Monday, December 29, 2008

A Great Movie For Epiphany



Well, as some of my dear friends have admitted to taking down Christmas all ready..I still think you can celebrate Epiphany in many ways.
I wanted to refer you to an old movie that some watch as a Christmas flick but which is really quite good for January 6th. It's called "The Fourth Wise Man".

I am not a big Martin Sheen fan, but the movie is pretty inspirational. I don't think it's a good one for preschool or younger just because of the heavy content of the heart wrenching story. It was originally a book by Henry VanDyke written near 1896. We have a copy but I think it may be a hard one to find. The movie follows the storyline of the book.
Janice Harayda says in her short one minute book review of the story:

"Van Dyke invents a fourth wise man, Artaban, who trades his belongings for gifts for “the promised one” foretold by prophets: a sapphire, a ruby and a pearl. Artaban plans to give the jewels to the infant after meeting up with his companions Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, who have gold, frankincense and myrrh. But he misses the connection after he stops to nurse a dying man, and later on, he parts with his jewels. He uses the ruby to ransom a child whom King Herod had ordered slain and the pearl to free a girl about to be sold into slavery.


Artaban believes he has missed all opportunities to meet the promised one until, near the end of his 33 years, he reaches Jerusalem just before the Crucifixion. There he realizes that his search has ended when he hears a faint voice saying: “Verily I say unto thee, Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”

The move has been given the dove award for family friendliness as well.



5 comments:

Gombojav Tribe said...

We own this movie and watch it every Epiphany since I was a child. I don't really remember going a year without it!

Tricia said...

The movie sounds good. I will look for it on netflixs.

Kristen Borland said...

yeah, i thought about you when i hauled our deader-than-a-doorknob-barely-made-it-through-Christmas tree outside. i don't plan on saying good-bye to Christmas-time (Epiphany), but i will NOT have that in my house anymore. i tell ya, it was SO pathetic looking. i had to take action!

Tony Escarzaga said...

I love that movie. It surprised me when I saw it later in life (we watched it all the time when I was young) that it was a made-for-TV movie.

I need to see if I can find it again. It was on VHS last time I saw it.

Alicia said...

Hey Tony! Thanks for coming by! I see you blog too, I'll have to check it out. I'ts been fun to find long lost TMI buddies:).
Yeah, the movie is on Netflix! I just requested it myself, so that means it is on DVD.