In the French film, “The Innocents,” based on a true story (subtitles required), a convent of Catholic nuns, helpful to the poor and wounded, has survived post war Poland. But not without tragic consequences.
As the war was ending Russian soldiers entered the convent and for days brutally raped the nuns both young and old. (This is not seen but recounted)
Several of the nuns became pregnant and they were left with unbearable decisions. The events had to be kept secret or else the nuns would be banned from the Church and the convent closed.
When the first victim went into labor, a young Red Cross physician, Mathilde, is secretly brought to the convent.
She is shocked by what she is told happened. And after delivering the first child she says she cannot return. She has orders to treat wounded soldiers in a nearby camp. The convent, she says, will have to bring in a team of doctors.
She is told that was impossible. And so, overcome by the nun’s dilemma, she agrees to help.
The convent’s stern Mother Abbess, who has worked to get the babies to waiting families, hesitates to let Mathilde return for fear of exposing their secret, but then realizes she has no choice.
As the deliveries begin one after another, Mathilde begins an important friendship with Sister Maria. A quiet, somber nun, but a woman of deep compassion.
At one point Maria breaks down in the presence of Mathilde and talks about the horrific ordeal of rape by Russian soldiers.
She said the rapes had created untold inner conflict within the women. Their vow of chastity had been violated and they believed they were irreparably damaged in the eyes of God and the Church.
Mathilde asked if any of the nuns lost their faith because of what had happened to them.
Maria says, “You know faith, at first, you’re like a child holding your father’s hand, feeling safe. Then a time comes—and I think it always comes—when your father lets go. You’re lost, alone in the dark. You cry out, but no one answers. Even if you prepare for it, you’re caught unawares. It hits you right in the heart.”
She pauses and looks out a window. Then she says, “That’s the cross we bear. Behind all the joy lies the cross.”
Mathilde is not much of a believer. She often sleeps with one of the doctors. She breaks rules if she thinks it will save a patient’s life.
But she keeps going back to the convent even though it risks both her career and her life. Her deep humanity fuels her desire to aid the nuns who have been so tortured and tormented.
She is gentle and kind with each girl and they adore her.
At the end of their conversation there is a long pause and Maria, trying painfully to smile says to Mathilde, “Faith is twenty-four hours of doubt and one minute of hope.”
In the end, the young doctor Mathilde devises an ingenious plan so the mothers can keep their babies and raise them in the convent. It is the result of enormous love on her part. And the little ones bring life into a place filled with gloom and pain.
Months later, Sister Maria writes to Mathilde: “Dear Mathilde, The dark clouds have moved on. The sun shines brightly in our sky. And you are in our hearts. Perhaps other wars will come. Other dangers threaten us. It will soon be harder to write each other. But what fate awaits us, I feel ready to face it. I know, even if it makes you laugh, that God sent you. May He accompany you in your trials and may you always be joyful. Yours, Maria.”
In spite of excruciating inner pain and the physical horrors that we can perpetrate on others, the film is a beautiful testament of the healing power of the human spirit.
“Behind all the joy lies the cross.”
Until we learn that, the lesson of self-sacrifice and love, and the hard path it requires, our religious faith, and all of our loving Jesus posturing, means nothing.
And perhaps, as Mathilde demonstrated, little or no religion, cannot stop the progress of the human heart and the love it is able to share.
(c) 2020 Timothy Moody
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