Scripture tells us that Christ became sin to free us from the bonds of sin and open the doors to heaven for us. Before Christ’s death and resurrection all those who died were not allowed into heaven. As we recite in the creed, “he descended into hell,” which means He went to hell out of love for those souls who earned a place in heaven but passed away before he opened the gates of heaven.
He loves us too much to leave us alone while we feed the demon and pet the serpent. However, since he is the perfect gentlemen he is not going to intervene unless we ask him to. We must be ready to stop feeding the demon.
When we watch horror movies, we make Jesus watch them too. Jesus who has a clear conscience, who knew no sin, chose to take on sin, not only sin itself but the consequence of sin. When we sin, we cause him to do the act with us. He chose this, because he loves us.
Worse still these images do not bring us closer to him. Most movies will easily show the supernatural evil but will leave out the supernatural good. The evil will be overcome by mere human effort, or by someone who has a similar power as the evil entity but use it for good. They deliberately leave out that only with God can we face and overcome evil. God doesn’t want us to choose to face the evil. Like the words of Mufasa, in the movie, “Lion King,”
“Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble.”
To add insult to injury we are making Christ accompany us as we watch a story that deliberately omits him, even though he is the one true victor over evil.
When we are dealing with zombies and vampires we are watching images that mock the Eucharist. In fact it is anti-Eucharist. Christ gave up his life, and allows his body to become our supernatural food which gives us eternal life. We have him accompany us as we watch media that says, ‘give me your body as food, and I will give you a decayed, dead, demonically possessed body.’
When we watch images that are meant to be fearful and disgusting, we ignore what is happening spiritually. We allow ourselves to become desensitized to the fearful and disgusting images. We think its safe to laugh in the face of evil. Unfortunately, I think Satan is the one having a laugh at our naïvety.
We ask our Guardian Angel to stop guarding, guiding and ruling, we ask Mother Mary to look away and we mock Jesus for the time it takes to watch a horror movie and allow ourselves to be spiritually slimed. That demon we fed during the movie in now ruling our conscience. When we go out into the world, what was once black and white is now grey. We have numbed our conscience, our perception of good and evil is skewed. Accepting immorality will come easier. In this way we endanger our faith, giving way to self-sufficiency, complacency and pride.
Death is not pretty and the images of skeletons and decaying flesh should serve to remind us that our physical bodies are temporary and will decay one day. This should motivate us to nurture our faith, to actively nourish our relationship with our Guardian Angel, with Mary and especially with Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. We can’t avoid the fact that our physical body will decay, but the good news is we can choose to nurture our spirit, instead of causing its decay.
The Good News is that God’s mercy is endless. All we have to do is ask for it and he readily gives it to us. We must work on journeying towards God, and turn away from anything that hinders that journey. In the words of Matthew Kelly, “Every journey towards something, is a journey away from something.” We can’t be afraid to take the steps necessary to cut off our attraction to images that draw us away from God. He will give us the grace we need to turn away and continue the journey to our eternal home with him.
I leave you with this quote from Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdelen, O.C.D. from Divine Intimacy, ” We want to become saints, but in the easiest way possible, without effort, without fatigue…we should like to practice virtue, but only to a certain point, only when it does not ask for great sacrifice, or go too much against the grain…Our progress in holiness depends precisely upon these acts which we hesitate to make, without them we shall lead a mediocre life, we shall always remain on the same level, if indeed we do not lose ground. Let us beg the saints whom we honor today to help us overcome our laziness, lassitude, our cowardice”
Read the first part here.
Tima Borges 
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