Almost thirty years ago, I saw a movie that has stayed with me ever since. The Mission, directed in 1986 by Roland Joffe, isn’t exactly the kind of film that an eleven year-old would normally be drawn to, and I’m sure there was much in this narrative about Jesuits in 18th-century South America that I didn’t fully grasp when I first watched it. But because film can be such a powerful visual medium, there were scenes that left an indelible impression on me, so that I find myself going back to them even now, decades later. One such moment occurs when Mendoza, the murderous slave trader who is seeking to change his life, comes to the end of a journey. He has made his way upriver to the Jesuit outpost where the missionary priests are ministering to the Guarani tribe. In the past, he might have traveled this arduous route in order to kidnap and sell the people who lived there. Now, he has another purpose—penance.
