King David had sinned gravely. Although he carried within him “the whole river of the generations from Abraham to Christ, roaring in his blood,”[1] he had let himself be deceived by evil. He took the wife of Uriah, one of the strongest men in his army, and sent her husband to the front line of battle to die. David, who bore “the Ten Commandments in his heart,”[2] was blind to the depth of his own wrongdoing. Then the prophet Nathan, sent by God, came to his palace. Curiously, the prophet did not come to recite the Mosaic Law to him, nor to remind him of his responsibilities as shepherd of the chosen people. Standing face to face with David, he simply said: “There were two men in a city…” (cf. 2 Sam 12:1–7). Nathan told David a story.
“You are that man”
The prophet tells of a rich man who, despite having flocks and herds in abundance, thinks nothing of taking his poor neighbour’s only possession — a little ewe lamb, which he cared for like a daughter — to serve up at a banquet for a guest. David listens closely to Nathan’s tale, and his indignation mounts until he springs to his feet and cries out: “The man who did this deserves to die!” He even calculates, on the spot, the compensation owed to right the injustice. Only then does the prophet close the story, his task complete. “You are that man,” he says, by way of explanation. Nathan needs to say no more. Neither does David: the point could not be clearer. Psalm 51 remains as a testimony to his repentance, the sinner-king's plea before God.[3]
What happened in David’s heart and mind in those few minutes? Why did a fictional tale allow the king to see with such clarity the lie he had been living? Can a story shed light on something we did not properly understand about the world, or about ourselves? Is a tale that never actually happened not, actually, a very trivial thing? These are the very questions Aristotle would go on to ask, centuries later, in writing his Poetics. The Greek philosopher needed to understand why, in watching the actions of characters on a stage, he seemed to discover something new within himself. His treatise would become a reference point not only for playwrights and screenwriters, but also for audiences — of theatre then, and of film and television now[4] — who wished to draw the greatest possible fruit from the time they spent with a story.
Our world on a screen
In the history of the arts, the invention of photography marked a turning point. For the first time, artists had as their raw material not clay or pigment, but an automatic reproduction of reality itself: a fragment of the world, a drawing made of light. Hence, for instance, our fascination with old photographs: even when we can barely make out what is happening in a blurred image, or cannot quite identify who is who, what captivates us in those black-and-white portraits is really their origin — reality itself. Photography, the language of light, “allows us (...) to admire in reproduction something that our eyes alone could not have taught us to love,” as a great scholar of the audiovisual world once observed.[5]
Photography thus gave rise to an art intimately bound to reality, anchored to it as a statue is to its mould. It was only a matter of time before the next link in the chain emerged: cinema, a projection of reality in its constant motion, a screen that seemed able to hold the world and turn along with it. It is no surprise that the earliest accounts of film screenings convey a deep sense of wonder at the mysterious movement unfolding on the screen.
Every new advance in filming and editing techniques has sparked fresh debate about what cinema truly is. But broadly speaking, we might say that our fascination with films and series comes from standing before a projection of our own world, and more specifically, from contemplating the decisions made within it — a world “inside” the screen that is, paradoxically, also very much “out here,” even in fantasy or animated films. When our attention is captured by something audiovisual, something similar to what happened to King David listening to Nathan occurs. What the king did, sitting in his palace hall, and what the philosopher later did in the Greek agora, we do today too, often enough: watching a series at home, or a film at the cinema, or in any of the countless other places where screens surround us. We fix our senses on stories.
Contemplation in the middle of the cinema
A superficial glance might suggest that these moments of immersion in an audiovisual story are a parenthesis in our relationship with God. Yet for a soul seeking to walk the paths of prayer, the opposite can be true: if contemplation consists not so much in doing many things as in listening to God, who speaks to us through what surrounds us, then stories too can lead us towards him. The Lord sits beside us in our armchairs, wanting us to see what He sees, letting Himself be moved — sometimes painfully — by what others have to tell, sharpening our sensitivity to listen, or to be struck with wonder at small gestures and small things. Delighting in what is beautiful cleanses our senses, so often saturated with strong sensations; it makes us more sensitive to our surroundings, and so lays the human groundwork for supernatural contemplation.
“It is so difficult to read!” a contemporary philosopher once exclaimed, in some surprise.[6] The same could be said of cinema: watching a good film is not always easy. To enjoy ever better things and uncover what lies beneath first appearances, we need to be willing to develop our taste and learn, like children, who gradually come to discover more complex or subtle tastes. David would not have been moved by Nathan’s story, nor recognised his own injustice, had he not been an active spectator, open and endowed with patient attention. It is no accident that the Latin verb spectare means “to watch closely;” and that, with a prefix added, it becomes expectare, “to wait attentively.” These interior processes, though they may take time to develop, help us to choose what is truly valuable.
St. John Paul II was fond of the theatre, both as actor, spectator, and writer. It is no surprise, then, that the rise of cinema as a popular art also caught his particular attention, though he was quick to distinguish cinema made purely to entertain from cinema with deeper aspirations. “Besides films whose primary aim is entertainment, there is a strand of cinema more attuned to existential questions. Its success may be less spectacular, but it reflects the work of great masters who, through their art, have helped enrich humanity’s cultural and artistic heritage. Before these films, viewers feel drawn to reflection, towards aspects of a reality sometimes unfamiliar to them, and their hearts are stirred: they see themselves mirrored in the images, confront differing perspectives, and cannot remain indifferent.”[7]
Recognising our own way of looking
The first films or shows that come to mind may well fall short of this ambitious description: most of the audiovisual content we consume is made to serve as a form of rest, much like going for a walk, casually playing a sport, or simply passing the time. Some of it is designed purely to stimulate the senses for a while, without aspiring to much more than an escape from routine. And yet there is also a cinema that offers rest while, at the same time, opening new horizons and posing new intellectual or existential challenges.
Not everyone sits in front of the screen in the same way, just as not all the music that reaches our ears — from frantic dance beats to great classical compositions — stirs the same activity within us. In the first case, we mostly come away with simple enjoyment; in the second, alongside that enjoyment, we may also experience real movements of reflection, critical observation, introspection, even conversion.[8] The same is true of cinema: it can be a way of climbing onto someone else’s bicycle to pedal into wonderful, unexplored territory — including territory within ourselves. In that case, we will need to cultivate patience and perseverance, learning to appreciate pauses and silences, because what is demanding is also part of the story being told. But cinema can equally function as a small motor we attach to our own wheel simply to end the day with a little relaxation. In either case — and this bears remembering — the landscape we have taken in stays with us, and goes on shaping our sensibility.
The way I position myself before the screen, which will vary according to my needs in the moment, shapes the action I am really carrying out. And at the same time, it is that way of looking (what I, as a viewer, expect from that moment) that determines the kind of stories I let in through my senses, even though almost anything is available to me from my pocket. “Everything is connected,” Pope Francis once told a gathering of filmmakers, “to the intentionality placed in viewing, which is not just an exercise of the eye, but something more. It is a gaze trained on reality. The gaze, in fact, reveals the most diversified orientation of interiority, because it is capable of seeing things and seeing inside things.”[9]
How, then, do we choose ever better stories? What moments should we set aside for film or television? How can we make the most of them? C.S. Lewis held that the best defence against bad literature is a great deal of experience with good literature:[10] far better to go looking for what is excellent than to view everything with suspicion, even if we do not always find it straight away. The same holds for any other art, including cinema. Our best defence lies in learning to tell what is beautiful apart from what is merely ideological, manipulative, or superficial. Our best defence lies in training our own eyes to recognise beauty — that is, truth, seen from a narrative point of view — which will not always lead us to the most pleasant or comfortable option, but will lead us to the most fruitful and exciting one.
Longings shared by all
In his careful study of experiences like King David’s, Aristotle observes that what sets historical accounts apart from good works of fiction — which he calls poietic, from poiesis, “creation” — is that fiction does not deal with a particular person, who existed in a given place, with a name and a story of their own, but instead shows “what tends to happen to a person.”[11] For this very reason, he even considers such stories more “philosophical” and “elevated” than history. Stories tend to explore some facet of the human longing for happiness; they show us a fragment of the infinite paths — sometimes confused, even contradictory — along which we draw nearer to, or further from, our true goal. Watching a good film can be like standing before a potential mirror, before who we might become.
“Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold,” Pope Leo XIV told a group of film professionals. “In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens, and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined. Your art form, as you well know, demands concentration (...). 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 silence.”[12]
Stories, whether written or filmed, also have the capacity to function as a great hall where people from the most varied backgrounds converge — geographical, cultural, social, or spiritual. If St. Paul made use of first-century poetry to find common ground with the non-Christian world around him (cf. Acts 17:28), and St. Justin drew on the pagan philosophy of the second century, it should not surprise us that we find, in the stories told today, in today’s languages, the same longings for happiness shared by everyone. Cinema, St. John Paul II observed, is “an extremely sensitive instrument, capable of reading, in time, signs that may otherwise escape the notice of a hasty observer.”[13] It is not uncommon for the same story to resonate in a similar way with people all over the world. That is why it matters so much, for the apostolate today, that each of us keep discovering stories, and the ways in which truth reveals itself through beauty.[14]
Discover is the operative word. In the realm of stories, and of art in general, truth is not expressed as a clear statement or an irrefutable syllogism; rather, it challenges us, calls us to dialogue, seeks to raise the right questions. If Christianity can be understood as the answer God offers to humanity’s deepest desires, then our task is to pose those questions well. And often we will do this through storytelling, just as Jesus did in the Gospel — bearing in mind that a story is not some kind of disguise for smuggling in the truth unnoticed. An American writer used to say, when asked about the message of her stories, that the only possible answer was to read them from beginning to end, since a story “is an experience, not an abstraction.”[15] If a great story could be reduced to a brief moral, a couple of lines long, it was probably not worth telling in the first place.[16]
* * *
When St. Josemaría preached his homily “Passionately Loving the World” on the campus of the University of Navarre — a place that would, in time, form many professionals in the audiovisual world — he explained that “we discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things.”[17] We find Him in the tools of our work, in the tiredness of those around us, at the table where we share our family meals… And nowadays, the stories that reach us through our screens are among the most visible, most looked-at things in our world. We spend time with them, and enter into dialogue with them. We give them a place among our senses and within us. They are among the lenses through which we interpret the world and ourselves. That is why it is so important to weave them into our ongoing relationship with Jesus, so that they, too, may become a place of contemplation and of love for the world.
[1] Cf. J.M. Ibáñez Langlois, El rey David [King David], Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile, 1998, pg. 39 (our translation).
[2] Ibid.
[3] St. Josemaría recited this prayer daily at the end of his workday, and asked that those who would later succeed him at the head of Opus Dei do the same.
[4] On the relevance of Aristotle to cinema, see, among others, P. L. Cano, De Aristóteles a Woody Allen [From Aristotle to Woody Allen], Gedisa, Barcelona, 2002.
[5] Cf. A. Bazin, What Is Cinema?, vol. I, trans. Hugh Gray, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967, pg. 14.
[6] A. Llano, Segunda navegación [Second Voyage], Encuentro, Madrid, 2010, pg. 300 (our translation).
[7] St. John Paul II, Address, 1-XII-1997.
[8] Cf. Benedict XVI, General audience, 31-VIII-2011, on the “way of beauty” as a path to God.
[9] Francis, Address, 7-XII-2019.
[10] Cf. C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1961.
[11] Aristotle, Poetics, 1451b.
[12] Leo XIV, Encounter with the world of cinema, 15-XI-2025.
[13] St. John Paul II, Address, 1-XII-1997.
[14] Cf. J. Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2005.
[15] F. O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, pg. 75.
[16] “In the beauty of art, essence is appearance itself; or, to put it another way, in a work of art, depth is surface and surface is depth (…). In conventional terms, content is form and form is content,” writes J.M. Ibáñez Langlois in La belleza y el arte, chap. 5 (Rialp, Madrid, 2023, our translation). In other words: a story with artistic aspirations is one thing — where what matters lies solely within the story itself — while a story used merely as an illustration of some other message one really wants to convey is quite another.
[17] St. Josemaría, “Passionately Loving the World,” in Conversations, no. 114.