Free Republic

We do not generally celebrate the birthdays of saints. We celebrate the date of their deaths, because how we end our lives is more important than how we begin them. However, St. John the Baptist is one of the two exceptions to this rule. We celebrate both the conception and the birth of St. John as well as the Theotokos, because these two people are the holiest of the saints. St. John was, we are told in the Gospels, filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb (Luke 1:15), and so he was a great saint,...

Today being Palm Sunday prompts me to pick a film based(very loosely) on a story from the Gospels. Despite some glaring inaccuracies(the most notorious being the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod Antipas in an effort to SAVE rather than to behead John the Baptist. Not how it happens in the book, folks), this film manages to entertain thanks to the villainy of Charles Laughton and Judith Anderson and, most of all, the loveliness of Rita Hayworth. I also like how instead of "THE END" appearing at the finale, the film shows the Sermon on the Mount with "this was...