Avengers Assemble:Our Need for Heroes

Image from Marvel

By the time you read this post, The Avengers, the new Marvel movie based on the comic book by the same name, will have premiered throughout the U.S. It has already been released to large crowds in Europe. Our daughter Tiffany, who is in Budapest working for Campus Crusade, bragged last week on Facebook how she had gotten to see the movie before us. My lame response was that at least we could get good Mexican food any day we wanted.

Growing up I was a big fan of The Avengers because Captain America was the leader of the team. I don't know if it was the red, white and blue uniform or the shield, but I wanted to be him. I still own several of his comic books and a few t-shirts too. Most of us grew up dreaming of being heroes, idolizing them in cartoons, comic books and movies. We are wired to seek out heroes. The ancient Greeks had the stories of Odysseus and Jason and the Argonauts. We see heroes portrayed throughout the literature crossing over cultures and time. In fact, Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, described this recurring theme as the monomyth. He summarized the monomtyth in his best known work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces as "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

As I was doing the research for this post, I couldn't help think that these are all types reflecting the thirst for THE hero, the God-Man - Jesus Christ. All year, as I have struggled through my studies in the Ave Maria University IPT program, I have kept coming back to St. Augustine's famous line from his Confessions: "Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in You." I think this may also point to one of the reasons that we have the Communion of Saints. They are our spiritual heroes. Unlike the super-heroes of comic books, we can be like them by aligning our lives with the will of God.

I can't go see The Avengers this weekend because I have my final classes for the IPT. Stacey and I are going to try and see it next week and hopefully I can write a review then. Steven Greydanus who writes for the National Catholic Register and Decentfilms has written a great review of the movie already.

If you liked this, you might be interested in reading these:

Catholic Views on Harry Potter
The Hunger Games: Advice for Catholic Parents