Actor Jim Caviezel embraces his calling

“Callings come when we least expect them,” began Jim Caviezel, during a recent talk at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Before an audience of more than 700 people, Caviezel shared his testimony of adoption and redemption throughout his personal and professional life.
 
The event, sponsored by Deaconess Adoption and Pregnancy Services, was held Aug. 30. Father Joe Jacobi, pastor of Holy Spirit in Mustang, gave the invocation.
 
Throughout the evening, guests heard personal stories of numerous adoptive families, children and birth mothers.
 
Caviezel’s testimony of his personal life as well as his experience as an actor, highlighted the evening. Caviezel and his wife, Kerri, are devout Catholics, both strongly committed to representing Christ through their personal and professional lives. An adoptee himself, Caviezel and his wife together have adopted three children, all with special needs.
 
Caviezel’s talk encouraged the audience to answer their calling, no matter how difficult or different from their original plan it might be.
 
Caviezel said he almost didn’t marry his wife, became an actor, and almost never adopted his three children because he had a “Plan A” for his life where he thought he knew what he wanted and needed, but found himself going down a different road.
 
“The choice,” he said, “is whether we become bitter or we embrace the journey.”
 
It was during the filming of “Count of Monte Cristo,” that Caviezel said he “started to realize God loves each one of us personally and he is there with us even in our darkest moments of despair.”
 
Caviezel said he doesn’t believe it is a coincidence his initials are “JC” and he was 33 years old when he took the role of Jesus Christ. It was a calling, he said, that took its toll physically, but strengthened him spiritually.
 
Throughout the filming of “The Passion of the Christ,” Caviezel said he was scourged, hit by whips, endured a shoulder separation, suffered months of hypothermia, was struck by lightening and underwent heart surgery.
 
“The glaring truth,” Caviezel said, “was there is no resurrection without the crucifixion. It takes courage and sacrifice to embrace a calling.”
 
Caviezel referenced Blessed Stanley Rother, whom he said also chose an uncharted path.
“He allowed Christ to work through his weaknesses so his savior could show his power and his strength,” Caviezel said. “Sometimes in our very failings, our Lord is preparing us for his ultimate plan.”
 
“Father Rother’s early life of hard work and simple beginning prepared him perfectly for his life’s mission of working with the impoverished Guatemalan Indians. After 13 years of service to some of God’s most needy, Father Rother would give the ultimate, his very life, to follow God’s call, which leads me back to the question of the evening – why are you here?”
 
Caviezel encouraged the crowd.
 
“You are here because you heard a call to help those who are defenseless – the unborn, the unwanted, the orphaned, the mother with no hope – each one of us is called to be that hope.”
 
Eliana Tedrow is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.