‘Jesus Thirsts’ tackles the immensity of the Eucharist

One thing I remember about first grappling as a young evangelical with the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist was not just how different the Catholic teaching was from the symbolic communion ritual that I had grown up with, but how much larger the whole topic loomed in Catholic thought, praxis, and imagination. It’s not that I thought of Communion as unimportant! For many of my formative years we were active members of an Episcopal church, where the Eucharist was the culmination of Sunday worship. The solemnity and reverence of the liturgy went deep in me, and I loved the Eucharist—but in my mind it was important like a wedding ring, an important symbol. I was gobsmacked by Flannery O’Connor’s much-quoted “I fit’s just a symbol, the hell with it.” I didn’t understand it, but I knew I wanted to.

Documentarian Tim Moriarty’s Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist comes at the mystery of the Eucharist in a number of ways. There are vignettes spotlighting the role of the Eucharist in communities around the world, from a Beaumont, Texas prison to a village in Uganda to young people at a SEEK conference hosted by FOCUS (the Fellowship of Catholic University Students).There are wordless dramatizations of relevant Bible episodes, from Abraham’s encounter with Melchizedek and the first Passover in Egypt to the Last Supper and the Emmaus road encounter, accompanied by commentary from Catholic scholars, clergy, and other commentators. A pair of segments bring us to two Franciscan communities—one of friars who tend a vineyard in Slovenia and make wine for communion, and one of sisters in Bosnia and Herzegovina who make hosts. There are Eucharistic processions, an exploration of Eucharistic miracles, and even a graphical segment aiming to clarify the philosophical categories behind the language and concept of transubstantiation.

If a single impression arises from this diversity of material, it might be simply this: the immensity of the Eucharist, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church, following the Second Vatican Council, calls “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). Whatever beliefs viewers may bring to this film, should they not accept Catholic teaching regarding the Eucharist, they will at least not mistake the point of difference for a minor one.

From the opening, the immensity of the Eucharist is evoked, among other ways, in the film’s exploration of the Church’s universality. The first words we hear, after a prologue featuring archival narration by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, are in Slovenian; the images are of the vineyard and winery run by the Friars Minor Conventional in Ptuj, Slovenia’s oldest recorded town. Other segments are in Croatian, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swahili, Vietnamese – eight languages in all, according to the director, in segments shot in seven countries on three continents. Too many international faith-based documentaries I’ve reviewed have been marred for American consumption by English dubbing. Jesus Thirsts uses subtitles, preserving the integrity of each subject’s presence and identity with their voice and the culture that stands behind it. Evangelization is inseparable from the credibility of the evangelist, and credibility involves the whole of a person, including their voice.

Jesus Thirsts emerged from efforts related to the ongoing, three-year National Eucharistic Revival sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops– in particular, from a series of conferences, called “I Thirst,” organized by Deacon Steve Greco, founder of Spirit Filled Hearts Ministry and director of Evangelization and Faith Formation at the Diocese of Orange. Evangelist Jim Wahlberg (brother of Mark Wahlberg), who has spoken at “I Thirst” Events, was also, with Moriarty, a producer on Mother Teresa: No Greater Love.

A drama is only as good as its antagonist, and here—as with the Eucharistic revival itself—the antagonist is the headline-making ignorance about, and lack of faith in, the Eucharist, as highlighted by a much-discussed2019 Pew Research poll, which found that just one-third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. More recent polls, conducted by CARA (the Center for Applied Research at Georgetown University) and Vinea Research, have come to more encouraging conclusions, but even significantly different ratios are differences in degree, and the need for evangelization, catechesis, and renewal remains.

Along with Deacon Greco and Wahlberg (an ex-con here seen speaking to prisoners), the long list of contributors includes Scott Hahn of Franciscan University; Magis Center founder Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ; FOCUS founder Curtis Martin; author and speaker Teresa Tomeo; and Noelle Mering of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Executive producer and filmmaker Eduardo Verástegui has the most visually striking talking-head segments, with Saint Peter’s Basilica as a backdrop.

Perhaps the most memorable contributions are in the segment on Venerable Cardinal Francis-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận, who spent 13 years in a Vietnamese communist reeducation camp, including nine years in solitary confinement. Through interviews with his sister Elisabeth and others, along with lowkey reenactments and archival footage of Cardinal Văn Thuận himself, Jesus Thirsts relates how, during his long imprisonment, family members and others were able to smuggle bread and wine to him to celebrate secret Masses. In brief archival interview clips, Cardinal Văn Thuận credits the Eucharist with his endurance, and movingly relates how he was able to tell astonished guards that, despite his long and brutal suffering, he loved them very much.

Cardinal Văn Thuận is the film’s most extreme example of the drama of the Eucharist in the lives of people who are suffering, poor, or marginal – a theme seen also in the Beaumont prison and in Uganda. These are among the film’s best sequences; I would have liked to see Jesus Thirsts take this one step further. “The Eucharist commits us to the poor,” the Catechism teaches. “To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren” (CCC 1398) St. John Chrysostom forcefully declared, “Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Do not neglect him when he is naked; do not, while you honor him here with silken garments, neglect him perishing outside of cold and nakedness. For he that said, ‘This is my body,’ and by his word confirmed the fact, also said, ‘You saw me hungry, and you did not feed me’” (Homily 50 on Matthew).
Bishop Robert Barron (briefly seen in Jesus Thirsts at the 2019 bishops’ meeting) recently proposed that “the higher you go liturgically, the lower you should go in service of the poor. “Jesus Thirsts goes quite high liturgically; the liturgies showcased tend to be pull-out-the-stops celebrations with incense, elaborately embroidered vestments, servers in cassocks and surplices, etc. (They are also celebrated according to the current liturgical books, with celebrants facing ad populum, etc.; the TLM or Traditional Latin Mass is glimpsed only in brief archival footage. Eastern Divine Liturgies, alas, are not shown.) Jesus Thirsts highlights spiritual service to the poor; its treatment would be richer if it were meaningfully connected to corporal works of mercy.

Jesus Thirsts takes on an enormous subject – too enormous, surely, for any90-minute film – and covers a lot of material well. For viewers who know enough about the Eucharist to know that they’d like to know more, including devout Catholics, not-so-devout Catholics, and Catholic-curious Protestants, it will be 90 minutes well spent.


“Revealing a truth that stops people in their tracks”: Interview with Jesus Thirsts director Tim Moriarty
By Deacon Steven D. Greydanus Special Contributor 
 
Tim Moriarty is the director, cowriter, and producer of Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist; he’s also the founder and executive director of Castletown Media, the production company behind Mother Teresa: No Greater Love. You might recognize him from his recur-ring role on the supernatural drama series Manifestor his appearances on shows like Blue Bloods and House of Cards. As a documentarian, Moriarty’s directorial works include Enduring Faith: The Story of Native American Catholics; The Field Afar: The Life of Fr. Vincent Capodanno; and Heart of a Missionary, about Bless-ed Pauline Gianicolo. Moriarty earned a Master’s in philosophy at Boston College and a Master of Fine Arts in acting from Louisiana State University. He spoke to me recently via phone about Jesus Thirsts. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. For viewing information for Jesus Thirsts, see jesusthirstsfilm.com.
 
You’ve directed a number of Catholic-themed documentaries, on subjects from Native American Catholics to Blessed Pauline Gianicolo and Marine Corps chaplain Vincent Capodanno. The Holy Eucharist, though, isa different kind of subject!
Yes – in fact, it was kind of terrifying to take it on, for a number of reasons! How do you possibly do justice to the subject? How do you create a film around a theological reality? It’s not like a biography or a current event.
 
Can you talk at all about how you did approach selection of materials, structuring the film, and so forth?
The first way in was the road to Emmaus story [in Luke 24]. It seemed to reflect where we are today in the Church: these disciples walking away from Jerusalem, dejected, in desolation. Then Je-sus meets them, and goes back and opens up the scriptures to them, and then their hearts start to burn within them. And then at the breaking of the bread, their eyes are opened.
We needed to start with where we are, which is some of the disturbing statistics from the [2019] Pew Research study. There have been subsequent studies, but that’s where we were when we started the film, and the study that the bishops responded to—the impetus for the Eucharistic revival. So we wanted to start with: Where are we as a culture, and why is it so hard to believe now? And then we wanted to follow that trajectory that Jesus took, to open up the scriptures. A second thought was, in terms of the best way to evangelize, if you’re looking at the prism of the three transcendentals – the true, the good, the beautiful – it’s probably best to start with the beautiful. We wanted the film to be beautiful, to have an aesthetic quality that could draw people in. We also wanted it to be not just a pure catechetical piece. Interspersed with the scriptural and theological roots of the Eucharist, we wanted to show stories of people from around the world who represent the universal nature of the Church.

So you wanted to begin with beauty. Is there a particular sequence that you are especially proud of in terms of visual power?
It’s a good question. I think, for me, the prison scene in Beaumont, Texas. There’s a way in which the beauty and power of the Eucharist is most manifest when human beings are brought to the lowest, where there’s utter humility. You see the devotion the prisoners show in receiving Christ. There’s imagery that’s much more beautiful in the vineyard and various other places. But there’s something in that sequence that I find moving and humbling: the deep gratitude and peace these men have as they receive Christ.
 
I thought one of the more striking shots was in the Beaumont sequence, where we see a prisoner with his face in his tattooed hands and a rosary hanging from his hands.
Yeah. There’s a Hispanic prisoner we interviewed who says something like, “Many people here pray: Lord, take me out of here. My prayer is: Do what you will with me.” Just, wow.
 
You also mentioned the Emmaus road segment being a way into the film. I thought that tied into two of the more notable cinematic moments in the film, one being the moment of the two disciples’ enlightenment, depicted through a rapid flash of im-ages of Jesus’ life, ministry, crucifix-ion. And later in the film you intercut between images of the Emmaus road and Eucharistic processions, which I thought was also very effective—like we’re on the same journey.
Yeah. That was the sense of one of the interviews we did with Father Spitzer. He talks a lot about the relationship be-tween sacred time and temporal time, and how the Eucharist is this breaking of the eternal into the temporal. The use of images where we go back and forward intime, from all parts of the world, was an attempt to convey that sense.
 
After the prologue, your film opens in Slovenia, in the vineyard operated by the Franciscans. There’s the sequence in Uganda with people speaking Swahili. There’s Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese ... How many countries and languages did you shoot in?
There were seven countries in three continents. I’d have to go back and count all the languages—let me get back to you on that! But yeah, we wanted to show the rich diversity of the Church.
 
You did stay, I think, entirely in the Latin tradition. Was there any thought or discussion about engaging the Divine Liturgy in the Eastern churches?
It’s true, and frankly we should have done so – especially because many members of my team actually grew up in that tradition. So that’s a good thing to note that was omitted, unfortunately.
 
Other than that, is there any other subject or sequence, something that you wanted to do that never happened?
One thing I would have loved to do would be to track a journey for some-body who’s totally on the outside and get a sense of inviting them in. We see a little bit of it with the Sisters of Life talking about a young girl who comes in and doesn’t know what prayer is! How do you awaken that in somebody who doesn’t have it? It’s akin to somebody who has no appreciation of music and you play Mozart. How do you create conditions for God to work and open up a person’s spiritual eyes? That’s something we’ve been thinking about.
 
As an actor on shows like Blue Bloods, Luke Cage, and Manifest, you have a lot of experience in the world of fiction. Do you have a preference between fiction and nonfiction?
Is Catholic-themed fiction an area where you might be interested inworking in the future? I love both for different reasons. Documentaries can be powerful, both in terms of the journalistic approach and the way you can reveal a slice of life through powerful interviews, to really see a flesh-and-blood person. Fiction can be truer than true, in a funny way. We’re very interested in both at Castletown.
I think there’s a renaissance happening in the Catholic world of film. As the mainstream is dissolving, there are a lot of new opportunities to share stories that are grounded and rooted in a Catholic worldview. I think that the era of Catholic content being somewhat subpar is falling to the wayside. Catholic art needs to be Catholic from the root, to be the best art out there. Art is ultimately about revealing a truth that stops people in their tracks, that changes their life. That’s the kind of work that we want to be engaged in.
 
Steven D. Greydanus, a deacon for the Archdiocese of Newark, has been writing about film since 2000, when he created Decent Films, for film appreciation and criticism informed by Catholic faith. For 10 years he co-hosted the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television, has appeared frequently on Catholic radio and written for a number of Catholic outlets