Pray for Jim

Confusion (at best) seems to be swirling around “The Passion of the Christ.” An email was forwarded to me (and probably thousands of other believers) months ago asking for prayer for the cast and crew of “The Passion of the Christ,” who, at the time, were undergoing “heavy spiritual warfare.” The email originator, Ron Handley, said he was in contact with the film’s star, James Caviesel, whom he had “discipled” when Jim was a student at the University of Wash. He noted Jim’s prayer request: “This movie has the potential to bring the entire world, including the nonreligious, to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Handley then exhorts the reader to “pray right now for the people you need to invite to see the movie with you.”

So where’s the “confusion”? The email gives the distinct impression that Caviesel is a fellow believer. Really? Does Caviesel have a “saving knowledge of Jesus Christ?” His subsequent interviews reveal him to be an extraordinarily devout Roman Catholic. There’s not even a hint of that in the email. Yet Caviesel in other places proclaims his zeal for his Catholic faith, his taking the Eucharist daily during the film’s production, his spiritually arming himself with relics of dead saints and “a splinter from Christ’s cross,” his praying the Rosary throughout the shooting of the film, his devotion to the Marian apparition of Medjugorje, and his belief that “The Passion of the Christ” was “made by Mary for her Son.” Pray for James Caviesel’s true salvation, and especially for discernment for the believers, shepherds, and the sheep flocking to this extremely Catholic motion picture.