Star Trek: The Motion Picture Part III

 I just finished the Star Trek novel The Lost Years.

It's about the Enterprise crew's time between the end of the original series (ST:TOS) and the first movie.

Since it was a while since I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I watched it again.

In 2014, I wrote two blog posts about the movie.

The posts came down to the longing for God along the Augustinian line (no rest for my soul until it rests in Thee, God) and baptism.

Upon re-watching the movie, it actually seems more like the sacrament of the Eucharist.

V'ger wants to touch the creator, who is human.

In reality, we touch and become one in a real, physical way with the One True God through Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity physically joins with us in a real and spiritual sense, since he is truly and substantially present in the form of bread and wine that enters our body. He joins with our body.

We don't join together with a halo or energy around us like Decker and V'ger's probe did. However, our lives are never the same.

How I Live Now Part III

So, in the last post, the swimming scene in the movie How I Live Now was explored. ***Spoilers Alert!*** In this post, the wedding scene between Daisy and Eddie will be looked at.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirror_of_erised/9627836862/meta/

If you saw the movie, you may be wondering when the wedding scene was. Well, it was the scene where the marital relations take place between Daisy and Eddie.

Before any religion or society, marriage was naturally taking place all the time. No vows were taken, just two people who consummated a marriage and usually raised their children (or adopted children) for life were living it out. In this movie with "no rules" (as the kids at the house said), the natural law rule of marriage still took place. From that intimate scene on, Daisy and Eddie were married, in what is called a de facto marriage, or natural marriage.

As was said in the first post on this movie, I saw this movie as an allegory of the Christian mysteries. This particular scene between Eddie and Daisy can be seen as the marriage between Jesus and the Church. After recognizing the beauty in Christ, whom Eddie represents, and then the life changing act of letting go in the swimming scene (baptism), Daisy who represents a Christian or the whole Church is nourished in the relationship with Eddie. She desires this nourishment wholeheartedly.

For Christians, when Jesus gave his entire self, his entire life up for the Church (those who where baptized in the "bath of water"), he was mysteriously marrying the same Church. When we receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist at mass, we remember and participate in this saving act. We desire to be intimately joined to Christ.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33

Contraception Stifles Grace

In my view, the video below (from the Vortex with Michael Voris) shows the importance of the Catholic Church's teaching for chaste marital relations without contraception. Contraception stifles grace since it doesn't allow for the married couple to participate in God's Will of creation in their vocation. Stifling God's Will potentially, if not necessarily stifles His Grace.

I thought that marriage showed how Christ's love for His Church was present, but the oneness between Christ and His Church was really preeminent to marital love. In other words, if there was no fall, there would be a perfect oneness between Christ and His Church; it's just that the fall caused humanity to have to be re-grafted onto Christ through baptism, or through the remission of sin/reconciliation with God.

WARNING: the subject below may be too graphic for sensitive readers.

Finally, I thought of a few analogies that went with the use of contraption vis-a-vis receiving Holy Eucharist (stay tuned for a question for you):
(1) Condoms: putting a barrier around Holy Eucharist
(2) The Pill: taking a drug that put up a chemical barrier on the absorbing wall of stomach/intestines/esophagus so that Holy Eucharist could not become one with the Communicant
(3) Diaphragm: Putting a hollow balloon in one's mouth

What analogy do you think works for homosexual relations? Please comment below.