God have sense of humor?

This may seem a frivolous or impious question, it’s anything but that. It’s an important question and a reverent one as well. Why? Because healthy humor and playful banter help bring joy, lightness of heart, and healthy perspective into our lives. Can we imagine all that wonderful lightness of heart having no connection to God?

Does God have a sense of humor? For sure! Without doubt! Jesus teaches that God is the author of all good things. Humor, playfulness and healthy banter are good, healthy things. They can have their ultimate origin only in God.

Why are they good things? What positive role do they play in our lives?

Freud once suggested that sometimes we can understand things more clearly by looking at their opposites. What are the opposites of humor, playfulness and banter? We see their opposite in three things: over-seriousness, needless irritation and pomposity (none of which are healthy).
Consider this example: I have lived almost my entire adult life within a religious community of men, and by and large it has been positive and life-giving. But among the (literally) hundreds of men with whom I have shared community over more than fifty years, there have sometimes been confreres who were over-serious and their presence in the community room or at table could sometimes effectively rob the room of joy.

I recall one such incident at table where someone shared a rather earthy joke (spicy, though not in bad taste). Most of us responded with a hearty laugh, but as soon as the laughter died down, one of our confreres in a heavy and overly pious tone, asked: Would you tell a joke like that in front of the Blessed Sacrament? That not only ended the laughter in the room and injected a certain heaviness into our gathering, it also effectively drained the oxygen out of the room.

Over-seriousness, while not a moral deficiency, can leave us too raw before the demands of family and community to which we can never perfectly measure up. On the other hand, playfulness, humor and banter, when healthy, can provide some important “grease” for family and community life.

For example, when you join a religious congregation you take a vow to live within a community (of men, in my case) for the rest of your life. Moreover, you don’t get to choose with whom you get to live. You are simply assigned to a community, which invariably will include some members whose temperament is very different from yours and with whom you would not normally choose to live.

Well, I have lived in this type of religious community for nearly sixty years and, with very few exceptions, it has been life-giving and enjoyable; mostly because I have been blessed nearly always to live in a community where part of our very ethos has been the daily exchange of humor, playfulness and banter. Prayer and a common mission of course have been the main glue that held us together but humor, playfulness and banter have been the grease that have kept petty tensions and the occupational hazard of pomposity at bay.

It’s interesting to note that the classical Greek philosophers understood love as having six components: eros – infatuation and attraction; mania – obsession; asteismos – playfulness and banter; storge – care; philia – friendship; and agape – altruism. When we define love, we generally make room for most of those components, except asteismos, playfulness and banter. We pay a price for that.

My oblate novice master, a wonderful French-Canadian priest, once shared with us (a group of young novices) a joke with a purpose. It runs this way: a family was planning the wedding of their daughter but were unable to afford a venue for the festivities after the church service. So, the priest made them an offer: “Why don’t you use the entrance, the foyer, of the church? There’s enough room for a reception. Bring in a cake and have your reception there.” Things were fine, until the father of the bride asked the priest if they might bring liquor to the reception. The priest replied most emphatically, “Absolutely not! You may not have liquor in a church!” The father of the bride protested, “but Jesus drank wine at the wedding feast of Cana.” To which the priest replied, “But not in front of the Blessed Sacrament!”

This joke can serve as a parable, cautioning us vis-à-vis stripping God of humor and playfulness.
God has a sense of humor, a sense of playfulness, and a talent for banter far beyond that of our best comedians. How could it be otherwise? Can you imagine spending eternity in heaven without laughter and playfulness? Can you imagine a God who is perfect love, but with whom you would be afraid to joke and banter?

Is the last laugh before we die to be our last laugh forever? No. God has a sense of humor which will without doubt be for all of us a delightful surprise.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Things Old And New
By Ruth Powers

After Mass a little while ago, my young granddaughter asked me a question that made me stop and think. She asked, “Gran, why do we thank God that Mass is over at the end? Shouldn’t we be happy that we were here with Jesus?”

I realized I didn’t have a really good answer for her, but her question made me think and sent me into research mode.

I learned that the dismissal formula used in the current English translations of the Mass is based on formulations from various Eastern rites of the church, but you have to admit that the response “Thanks be to God” after the announcement “The Mass is ended, go in peace” can sound a little jarring.

It is one of the less felicitous translations of the Mass into English and can make it seem as if we’re saying, “Thank God that’s over.”

The direct translation from the Latin dismissal, Ite, missa est, isn’t any better: “Go, it is the dismissal.”

The Latin phrase makes more sense when one investigates its history. The phrase predates Christianity and apparently was used in the Roman military. Ite, missa est was the command spoken by an officer as he sent a soldier or soldiers off on a mission. It had the meaning, “Go, you are sent.” It was an order, not a request, with the subtext that whatever task had been given, speedy and appropriate completion was expected.

Later, the phrase became a common way to dismiss the people after a public assembly of any kind.
Recognizing the origins of the original words of dismissal for Mass presents much food for thought. We are being dismissed, but not to brunch, or to watch the game on television, or to take a Sunday afternoon nap, or to do so many of the other things that we do after Mass.

It is not a dismissal to go about our lives as usual until the next time we meet for Eucharist. Instead, the dismissal at the end of Mass is a clarion call to us. We have been given our marching orders and are being sent out.

What are we being sent out to do? We can take our orders from Jesus in many places in the Gospels.
In Luke 10:1-24, Jesus sends out the 72 disciples with the mission to proclaim the kingdom of God throughout the region in preparation for his own visit. They shared Jesus’ message and were given the power to heal the sick and cast out demons.

We can also share the Gospel every day through word and action; and although we may not be able to literally heal or exorcise, we can make sure that we are not contributing to the spiritual woes of the world by acting with kindness and casting out Satan’s demons of divisiveness and prejudice in our interactions with others.
We can take Jesus’ commands in Matthew 25:31-46 seriously, when he tells us that in order to inherit eternal life and not be cast into hell, we must feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick and visit the imprisoned.

Finally, we can remember the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” We follow it by leading others to Christ by our good example.

If we understand the dismissal at the end of Mass as a sending out to follow the commands of Jesus, the response “Thanks be to God” now becomes the only appropriate response.

We have heard the Word of God, we have been strengthened for the task by the Eucharist, and we have been sent out to fulfill the mission by our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

(Ruth Powers is the program coordinator for the Basilica of St. Mary in Natchez.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The main character in T.S. Eliot’s play “Murder in the Cathedral” is Thomas Becket, a bishop, who from every outward appearance is saint. He is scrupulously honest, generous to a fault and a defender of the faith who dies as a martyr. Yet, at a certain point in his life, prior to his martyrdom, he recognizes that he might not be distinguishing between temptation and grace.
Many of us are familiar with how he famously expressed this:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason. …
For those who serve the greater cause
May make the cause serve them.

What’s the temptation here that can look like grace?

Simply put, we can be doing a lot of good for the wrong reasons. Moreover, this can be enormously subtle; not least in those of us who serve the greater cause, because, as T.S. Eliot points out, it is easy to make the cause serve us.

How can we make the cause serve us? How can we be doing good for the wrong reasons?
Here’s an example: I can be doing a lot of good things that help others and serve God’s purpose here on earth. I can be generous to the point of martyrdom. However, what if I am doing this (serving the greater cause) mainly because it makes me look good, makes me feel moral and righteous, draws respect, earns me praise and admiration, and will leave behind me a good name?

These questions probe the difference between temptation and grace. I can be doing the right things and, while not doing them for a bad reason, I can still, for the most part, be doing them for myself. I can be making the cause serve me more so than I am serving the cause.

The late Jesuit Michael J. Buckley (one of the major spiritual mentors in my life) pushes us to make a painful examination of conscience on this. Am I doing things to serve God and others or am I doing them to make myself look and feel good?

In his book “What Do You Seek? The Questions of Jesus as Challenge and Promise,” Buckley writes this: “For, in a thousand ways, those who serve the greater cause may make the cause serve them. This can be enormously subtle. Sometimes a nuance at the initial formulation of an action or of a life can work the unexpected twist, the unrealized but profound reorientation so that zeal masks a hidden but vicious ambition; it is hidden because ambition and zeal, however profoundly contradictory, can look initially so much alike. The desire to get something achieved can mix the intrinsic worth of a project with the reflected glory of the accomplishment.”

As a priest, in ministry for more than fifty years, I find this a particularly challenging prism through which to examine myself and my fifty plus years of ministry. How much have I served the greater cause and how much have I, blind to self, made it serve me? Who is the bigger winner here: God and the church or me and my good name?

Granted, motivation is tricky to discern, and this side of eternity is rarely pure. We are a bundle of mixed motivations, some which serve others and some which serve ourselves; and, as Buckley astutely points out, initially they can look very much alike. Moreover, certain sayings of Jesus seem to suggest that sometimes explicit motivation is less important than actually doing the right thing.

For example, Jesus says that it is not necessarily those who say Lord, Lord who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but it is those who in fact do the will of the Father on earth who will enter the kingdom. (Matthew 7:21) As well, in teaching that we will ultimately be judged on the basis of how we treated the poor (whatsoever you do to the poor, you do to me), notice that neither group, those who did it right and those who did it wrong, knew explicitly what they were doing. They were rewarded or punished solely on the basis of their actions. (Matthew 25)

So, can we be doing the right things for the wrong reasons? And, indeed, if we are doing them for less than purely altruistic reasons (approval, respect, a good name, good feelings about ourselves) how bad is this? Does it denigrate or destroy the good we are doing? Is the desire for respect, a good name, and good feelings about ourselves genuinely at odds with altruism? Might the two befriend each other? Is God judging us more by our motivation than by our actions?

Am I serving the greater cause or am I having it serve me? That is a critical question for self-reflection. Why? Because it is easy to be blind to our own hypocrisy, even as it is just as easy to be too hard on ourselves.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
Among the countless fictional detectives on TV and in the movies, one stands out above all the others for his rock-solid faith, his vast knowledge of the inner workings of the criminal mind, and his unyielding efforts to catch lost souls and lead them back into the fold. This detective also happens to be a priest. Of course I’m referring to Father Brown, created by Catholic convert G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) who, oddly enough, had not yet converted when Father Brown made his first appearance in a 1910 short story, “The Blue Cross.”

Chesterton based his immortal amateur sleuth on Father John O’Connor, a parish priest who would come to play a major role in his conversion to the Catholic faith. From conversations with Father O’Connor, Chesterton devised the notion of “constructing a comedy in which a priest should appear to know nothing and in fact know more about crime than the criminals.” This basic irony, which persists throughout the stories, has a startling explanation: Father Brown has intricate knowledge of criminal behavior because he has heard all the sordid details in the confessional.

Chesterton wrote more than fifty short stories scattered across five volumes about his famous crime-solving clergyman. In the first collection, “The Innocence of Father Brown” (1911), he describes his most celebrated creation as “a very short Roman Catholic priest [with] a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling [and] eyes as empty as the North Sea.” He also makes reference to “his quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity” and the “large, shabby umbrella” he carries. With this minimal description Chesterton leaves it to his readers’ imagination to fill in the details of what this man of the cloth looks like.

As a result of the lack of more specific information about the character’s appearance, the manner in which he has been portrayed has varied considerably. To date, at least ten actors have interpreted Chesterton’s mystery-solving cleric on the large and small screens. The first was an American, Walter Connolly, who starred in “Father Brown, Detective,” a movie released in 1934, during Chesterton’s lifetime.

One of the most notable performances was given by Kenneth More, who took on the role for a 1974 British TV series lasting thirteen episodes, each of which bears the title of a Chesterton story and is, generally speaking, faithful to the source material. Also worth noting is a 1979 film, “Sanctuary of Fear,” a typical made-for-TV movie of that period. Set in New York City, far removed from the fictional universe of the original stories, it stars Barnard Hughes, who gives a competent performance but, unfortunately, he bears little or no resemblance to the way Father Brown’s creator imagined him. The performer who currently plays the part, the likeable English actor Mark Williams, has starred in the long-running British TV series about the priest/detective since 2013. It’s paradoxical that Williams has been so successful because he is a large man, over six feet tall, playing a character who is, by all accounts, “very short.”

All the versions mentioned so far, except the 1934 film, are in color. A black-and-white production, however, seems more appropriate for creating the atmosphere of the shady world of crime. Although I wouldn’t brand these movies and TV episodes as film noir, it seems logical that the dramatization of detective stories, normally associated with the realm of shadows and the interplay of light and darkness, would achieve greater stylistic effect in black-and-white.

With these technical aspects in mind, let’s move on to the screen version that captures the essence of Chesterton’s creation better than any of the other adaptations: the 1954 black-and-white film “The Detective,” starring the distinguished English actor Alec Guinness as Father Brown. Guinness, by the way, would go on to receive a Best Actor Academy Award three years later for “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and gain lasting fame for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the “Star Wars” cinematic franchise.

Although of average height and thus much taller than Chesterton’s extremely short priest, Guinness fits the part perfectly because on screen he strikes the viewer as a small and insignificant figure, just the type to blend into the background and be overlooked and underestimated by lawman and lawbreaker alike. Guinness takes upon himself Father Brown’s humor, charm and eccentricities to such a degree that I can’t imagine anyone else improving on his performance. The strong supporting cast includes Peter Finch as the infamous international art thief, Flambeau, and Bernard Lee as Inspector Valentine, the police detective who obstinately chases after Father Brown while the latter stays hot on the trail of Flambeau.

“The Detective,” very loosely based on “The Blue Cross,” opens with a police car racing to the scene of a crime. There, we see a man hiding in the darkness. As soon as the police enter the building, this shadowy figure manages to make his exit undetected. What the officers discover is truly shocking: a priest in front of an open safe with stacks of money in his hands. But rather than taking the money out of the safe, he was actually putting it back in. We quickly learn that when the priest had first become aware of the theft, he had convinced the real burglar to let him return the money to the safe. Later, he sets up the would-be robber in an honest job as a chauffeur to one of his parishioners. This captures the essence of Father Brown: he will go to any extreme to win over the sinner and turn him away from a life of crime.

Father Brown’s primary concern in “The Detective” involves the capture of Flambeau, but, oddly enough, he has no desire to put the thief behind bars; his only concern is for the state of his quarry’s soul. Like the “Hound of Heaven” going after His prey, the little priest is relentless in his pursuit of the famous criminal. He never gives up because, as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen says, “unless souls are saved, nothing is saved.”

Little children also have a part to play in this drama of salvation. Although on camera only briefly, their appearance speaks volumes, especially if one calls to mind the prophecy that “a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6) and the words of Jesus: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) In order not to give away the climactic scene, I’ll not say anything else on this subject.

As a postscript, it’s worth noting that while the film crew was shooting on location in France a dramatic episode occurred involving Guinness and a little child. This scene was definitely not in the script. During a break in filming, Guinness, rather than changing clothes, decided to remain in clerical attire. A little boy spotted him, grabbed him by the hand, and called out “Father, Father” in French. Although Guinness’ French was inadequate to carry on a conversation, the actor was, nevertheless, deeply moved that the child, a total stranger, felt a close attachment to him simply because the boy thought he was actually a priest.

Not long after this incident, Guinness converted to Catholicism. Father Brown’s tenacity paid off. He caught another one.

You can catch “The Detective” now streaming for free on Tubi.

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)