“We live in an age where digital screens are always on. There is a constant flow of information. However, cinema is much more than just a screen, it is an intersection of desires, memories, and questions. It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet image, and even pain can find new meaning.” — Pope Leo XIV, Nov. 15, 2025
One evening in early October 2024, while scrolling my phone, I saw a black-and-white still image posted on a popular social media account dedicated to cinema. A young man with a furrowed eyebrow looked directly toward the camera. Beneath him were the words, “You may serve God or money, you cannot serve both” (Mt 6:24). I had not thought about this Bible verse in years, although I recognized it instantly. The grainy film still and foreign title were probably algorithm-delivered to me based on aesthetic, but the message cut—deep and essential.
I quickly discovered that the image was from “The Gospel According to Matthew,” Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 film on the life of Christ. The contrast struck me immediately. On one side was the restless digital world Pope Leo describes, the constant stream of distraction. On the other side was the face of Christ, still and severe, taken from a film made with silence, attention and reverence. Instead of creating a moment of distraction, it created a movement. A new ministry was born.
I watched the entire film that night. Its simplicity—the literal words of Matthew spoken by non-professional actors from southern Italy who looked like the faces in my family tree—made the Gospel feel newly alive. Even though the actors spoke Italian, with the help of the subtitles and the King James Bible I memorized in Sunday school, I felt a new and deeper understanding of every word.
The film spoke to my identity as a Christian. I had been baptized Catholic as a baby and was raised in a Baptist church that emphasized literal interpretations of Scripture. I had only recently begun to participate in the Christian initiation program at my parish, the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s in New York City. I carried these disparate parts of myself: Catholic roots, evangelical formation, a love of Scripture and a growing sense that God was calling me to serve him.
Pasolini dedicated the film to Pope John XXIII, who notably encouraged Catholics to read the Bible for themselves. That detail felt like a small grace. It suggested that the church had room for someone like me. The film brought many parts of my life together. It offered the kind of integration only art can create, gentle and unexpected.
The first screening
On Oct. 30, 2024, our parish hosted its first classic film night in the undercroft of the basilica. We laid out baked goods, olives, hummus, tarelli, wine and marigolds. I invited everyone I knew, praying that the event would reach exactly those whom God intended.
The room was packed, with more than 60 guests. I knew most of them by name.
Some sat in chairs, others on the steps or the floor. When the room filled beyond capacity, people stood quietly in the back. For more than two hours, while Pasolini’s Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount in Italian, people were simply present. When Jesus called his disciples by name, a moment that never struck me on the page, the gravity of it landed with renewed force when spoken aloud on film.
Afterward two film professors from New York University, Stefano Albertini and Antonio Monda, joined Father Daniel Ray for a discussion of Pasolini’s cinematography, his relationship with Christianity and his radical choice to use the literal text of Matthew. People lingered. They reflected on the Beatitudes, the stark beauty of the film and their own experiences with faith and doubt.
We began hosting a screening each month: “Paisan.” “La Strada.” “Flowers of St. Francis.” Each film drew new people: Catholics, non Catholics, skeptics, neighbors who wandered in, art school students, retirees, young professionals, immigrants.
People who might never attend Mass came willingly for a film night.
Film became a gentle entry point into faith. Not confrontational or doctrinal (although the discussions could be), they were simply beautiful. People stayed after the credits ended, discussing mercy and vocation and human suffering and grace.
Many who felt alienated from the church or who had been lapsed Catholics told me they would not easily go to Mass, but they would drop by for a movie night.
Beauty as evangelization and the Great Commission
At the end of “The Gospel According to Matthew,” Pasolini does something astonishing. After the starkness of the crucifixion, the film breaks open into radiant simplicity. Christ rises, calm and clear, and then speaks the words that have carried the church for centuries: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. And behold, I am with you always.”
Watching that scene again in a crowded undercroft, I was filled with joy. I realized that this moment is not only the center of the film but the center of the Christian life and now the center of our film ministry. In a world driven by trends, seismic shifts and markets, the great commission remains constant. It is the starting point and the inspiration of Christian life. And, like the apostles, we now use the media of our age to share the Gospel. Film has become one of its most powerful engines.
What could be more essential to our faith than the Gospel itself, a message that cuts across political, linguistic and historical divisions.
Pasolini once said that “human action in reality is the first and foremost language of mankind.” It is a sign of God’s mysterious grace that a film created by someone far from the church has become a way for me and my fellow parishioners to put the great commission into action. Neighbors, artists, skeptics and seekers encountered the Gospel through his work. At Old St. Patrick’s, people came for cinema and left with an introduction to Jesus Christ.
As the final words of the film filled the room, I felt the joy of the greatest ending ever told. Christ has risen and he is with us always, even to the end of the earth, as we share the good news, sometimes even with something as humble as a film projector.
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