By Michaela Gordoni
Jim Caviezel takes his acting roles seriously, and no role was greater than playing Jesus in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
“I reached out to God and said, ‘Please help me’ and He did,” Caviezel said in a recent episode of the “Arroyo Grande with Raymond Arroyo” podcast. “And He came in a way which regained my purpose.”
“I always say I never played Him. He played me. Let God play you,” Jim Caviezel explained. “He knows you better than you know yourself.”
He explained that many go through their lives without a purpose. But God will show those who ask Him.
The actor encouraged others not to ask for “money or power.” A purpose is all they need to ask for.
“God is in my heart…I’m against…evil. When you’re a steward of God, much is given, much is expected. That’s a huge responsibility,” the actor explained.
Caviezel suffered while playing Jesus in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, which came out in 2004. While filming, he was struck by lightning, his shoulder separated while carrying the cross, he got hypothermia, experienced high levels of exhaustion and suffered other injuries.
“My arms and legs went numb,” he recalled of getting hypothermia. “I was suffocating on that cross. In the meantime, you watch people have coffee and laugh. They were very indifferent about what I was going through.”
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The cross “fell on my head, and I bit through my tongue and my cheek,” Jim Caviezel said.
The lightning strike caused Caviezel to have two heart surgeries, one of which was a more risky open-heart operation. He had to take a lot of medication, but his heart issue was “corrected” in 2014.
Nearly 22 years after THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, Caviezel will reprise his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST.
The first movie was the top domestic R-rated movie ever, until last year.
Gibson said it’s possible the second movie will be an “acid trip,” showing viewers hell and other “realms.”
The script is a “massive undertaking,” Gibson said. “You have to really consider what it is that you need to show in order to be poignant. It can’t be linear. You have to have many things to juxtapose against one another even from different time periods in order to illustrate what something means in a more full way.”
According to IMDB, the movie is slated to come out next year.
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