But while they are separated by 853 miles and 190 years, it is not too fanciful to suggest that Marist founder, Fr Jean-Claude Colin would have related very readily to the situation in which the movie's central character finds himself.

As with most of Loach's work, I, Daniel Blake is an angry film.

It aims to challenge, to unsettle, to demand social change, and it is impossible to watch without becoming emotionally engaged with it.

I, Daniel Blake tells the story of Daniel (Dave Jones), a 59 year old Geordie (Newcastle inhabitant) joiner who has never been out of work.

After suffering a heart attack, Daniel is ordered to rest by his doctor.

Unable to work and needing support, Daniel turns to the state for the first time in his life.

After being put through various tests, he is deemed capable of work because he can achieve minimal fitness standards.

And so he is put on a benefit that relies on his actively seeking employment - even though he is not physically capable of actually undertaking any job should he be offered one.

And so Daniel enters a strange sort of twilight world where he is out of work because of his state of health and yet the state demands he look for work as a condition of paying him a benefit - but should he find work, he cannot undertake it because of his health, and so the state will cut his benefit for not working.

It is a new world for Daniel - and he finds he is not the only inhabitant of it.

He befriends and supports Katie Morgan (Hayley Squires), a single mother with two children, who has been forced to relocate to Newcastle from London because of housing costs.

One of the most haunting scenes in the movie occurs when Katie realises how powerless she has become to look after herself and her family and becomes reliant on a food bank for the first time in her life.

Consumed by utter frustration at a bureaucracy that places order and systems above the real needs of people, Daniel enters into another new (for him) state of life: a political activist, painting graffiti on the wall of his local job centre in an act of defiance against the nightmare of a system that has captured him and so many others.

The depths of Daniel's despair, anger and frustration are revealed most poignantly in what become his final words in the movie:

'I am not a client, a customer, nor a service user. I am not a shirker, a scrounger, a beggar nor a thief.

'I am not a national insurance number, nor a blip on a screen. I paid my dues, never a penny short, and was proud to do so.

'I don't tug the forelock but look my neighbour in the eye. I don't accept or seek charity.

'My name is Daniel Blake, I am a man, not a dog. As such I demand my rights. I demand you treat me with respect.

'I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you.'

"I demand you treat me with respect" are words that would have resonated with Jean-Claude Colin.

In March 1827 he, Etienne Declas and Antoine Jallon visited the region of Tenay, which stands out amongst the early missions the first Marists preached because it was the only one given in an industrial area.

They found it a challenging place.

It was difficult for people to attend the sessions because work began just as the mission got underway and employers were not supportive of their workers absenting themselves.

Nevertheless, Colin and his companions continued, with some success, to encourage people to come to the mission.

Challenging as it was, the time in Tenay proved highly significant for shaping Colin's thoughts in terms of the approach to be adopted by Marists in dealing with people.

He advised them to encourage, rather than to reprimand or criticise, those who may not have been able to make the mission: "Speak with esteem and respect of those who have not made the mission. Excuse them by attributing their absence to the pressure of business or other responsibilities."

Colin understood that people are not always able to make the choices they might prefer to; and that the demands placed on them by employers, officials, the Church and others may well leave people in a position where they feel utterly powerless.

Consequently, the last thing they need is for yet more pressure and expectation being placed on them.

This sensitivity towards the burdens experienced by the "ordinary person" is reflected in what Craig Larkin SM has called informally "Father Colin's Ten Commandments for Missioners".

Although clearly originally written for priests, the principles behind them are valid for all Marists:

• Show great kindness to sinners who come to you in the confessional. Do not rebuff them or appear surprised by their crimes, however great they are.
• Never say, "I can't see you [i.e. you haven't been attending the mission]; I can't absolve you." If people come to you, that's a sign that they need something; that's the beginning of good will.
• Have a great knowledge of the human heart and find the key to the human heart. You must win people's esteem, and their heart, in order to win them over.
• Listen to people quietly and with kindness.
• Follow all those opinions which give greatest play to the mercy of God, without however falling into a laxist theology.
• In the confessional, follow those principles: "All for souls", and "Salvation before law."
• Do not frighten people by too severe a sermon. They are not always strong enough to take it.
• In your preaching, do not enter into great detail about obligations at the beginning.
• Never scold children.
• Finally, keep a light touch; find things to laugh about. It loosens up your head and your nerves.

Perhaps the most well-known saying of Jean-Claude Colin in this whole area of caring for people is "It was in Rome that I learned the maxim: 'Law was made for man.' If I cannot save him with the law, I shall try to save him without it."

By this, Colin was not suggesting he would cherry-pick what he liked of the law - rather, he was making the point that compassion must come first before placing demands and expectations on people.

Colin's approach was one that Daniel Blake longed for but could not find in his world.

He would have experienced in Colin someone who would recognise him as a man and not as a client, a customer, a service user, a shirker, a scrounger, a beggar, a thief, a national insurance number, a blip on a screen.

Someone who would treat him with the esteeem and respect that was his right.

The challenge for us in our world - which might also be far removed removed from Tenay or Newcastle - is that many Daniel Blakes and Katie Morgans continue to be overwhelmed with bureaucracies and systems intended to help, not crush, them.

As Marists, we are called to show "esteem and respect" to everyone we encounter and to be at all times "instruments of divine mercy".

That encompasses both helping those in need and actively working to change systems that oppress people. I, Daniel Blake reminds us in a powerful and moving way that there is, in many respects, very little space and time between the world of the Bugey and the world we inhabit in our daily lives.

• Brian Cummings SM, is the Director of Pa Maria Marist Spirituality Centre, Wellington, New Zealand.
• Originally written for Today's Marists, a publication of the US Marists.

With the film's release, conjecture and debate continues.

For some critics, it's a major disappointment: slow moving (at 161 minutes); minimalist action; characters that fail to engage emotionally with the viewer; intense cruelty and so on.

Certainly it didn't generate much enthusiasm from the Academy in terms of this year's Oscars (which in itself was somewhat surprising given the reputation Scorsese rightly enjoys as a major influence in movies).

Other critics are far more positive and see "Silence" as a movie that poses very significant intellectual questions on such matters as faith and just what is "apostasy"; cultural engagement and the role and place of missionaries.

Different levels of engagement

And that spectrum between disappointment and acclaim gives us a clue as to how we might engage with "Silence" on a spiritual level - because whatever else it is or isn't, "Silence" is a movie that not only invites the audience to engage, it demands it if we are to gain any sense of how Scorsese is aiming to bring Endo's novel to the screen.

That level of engagement is for the viewer to decide.

If we wish to see "Silence" as purely an historical story of some early Christian missionaries in Japan, then we can do so - and we will, in fact, likely find it tedious, uninspiring and horrific.

Further, we may well - as some critics have - see it as an attack on the whole concept of evangelisation and a statement that ultimately, faith is purely human and, when put under enough stress, doomed.

If we are willing to engage on a more intellectual level and enter into the questions the movie puts before us, then "Silence" becomes an intense, nearly 3-hour debate about the relationship of missionaries with the local faithful who have survived and endured in the faith in the absence of any priests; about the purpose of suffering and what it is reasonable and possible to expect of people; about how often we can - or should even - forgive someone; about judgement of those who seem to have given up their faith in order to stay alive.

And there is at least one other level of engagement that offers itself to us: to view the movie not only from the standpoint of its "message"; nor solely on an intellectual level; but as a meditation - an invitation to enter into prayer as we reflect on what we learn about ourselves as a result of having watched "Silence" .

To take such an approach is both very Marist (in the spirit of Luke 2:19 - "Mary pondered all these things in her heart") and also very Ignatian.

Essentially, by viewing the movie as a meditation we are asking ourselves "What moved me - either to Consolation or to Desolation - in this movie?"

An Ignation view

In the Ignatian sense, how we view spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation depends on whether our basic orientation is towards intimacy with God or away from that intimacy.

As such, consolation and desolation are not feelings but indicators of where we are pointed based on our underlying attitudes.[Monty Williams, SJ The Gift of Spiritual Intimacy, pp28-29]

The difficulty for many of us, though, is in understanding just what is happening within us in terms of our basic orientation.

• What are our values?
• What really motivates us?

Without a deep understanding of what these are, we are always open to the risk that our values and actions control us rather than vice-versa.

By entering into a movie as a meditation (and obviously not all movies lend themselves to this approach, but "Silence" certainly does) we can come to a greater awareness of what moves us in our lives in both positive and negative ways. By engaging with the movie we can reflect on what moves us to consolation (draws us out of ourselves and closer to God) and what moves us to desolation (closing in on ourselves).

And so we can see "Silence" engaging us not only on the level of its message and of the intellectual questions it poses, but also on the deeper level of "What is happening to me as I watch this movie?"

And here the values of quietness and reflection become central to engaging with Scorsese's movie on a deeper level.

Just what is the "silence" of the title? In terms of the movie (and Endo's novel), it certainly includes God's apparent silence in the face of doubt and of suffering, both spiritual and physical. It includes the natural "silence" of nature throughout the movie (in the absence of anything that could reasonably be called a musical score).

From a Marist perspective

And from a Marist perspective we could also say that the silence includes the pondering of Mary - and us - as all these things are considered in the heart.

Also from a Marist perspective, it is impossible to view "Silence" as a meditation without taking into account our call to be "instruments of divine mercy": to portray the "feminine features" of God, and to help to build a church which is not perceived in terms of power, planning, control, administration and competitiveness, but rather in terms of community, compassion, simplicity, mercy and fellowship. [Craig Larkin SM, A Certain Way, "Instruments of Divine Mercy", p 50].

To enter into the movie as a form of, we could consider the following questions:

• What elements touched me positively [moved me to consolation] in "Silence" and why?
• How do these relate to my own life and my life experiences?
• What do they say to my present values and where I am on my spiritual path?
• How do they help me understand more what is going on within me, around me, in my family and community, in my work, in the society in which I live?
• What elements in "Silence" unsettled or challenged me [moved me to desolation] and why?
• How do these relate to my own life and my life experiences?
• What do they say to my present values and where I am on my spiritual path?
• How do they help me understand more what is going on within me, around me, in my family and community, in my work, in the society in which I live?

There are no neat and satisfying answers at the conclusion of "Silence".

Scorsese remarked in an interview ["Film Comment", January-February 2017 p 31] that he found in the making of the picture that his way of seeing the world was changed.

In viewing the movie and reflecting on it, we could ask ourselves what has changed in the way in which we see and understand ourselves and our world?

• Brian Cummings SM, is the Director of Pa Maria Marist Spirituality Centre, Wellington, New Zealand.
• Originally written for Today's Marists, a publication of the US Marists.