No, Ben Hur wasn't in PJs, but I was. I first saw the movie Ben Hur when my family and I all piled into our 1961 Ford Country Squire station wagon and went off to the local drive-in. This was the Paleolithic Age when if you wanted to see a movie, you actually had to go to the movies. And certain “big” movies that had experienced equally big success were periodically rereleased to movie theaters.

When one of the movies had a particular theme to it, as Ben Hur did, the movie studios would time the release accordingly. So the Holy Week theme that permeates this film always seemed to find the rerelease scheduled around March or April every couple of years.

I was excited, older brothers and sisters who saw the movie on the previous rerelease told amazing stories of sea battles and a rather cool chariot race where guys got run over by horses. I couldn't wait.

But the catch was my mother made me wear my pajamas as I hunkered down on the folded-down seat in the back of the station wagon among sleeping bags, pillows and homemade popcorn. They thought I couldn't stay awake for a measly three-hour movie. They thought I was a baby. They thought right.

I didn't make it to the chariot race, I didn't make it to the sea battle, I didn't even last long enough to witness the first bit of misfortune befall poor Ben Hur. Disappointed but not undaunted, I vowed, pajamas or not, to stay awake the next year when Ben Hur came out to the theaters. It was a rite of passage out of my childhood when I finally succeeded in watching this movie in its entirety.

Just as my father was able to complain that I had no clue how difficult his childhood was compared to mine, I now can follow that grand tradition and scold my own children on their cream-puff existences. Granted, my dad was talking about living through the Great Depression and World War II, and all I had to complain about was the lack of video technology that made it necessary to go out in a 1961 Ford Country Squire station wagon in less-than-fashionable sleepwear just to see a movie.

A Tale of the Christ

Our response as a nation to serious juvenile crime is to treat them like adult offenders. For example, my native state, North Carolina, has lowered the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults to 13. Oklahoma has done the same. Tennessee has gone a step further by removing entirely the age limit for juveniles accused of serious crimes. When it comes to executing juveniles, Texas leads the way.

Through the marvels of modern technology, Ben Hur is no longer an elusive piece of movie magic that comes and goes through the mists of time and the whim of the marketing guy at MGM. There used to be an old saying that the making of religious epics like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandmentsconsisted of Jewish studio moguls making movies based on Catholic theology for Protestant audiences. Hey, they didn't call it the Golden Age for nothing.

Although Ben Hur fits that category to a tee, it would be a rush to judgment to dismiss it as a piece of overproduced, heavy-handed filmmaking.

First and foremost, Ben Hur is a great story, the proof of which is found in the fact that Ben Hur has never been out of print since its first publication in 1880. Three movie versions have been made, with the 1959 version being one that has held sway over me ever since I fought off those heavy eyelids in the back of the station wagon.

The subtitle to Ben Hur is “A Tale of the Christ” and, of course, as anyone who has read the book or seen the movie knows, Jesus is the fulcrum upon whom the entire story hinges. But because Ben Hur doesn't end with the victory of Easter but rather the “defeat” of Cavalry, I have always found it to be especially moving during Holy Week.

Good Friday itself has had a special, for lack of a better word, allure to me.

I come to this honestly as I was fortunate enough to be born into a family that took the faith to heart and subsequently all of the beautiful road maps the Church laid out to guide us through this vale of tears.

At the risk of sounding even more like my father, things just aren't the way they used to be and unfortunately this includes the way we worship as Catholics. Good Friday used to be a lot more solemn than it is now. We weren't allowed to go out and play, to watch television or have any fun at all. Of course we complained, but it certainly made an impression on me and the paschal memory of those long-ago days echoes in my mind as I witness the cacophony of nonobservance Good Friday is heir to today.

So in my own feeble attempt to reclaim some sense of ritual and solemnity, and with the help of Charleton Heston, I initiated a Good Friday custom I hope will continue for some time to come. It starts with noon Stations of the Cross. The drama plays out, station by station, to a plaintive lament. This must be the Irish in me, but there is something so appealing in the “defeat” that is Good Friday — I would like to hope it's a feeling born out of the knowledge of what is to come on Easter.

After stations, my family and I return home.

We try to keep things quiet. No television, no music — just quiet. Then, at 3 o'clock we disconnect the phone. The television goes on and the DVD of Ben Hur goes in.

We have our one meal of the day of clam chowder and sourdough bread in front of the television and watch the “Tale of the Christ” unfold, again, before us. The movie still works. It has plenty of Roman soldiers for my 10-year-old and a satisfactory body count during the epic sea battle. For my 12-year-old it has Jesus being crucified in an artistic style that remains gripping, powerful and not a little painful to watch. The 6-year-old falls asleep on the couch, so we'll have to wait for her input in another couple of years.

Good Friday DVD

The use of art to tell a story about God is as old as art itself. Pope John Paul II, has seen the potential for great good that can be achieved through art.

In my own little way, and via the notso-highbrow method of a Hollywood epic, I would like to think I am building some sense of solemnity for Good Friday. In his 1999 letter to artists, John Paul stated, “But for everyone, believers or not, the works of art inspired by Scripture remain a reflection of the unfathomable mystery which engulfs and inhabits the world.”

As I have watched my children watch Ben Hur, I think I understand what the Holy Father was saying. The truth will out. Ben Hur, in its own Hollywood epic way, shows how Christ pierces through the hardest of hearts and how death on a cross equals victory, not defeat.

It's a message I hope with all my heart my 21st-century, DVD-watching children embrace as much as that pajama-wearing little boy in the back of a 1961 Ford Country Squire station wagon did.

Robert Brennan is a television writer in Los Angeles.