Let Me Know Myself
One of the things I love about acting is that the quest to enter deeply into the psyche and mind of a given character ultimately becomes a journey into the depths of myself. I have to identify something within myself to which I can relate and use to make this character truly my own. In my preparations for my role of Matt Poncelet in Dead Man Walking, a rapist and murderer sentenced to be executed, I have been struggling to find that piece of myself that lives in him. There have been some superficial things that have helped - those feelings that the world is against me that I have felt in the past, feeling like everything is crashing down, and not wanting to let others into the depths of my pain - well, I suppose those aren't superficial, but it's just that anything I have experienced like that pales in comparison to what Matt has felt, and so while they help me a little bit in my character development, they haven't allowed me to become Matt Poncelet, which is what I really seek.
Today I noticed something, though, with which I think I can really connect. In the first three quarters or so of the play, Matt is very unwilling to let Sister Helen meet him in his heart. The whole dance between the two is her trying to get to his heart, because that is where redemption is experienced, and him trying to keep her in his head, where he can intellectualize everything. Up till today I had always seen this as simply trying to keep her from knowing what really lies within him. He denies having done anything, and I've always seen this as simply Matt wanting to manipulate whomever he can that can help save his life. Today I realized that it's not just Sister Helen that he is trying to keep out of his heart - it is Matt himself who is terrified to go there. Matt's denial of what he has done is not just some show that he puts on while secretly snickering because he's pulling a fast one on Sister and everyone else. Matt's denial is first and foremost to himself. To accept what he has done - brutally raped an innocent young girl and executed her boyfriend in cold blood - will require Matt to see himself as he truly is - a sociopathic monster. He cannot - no, I cannot accept this, and so I will not allow myself into my heart where the truth is buried deep within. This is the real challenge, because if I do not enter into this heart of self-knowledge, if I do not allow myself to see me as I really am and for what I really am, then I cannot allow Christ into that pain and into that ugliness so that He can heal me.
I am reminded of Saint Paul's exhortation to fill in what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Though he meant this perhaps in a different context, it applies here, as well. We all have ugliness, pain, sufferings, sins, that we simply do not wish to face. Christ died to heal all of that. But while His death made healing and salvation available to all, not all experience it. For many, it is because we simply do not allow Him to fulfill His purpose. We reject His death, not because we actively desire to reject Him, but because we do not wish to experience the pain that goes along with deep self-knowledge.
Saint Augustine used to pray, "Lord, let me know myself, let me know You." This too takes on new meaning in light of this understanding. By searching myself and seeing myself and knowing myself as I truly am, only then can I fully appreciate the depths of God's mercy, and only then can I experience the fullness of God's healing. Maybe this could even explain Purgatory - every depth of knowledge that we refuse to allow Christ to heal in this life, when we die we have no choice but to see ourselves as we truly are; there can be no more hiding, and those sins and those pains and those sufferings that we would not allow Christ to purge from us here must be purged from our soul so that we can experience the fullness of life and the glory of God, without impediment.
In my own life, I go through glimpses of self-awareness, but I know that there are recesses into which I still refuse to allow God to enter. In the scene of the play when Matt finally experiences redemption, when I admit finally to what I have done and the tears of purification gush from my eyes, Sister Helen says something so beautiful to me. She says, "Oh Matt. There are spaces of sorrow that only God can touch. You did a terrible thing, Matt, a terrible thing. But you have a dignity now and no one can take that from you. You are a son of God, Matthew Poncelet." We are indeed God's children, and He is a loving Father Who has the true power to heal all of our pain and forgive all of our sins, but only if we let Him in, only if we face who we truly are and see ourselves through both the justice and the mercy of Christ.