Joseph Ratzinger Watches I’m Perfect (2025)
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I’m not the biggest fan of Philippine cinema, I must
admit, but there are some locally-produced films that I really love (e.g. the Bayaniverse
trilogy). There are Filipino films, however, that are so well-thought-of by
the filmmaker(s) that, as a result, demand that we not just enjoy them but
ought to absorb its message at the existential level and have the courage to
ponder the challenge it presents to us, because it had enough guts to face what
we would normally avoid, like disease and death. I am talking in particular
about the new film, I’m Perfect, a love story starring two actors with
down syndrome, Anne Krystel Daphne Go who plays Jessica and Earl Jonathan
Amaba, who plays Jiro.
There’s a pattern that I’m noticing with many modern
Filipino films, and it is this: many of them present a message that invites us
to struggle and wrestle with the inevitable finitude of life and love.
Take, for instance, the 2023 film Instant Daddy, which is all about a
father figure fighting for his relationship with his foster child, threatened
by custody battles and sickness/loss of life. Another example is More Than
Blue (2021), a remake of a Korean movie that showcases a heart-wrenching
story about a guy who cannot take the risk of admitting that he’s in love with
his female best friend (who also has mutual feelings for him) as his way of
protecting her from future heartbreak due to him having a life-threatening
disease. Simply put: The biggest threat to our pursuit of never-ending love
is death. This forces us to ask: Is loving another person even worth it
if we will all die?
I’m Perfect puts us in a position where we have
to be conscious of this fact. As mentioned, the two lead characters who have
fallen in love with each other, Jiro and Jessica, have down syndrome (DS),
which means that the threat of death is present from the very beginning, given
that, traditionally, the life expectancy of people with DS isn’t very long,
i.e. 25 years old on average (though given progress in modern healthcare, some
are able to live to their 60s and 70s).[1]
So, from the very start of the film, DS has been the unspoken but blatantly
obvious “plot device,” so to speak, that aims to remind the audience that the
movie will most probably not have a happy ending, that this amazing love story
that defies all odds will not be able to defy mortality.
And we’re back to the original point I’m trying to
make: The biggest threat to our pursuit of never-ending love is death.
It is the one great opponent of eros, of our desire for an eternally
passionate existence, an existence that will only be completed by communion
with another person. To borrow an expression used by many today, naghahanap
tayong lahat ng forever (“We’re all looking for forever”). But this
“forever” is overcome every single time by the finitude of human existence.
This creates a fundamental problem at the very heart of being human: Our
hearts cry for eternity, but we cannot achieve it. There’s an
eternity-shaped hole in our very souls, but it’s a hole that will remain hollow
and unfulfilled because of death.
It doesn’t matter what race, religion, or tribe you
belong to. You will die. Death is the one universal destination of
everything that lives or has lived. The yearning of our hearts for a love that
doesn’t end cannot be satisfied by us because of it. This is a fundamental
feature of all men and women of all shapes and sizes. I’m perfect doesn’t
shy away from this fact, and for that, I’m grateful, because it reminds us
(even us who do not have DS) of a basic issue within all of us that calls out
for a solution. I want a love that does not end, that endures for all time,
but I cannot have it because I will die. Can someone give me a love, a
life, that lasts forever? Or, as St. Paul once put it: “Wretched man that I am! Who
will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24)
Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) powerfully
wrote about this interior cry for an eternal love that death cannot defeat in
his Introduction to Christianity. He said that
The boundless demands of eros... do in reality
give expression to a basic problem, indeed the basic problem of human
existence... love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so
to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love's
cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it
claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its
loneliness and its power for destruction.[2]
Eros, our “upward impulse…
toward what is true, good, and beautiful,”[3]
“demands infinity but cannot grant it.” This is the “basic
problem of human existence.” You know it. I know it. I’m Perfect expresses
it well. So, it seems that at the end of the day, humanity has no choice but to
take on the posture of defeat before death. It is, and will remain, the one
fundamental roadblock to our pilgrimage towards never-ending bliss. In other
words, our dream for eternal love will only be that: A dream.
But what if this dream can, and has, come
true? What if there is a love that has surpassed death and can surpass it
for us? What if there’s something, or Someone, that possesses a Love so
strong that it has crushed the powers of the grave? Wouldn’t that be the most
excellent news of all? Wouldn’t that constitute the good news – the Gospel –
that every single human being longs to hear and believe?
For Christians, the dream has, as a
matter of objective fact, come true in the resurrection of Christ! To once
again quote Ratzinger, “To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a
beautiful dream is in fact true: ‘Love is strong as death’ (Song 8:6).”[4] Once upon
a time, death was stronger than love. Nay, death was once the strongest
force upon which all that lives and breathes must submit. But now, Love is as
strong as – no, STRONGER THAN – death!
My friends, this is great news! If this
is true (and it is), then our aspirations for a never ending love affair has
been given to us already! The resurrection of Christ is, as Ratzinger says,
“the greater strength of love in the face of death.”[5]
The risen Christ is our one great and sure hope against the powers of death,
and if we are in Him, then we will rise with Him when the time comes. Recall
St. Paul’s question, which is also our question: Who will deliver me from
this body of death? The apostle immediately adds: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
(Rom 7:25) Why would St. Paul give thanks just after asking a morbid question?
Because that same morbid question has been given a definitive answer by the God
Who has power over the grave!
Hence,
the fear of death that most, if not all, of us have; the terrifying fact of
finitude that I’m Perfect is trying to make us conscious of, does not
have the final word. Therefore, we have nothing to be afraid of. As a matter of
fact, death has now been transformed as a further step toward future
resurrection and eternal life, instead of being an insurmountable problem
that prevents us from having them. Let us never fear death, my friends, “for if
we have been united with (Christ) in a death like his, we will certainly also
be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6:5) Our aspirations for a
love that doesn’t end is fulfilled by the risen God-Man Whose Love and Life is
incorruptible. The Love of the risen Jesus
Is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love
alone… he (Christ) who has love for all has established immortality for all.
That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection
is our life. (As St. Paul said)... if he has risen, then we have, too,
for then love is stronger than death… (O)ur own love left to itself, is not
sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an
unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God’s own power of
life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality.[6]
The
never-ending love affair that Jiro and Jessica wanted, that we all want, “would
have to remain an unanswered cry” if left as is. But no, it isn’t. It
has been given the ultimate solution by God, Who is “the God of the living, not
of the dead” (Mt 22:31-32). The resurrection of Jesus is this ultimate
solution. Let us cling to Him, continue hoping in Him and Him alone, so that,
when the designated time shall come, we will rise into glory like Christ before
us, and enter into never ending-bliss, where no genetic defect can threaten our
enjoyment of the love that lasts… forever.
Risen Jesus, increase our hope. Amen.
[1] Manickam, M. (2021, July 21). Down
Syndrome Life Expectancy Is Higher, But Not For Everyone.
Www.nationwidechildrens.org.
https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-education/700childrens/2021/07/down-syndrome-life-expectancy
[2] Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to
Christianity (Ignatius Press 2013,), p. 302, emphasis in the original
[3] St. John Paul II, TOB 48:1
[4] Introduction to Christianity, pp.
301-302
[5] Ibid., p. 302, emphasis added
[6] Ibid., p. 306, emphasis in the original
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