Posted by WORD Becoming, Spiritual Reflections by Fr Roderick Salazar SVD
Murder is the first word in the title.
So there is some kind of trepidation that arises.
But since it is a novel written by Agatha Christie, it must be a mystery thriller.
Add the rest of the title: ‘In the Orient Express’ and something exotic one expects to arise.
The latest movie version of the book is directed by the English actor Kenneth Branagh who also plays the detective Hercule Poirot.
Branagh also wrote the lyrics of the theme song, with music composed by Patrick Doyle.
They title their work, NEVER FORGET.
The same ten or twelve notes on a piano go up and down and up and down and up and down
until a woman’s whisper arises, soft, silken, sad, soulful but unforced, blooming into a song, a plea, a prayer:
“Please
will you come home?
Will you stay with me?
Say you’ll laugh,
Say you’ll understand
Say you’ll dance with me
Say you’ll smile that silly smile for me
Say you’ll hold me in your arms so sweet
Will you come home?
Will you come home to me
Home, my love.
We will never forget you
You will never leave
In our hearts we’ve kept you
We’ll be safe.
You’ll remember all the days of summer sun
Hold me close in dark November
Before the winter comes.
Tell me all
the things you wish for
Tell me all
that you would want to live for
When you come home
When you come home to me
Home, my love.
All the days of sorrow
Will vanish in tomorrow
You can count on me, my love
To be here
We will all be ready
Love and kindness steady
We will never forget you
You are home,
my love…”
(And the dozen up and down and up and down piano notes that had opened the song and had continued throughout though faintly, in the background, reclaim their prominence but only so they can gently fade away…)
Michelle Pfeiffer is in the cast.
It is her voice, really, that we hear, carrying the tune of this nostalgic
NEVER FORGET.
But it is more than Michelle Pfeiffer that I hear.
Remember the song of a cricket?
That I hear plus the voice of the one who said,
“A beautiful song is worth more than a thousand full barns.”
Other things I hear as well.
From within me.
And yet beyond me.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20
“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and My Father will love him, and WE will come to him and make our dwelling with him” John 14:23.
“And Moses said to the people of Israel:
‘This command which I give you today is not too wondrous or remote for you.
‘It is not in the heavens, that you should say ‘who will go up to the heavens to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?
‘Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?
NO.
The word of God is something very near you,
in your mouth, and in your heart.
Deuteronomy 30: 11-14.
God is calling me to make Him my home here and now while I live.
So when the life He has given me is done, I am fully at home with Him in heaven.
In the meantime, in this gracious time,
He invites me ever to pause and be silent in His presence.
If I have to talk, then, yes, He assures me,
“Tell Me all the things you wish for
Tell Me all that you would want to live for
But come home,
Home to Me
Home, my love.
This is what prayer is:
being at home
with God.
Indeed this is what life is all about.
But I forget.
The song reminds:
NEVER
FORGET
HOME.
This done, the movie murder mystery solved,
ace detective Hercule Poirot
alights the train.
Which, Express as it is called, speeds its way away.
To the Orient
where the sun
is seen to rise.
It is a new day.
Never forget.
HOME.
