As we journey through Advent, who better to help us prepare for Christ’s birth than the man who plays Jesus on “The Chosen”? Father Dave welcomes Catholic actor Jonathan Roumie, who stars in the highly popular TV series about the life and ministry of Jesus. He is also a prominent voice on the Hallow prayer and meditation app, where you can hear him and Liam Neeson in the “Advent Pray25 with C.S. Lewis” prayer challenge.
Jonathan explains his difficult road to portraying Jesus. “I had been acting on and off for about 20 years. I had started my journey back in New York and then around 2010, I went over to Los Angeles to see if I could take my shot,” he begins. “Eight years in, I found myself struggling and completely broke…literally had enough food to last the day. I got to that point where I was thousands of dollars in debt, and I was paying rent on credit cards, and I didn’t have any other options.”
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“So the only thing I could think to do is to get on my knees and give my soul basically to the Lord,” Jonathan continues. “Give everything to him and just say, ‘Look, you brought me here, I don’t know why I got to this point, but here I am and I trust you. So my problems are now truly your problems.” After this prayer, he describes how he left the house for a few hours, and upon his return there were four unexpected checks that arrived in the mail.
Jonathan says, “I hadn’t worked any of my side jobs that I was juggling for several weeks; I didn’t know what was going to happen. Then this miracle just happens hours after I surrendered to God. At that point, I realized that he basically stepped in because I stopped trying to micromanage him. Once I did that and truly committed to the act of surrender, then I was able to to be used in the designs that he had. And then three months later, I got the call for ‘The Chosen.’” The crowdfunded series has seen unprecedented success on both streaming platforms and in theaters, and its fourth season will debut February 1, 2024.
This Advent, Jonathan lends his voice to the Hallow App’s “Advent Pray25 with C.S. Lewis” prayer challenge. “I was asked to work with [Hallow] pretty early on, and it just was an immediate ‘yes’ because I saw the work that they were doing,” He says. “They have hearts for evangelization and leading people to prayer; I feel very convicted to get people to pray more. It was in me through my art, and so this was just a natural extension of what I do as an actor for ‘The Chosen.’”
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The Advent challenge consists of a daily set of readings from C.S. Lewis and reflections for prayer, voiced by Jonathan and Liam Neeson. “I basically set up the reflections, [Liam] reads the writings, and then I come back in and we weave in and out together,” Jonathan says. “Hopefully [we] create a nice vocal tapestry of praise and worship, in that sense that we’re leading people to a deeper relationship with Christ – trying to get them to block out the noise of the society, block out the noise of the commercialization of the season, and to just focus on the importance of what it means to cultivate a deeper relationship to Jesus as we lead to Christmas.”
Father Dave notes the popularity of prayer apps saying, “People use their phones for a lot of things that are distractions, but it seems like people are really gravitating in our busy, crazy, complicated world to ask how can I put in my earbuds and just be quiet?” Jonathan responds, “I think when we have constant access to technology and technology has 24/7 access to us, it’s a fight for our attention. I think this is one of the ways where we try to flip that notion on its head and make technology work for us to give us peace, contemplation, and a sense of meditative commitment to growing closer to Jesus this season.”
