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Although not explicitly Catholic, The Super Mario Bros. Movie illustrates some pretty powerful Catholic Teaching.
Here at Jump In Catholic Family Ministry, we want to teach parents and kids to look for truths of Catholicism present in the secular world. All good, true and beautiful things lead us to God!
Catholic Movies for Families: October
Because October 12 is the Feast Day of soon to be St. Carlos Acutis, I wanted to honor his affinity for video games and Mario and his desire to live the life God calls us to! This month's Catholic Family Movie Night is Super Mario Bros Movie (2023). It’s about two brothers who are chosen to work together and protect the world from the evil Bowser's attack and devastation.
General Teaching
On a very basic level, this movie illustrates the importance of teaming up with others to fight the good fight against evil. It also illustrates that we are all called on a journey home, home to heaven.
Sometimes that journey is scary or difficult. Sometimes we meet enemies that want to take us off course. God always sends us help in the form of holy friendships, family relationships, Mary’s intercession, and even the help of the communion of Saints!
A Very Catechetical Scene from a Secular Movie
On a more specific level, a particular scene in the movie illustrates some pretty powerful Catholic truths.
The scene I want to use to teach is the training scene (from 27:15-32:00)
At 27:15, you see Peach and Mario enter the training ground. Peach, who represents Mary in this analogy, is full of grace and goes through the training ground effortlessly. Sin slows us down and confuses us. Since she is without sin, she makes her way through the training with ease.
Peach teaches Mario about PowerUps (like mushrooms) and how they make Mario taller, stronger and even jump further.
PowerUps are like Grace
Our Catholic Church teaches us about the PowerUps of Grace. Let's take a paragraph out of Level Up: The Mom/Son Guide to Growing in Catholic Virute, which uses video game examples and language to explain Catholic teaching:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace as: “Favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and eternal life.” (CCC, 1996-1997).
The more grace we have, the better our life is! Just like the powerups in Mario, grace helps us win the game of life! Why do we need grace? Essentially, grace helps us become bigger, faster, and stronger in our spiritual lives and helps us along our journey towards heaven!
Even with PowerUps, We Still Need Practice
Back to the movie… Even though these powerups help Mario, he isn’t unstoppable. Just like Mario after eating his first mushroom, even though grace makes us better, we still need to practice being good. Another word for that is practice virtue, or habitually choosing what is good.
Mario is shown messing up hundreds of times. Each time he messes up, he learns from his mistakes, takes another mushroom, and tries again. This is our calling in life as well; when we make mistakes we should learn from our mistakes, go and get some grace from prayer and the Sacraments, and try again.
We Don’t have to Enjoy ways to receive Grace for it to be Effective.
Also notice that Mario doesn’t like mushrooms, but he eats them because he knows they make him better.
Likewise, the ways we open ourselves up to grace are not super fun all the time and some may even say boring.
Although not always enjoyable, here are some powerful ways to ask for grace:
Prayer
Sacraments
Loving others (let the Corporal and Spiritual Acts of Mercy be your guide!)
Reconciling or saying you're sorry
Asking Mary for help (Via Marian devotions like the Rosary)
We should do these things regularly even when we don't feel like it.
If at First you Don’t Succeed, Try, Try again!
Another thing to notice about this scene is that when Mario messes up, he gets another mushroom and starts again. Likewise, when we mess up and sin, the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation gives us a special grace to begin again. There is no limit to the times we can receive this sacrament. God is always ready to forgive us and give us the grace to begin again.
Peach says to Mario near the end of this scene, “We have a long journey ahead of us, mustache.”
Mary says something similar to each of us. “We have a long journey toward heaven ahead of us, dear one.” Don’t forget to ask for her help and intercession along the way toward heaven!
For the rest of the Movie:
Ask the kids to pay attention to a few things through the rest of the movie:
We are all called to go on an adventure, fighting against evil and sin along the way.
Mario is strongest when he works with Peach and Luigi and Toad
Mario is strongest when he has power ups like mushrooms and fire flowers.
Ending Prayer
At the end of the movie, ask the kids what their favorite part was and why.
Then end with this prayer: "Good and gracious God. Thank you for calling us all on the same adventure: The adventure in walking towards heaven. Help us to remember all the ways you will help us along this adventure. Give us the desire to seek PowerUps of grace. Remind us of your Mother's guidance and desire to give us grace. Keep calling us up, each time we fail. Lord in a special way, send your Holy Spirit to continue guiding us toward heaven together. Helps us to find joy, peace, and have some fun along the way. In your holy name we pray, Amen."
See other Catholic Movies for Families Blog Posts.
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