In my family, I am the only one who practices the Faith.  If I broaden that definition to extended family, there are some aunts, uncles, and cousins who still make it to Mass.  If that is the end all, be all, for keeping the religion, then the numbers are a little higher.  Further, I can only speak to my own spirituality.  I pray that my relations who are not practicing in any form have some belief in God.  I say this because today’s film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2012), henceforth simply The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, makes an important observation along these lines: we have nothing if not belief.  The context in the film is slightly different, but the spirit is the same.  The Bible backs this up in several places, saying that everything we have, no matter the quantity, amounts to nothing without God.  The climax of today’s film also lends credence to this idea since Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is the analog to God in the story.

We see the exterior of one of God’s houses in London at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  World War II is still raging, but two of the Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell), have gone to the United States with their parents.  For reasons I can only imagine, they leave the younger two, Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley), behind in England to live with their aunt and uncle.  The uncle literally hides behind a newspaper and grumbles.  It is down to their know-it-all, no-nonsense cousin, Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter), to voice his annoying concerns.  Edmund wants to beat the younger boy up, but Lucy stays her brother’s hand.  Instead, they listen to him as he complains in their room.  During the row, Lucy notices the seascape painting in their room has suddenly produced a ship that looks like it came from Narnia.  Before long, their quarters are filling with water and they are deposited in the middle of a Narnian sea.  Luckily, the title ship is within range and it belongs to King Caspian X (Ben Barnes), ruler of the seafaring land of Telmarine.  While an astonished Eustace eventually faints when he encounters several talking animals, Edmund and Lucy are used to this and inquire as to why Caspian has summoned them.  As it turns out, it was not the Telmarine monarch who brought them to Narnia, though we are never told the purpose for their appearance.  What Caspian tells them is that he is on a mission to find the seven missing lords of his kingdom, and he is following in their route across the waves.  They had been sent to investigate reports of strange goings-on but never returned.  The first island they come to suggests that something is amiss.  They find a largely deserted port town, and those left are cowering in fear.  This is because the population has been taken over by slave traders, who capture Caspian, Edmund, Eustace, and Lucy.  Caspian and Edmund are jailed separately, and they happen to share a cell with the first of the missing lords, Lord Bern (Terry Norris).  Lord Bern explains as Caspian and Edmund watch a great green mist approaches the harbor into which a boat full of locals has been floated.  The people in the dinghy are surrounded by the emerald gas and disappear as it dissipates, a sacrifice to an evil force gathering in the east at the edge of the world.  Once Caspian’s crew rescues them, it is decided that they should sail in that direction.  Doing so brings them to another island, this one inhabited by the Dufflepuds, a race of one-legged humanoids who are also invisible.  They cannot be seen because they have had a spell cast on them by a wizard named Caskian (Bille Brown).  Lucy meets him when she is forced by the Dufflepuds to retrieve his book of spells.  Instead, she rematerializes everything using the tome’s magic.  Once all is revealed, Corkian lays out what must be done to stop this mysterious evil.  They are to gather all the swords of the seven Telmarine lords who have been lost, though, fortunately, they have one of them thanks to their encounter with Lord Bern.  While they now have a quest, Corkian warns them to beware of the temptations that will face them along the way.  The first comes on the next island, a volcanic rock filled with treasure.  Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy locate another sword inside a pool of water that turns everything that touches it to gold, except for these magical weapons, of course. Poor Eustace succumbs to the allure of riches, too, finding an armlet that, when worn, turns him into a dragon.  Once they realize what has happened to the boy, they are finally shown the blue star Corkian foretold would lead them on the correct path.  It takes them to the penultimate island where four more of the lords made it, but were driven mad with hunger.  It makes them leery of the food at Aslan’s table until they are visited by the embodiment of that blue star, Lilliandil (Laura Bent).  She once more warns the crew of the dangers that await them at what has been identified as the Dark Island, saying that their deepest, darkest fears will manifest there.  As they go in, they are greeted by a crazed Lord Rhoop (Bruce Spence).  Though he has the last blade, he ends up hurtling it at Eustace, still in dragon form.  This means their greatest weapon against the sea serpent Edmund accidently conjures flies away.  When Eustace lands, he is visited by Aslan, who returns the boy to human form and sends Eustace to the table.  Once Eustace is able to put the sword in the right place, the sea serpent is defeated.  They then head for Aslan’s land, which is supposed to be Heaven, but only the rat Reepicheep (voiced by Simon Pegg) takes the offer to settle there and never return.  This visit is also to be the last for Edmund and Lucy, who bid a tearful goodbye to Aslan and Caspian before joining Eustace in the tunnel back to their world.

In The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is no exception, there is a feeling that the real world is something that must be returned to, eventually.  In a sense, it is more of a stage of development than a liminal space.  This is the logic, such as it is, behind why first Peter and Susan, and then Edmund and Lucy, can never return to Narnia.  Essentially, they get to be too old.  While they are in the magical land, though, it is Lucy that is consistently the best character from a Catholic point of view.  In Mark 10:13-16, Jesus places a child before His disciples and tells them that unless they approach the Kingdom of God like one of these little ones, you will not enter it.  For this reason, because Lucy is the youngest, she is the one with the most faith and profoundest experiences with Aslan.  As she is about to see the savior figure one last time, she asks a question any child would: will she see him again?  It is what a young son or daughter would look to their parents for, some kind of reassurance that this force for good to which they have grown accustomed will always be there for them.  This should not imply, though, that as we get older, we can no longer have a relationship with God.  The example Jesus provides gives us a goal to strive for with the knowledge that God is at the other end of that quest.  Put differently, the faith might remain, but it will be different.  St. Paul backs this up in 1 Corinthians 13:11 when he writes, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”  Taken together, Scripture is telling us that while our relationship with God will hopefully grow, we should try keep it as simple as possible.  In this way, temptation is easier to resist if we have that purity of heart.

That purity of heart is what stands out for Lucy again in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, although at one point she experiments with a spell to make her prettier.  It turns her into Susan and erases Lucy’s existence, an experience the younger sister immediately regrets.  On the other hand, I do not think you will have any regrets in watching this last installment of The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy.