The film Amadeus portrays how quickly a relationship with God can disintegrate when bound to our "religious" ways of thinking and conducted on our terms alone. Consider Antonio Salieri's pious prayer as a boy:
His prayer appears to have been answered initially with him enjoying success as the court composer in Vienna, but along comes Mozart, and everything changes. God's glory was to be celebrated all right, but it was not to be celebrated through the music of the chaste Salieri. Instead, the voice of God was to be heard through licentious Mozart, that despicable jar of clay gifted with all that Salieri longed for and more.
This he could not handle; this he had to renounce, and in so doing he was forced to renounce God himself:
The tragic irony is palpable. Through Mozart's music, Salieri was confronted with the glory of God that he longed to see celebrated, but he could not look on it in awe and wonder. All he felt was disgust and injustice. The god he thought he knew was a fraud created by the religious mind. The real God -- the God "incarnated" in the music of Mozart -- was revealed to him, and the shocking revelation led him to turn away, knowing full well what -- or rather, whom -- he was rejecting.
An unsettling God indeed.
Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God. Make me immortal. After I die, let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give You my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, Amen.
His prayer appears to have been answered initially with him enjoying success as the court composer in Vienna, but along comes Mozart, and everything changes. God's glory was to be celebrated all right, but it was not to be celebrated through the music of the chaste Salieri. Instead, the voice of God was to be heard through licentious Mozart, that despicable jar of clay gifted with all that Salieri longed for and more.
This he could not handle; this he had to renounce, and in so doing he was forced to renounce God himself:
From now on we are enemies, You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature on earth as far as I am able.
The tragic irony is palpable. Through Mozart's music, Salieri was confronted with the glory of God that he longed to see celebrated, but he could not look on it in awe and wonder. All he felt was disgust and injustice. The god he thought he knew was a fraud created by the religious mind. The real God -- the God "incarnated" in the music of Mozart -- was revealed to him, and the shocking revelation led him to turn away, knowing full well what -- or rather, whom -- he was rejecting.
An unsettling God indeed.
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