Will Hunting knew the theory; he had the words, but not the experience. The first disciples of Jesus had the opposite problem.
by Fr. Geoffrey Plant
The 1997 movie Good Will Hunting starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams is the story of twenty-year-old Will Hunting. Will Hunting is a mathematical genius who works as a janitor at MIT. Will gets into a fight, and heβs arrested after attacking a responding police officer. As a result he faces the prospect of imprisonment. If he wants to avoid jail the condition is that he must attend psychotherapy sessions. He agrees, but he treats his therapists with disdain, and as a result they refuse to work with him.
Things are different with Sean Maguire, the role played by Robin Williams. Maguire is able to breach Willβs defence mechanisms. In one memorable scene Maguire tells Will that what he knows comes out of books, not lived experience.
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Lifeβs work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldnβt tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. Youβve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.
If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but youβve never been in one. Youβve never held your best friendβs head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help.
And if I asked you about love Iβd get a sonnet, but youβve never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. And you wouldnβt know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and youβve never dared to love anything that much.
Will Hunting knew the theory; he had the words, but not the experience. The first disciples of Jesus had the opposite problem. They had the experience, but they struggled to put that experience into words. How could they express the mystery that we celebrate today, the mystery of Christβs transition – a transition between that period during which Jesus of Nazareth was physically present, and the time that followed when he was no longer physically with them? The celebration of the Ascension is a way of talking about Jesusβ physical separation from the human story. But words struggle to describe what the disciples had experienced.
