Please join us in honouring the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ which began on Holy Thursday and ended with His Death on the Cross. The Passion Clock hourly portrays events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
It would be worth watching Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ." The visual aspects of the movie will bring us closer to the time of Our Lord's Suffering and it will be a meaningful time for us to contemplate upon His Holy Death.
Clip from "The Passion of the Christ" 2004 by Mel Gibson
Quid et Veritas, Claudia? (What is Truth, Claudia?) - https://youtu.be/7senWR91kQA
We're sharing with you some very interesting facts from Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ.” This movie was truly one of the greatest in history! Mel Gibson is preparing “The Passion of the Christ 2” which will be entitled “The Resurrection.” Hopefully it will be released very soon!
The actor who portrays Jesus in the film, James Caviezel (whose initials, coincidentally are J.C.), experienced some strange signs regarding the role. Six months before he ever auditioned for the film, a total stranger walked up to him and said, "You'll be playing Jesus."
His identification with the character of Jesus was so strong that fans felt compelled to bow down to him when they saw him.
Mel Gibson said he received similar signs that he believes suggested that he should make this film that he had only been considering. A French woman, who he had never met, approached him out of nowhere and said, "Jesus loves you."
Caviezel was actually struck by lightning during the filming of the movie. "About four seconds before it happened it was quiet, and then it was like someone slapped my ears," Caviezel told Newsweek. "I had seven or eight seconds of, like, a pink, fuzzy color, and people started screaming. They said I had fire on the left side of my head and light around my body. All I can tell you is that I looked like I went to Don King's hairstylist."
The assistant director was also struck by lightning. This time, no person was hit, but the bolt struck the cross on which Caviezel was later to be "hung."
John Debney, who composed the music for the movie, says he battled with Satan as he was working. "I was stretched every which way but loose," Debney said in an interview with Dan Wooding for WorldNetDaily. "I was stretched by Mel Gibson. I was stretched by the Guy Upstairs and also I was stretched by the guy downstairs. What it did was completely strengthen my faith and I have realized something very interesting. I had never before subscribed to the idea that maybe Satan is a real person, but I can attest that he was in my room a lot and I know that he hit everyone on this production. I had all these computers and synthesizers in my studio and the hard drives would go down and the digital picture that lives on the computer with the music would just freeze on his [satan's] face. Then the volume would go to ten and it would happen all the time."
Debney believes that it was a miracle that he got to work on the film in the first place. As the composer for such film comedies as Liar, Liar and Bruce Almighty, Debney would not have been the first choice for a film like The Passion of the Christ. But he knew Stephen McEveety, one of the producers, from childhood. At first he was asked just to write some special music for the film, but when Mel Gibson heard it, he hired Debney to score the entire film. "It is a complete miracle that I became involved with the project," he said. Debney found the process equally miraculous. "I didn't have a lot to do with the writing of this music. I have done a lot of music, but literally things would just come out."
I have also heard that Mel Gibson had the actress who played Satan filmed in slow motion, so that they could eliminate her blinking.
Jim Caviezel hurt himself carrying the cross.
Jim Caviezel was seemingly the perfect candidate to play Jesus Christ. What you may not have known is that he experienced a shoulder separation when the 130-pound cross was dropped unto his shoulder. That scene is still in the movie.
That was a heavy cross. It was probably more than half the weight of a typical Jewish man. It took great inner strength for Jesus to carry such a weight after being severely scourged with a cat-o-nine whip, hit in the head with a reed, had a crown of thorn pressed into his head, and abandoned by all his friends.
Jim did it with a separated shoulder, though we are sure he did not traverse the full length of the journey but the pain in his face during that scene would have been real.
Jim accidentally got whipped twice.
During the scourging scene, Jim accidentally got whipped twice. The first literally knocked the wind out of him. The second time hurt so much that it caused him to wrench his hands from the shackles, scraping his hand pretty badly.
Ouch! Watch the film again, and see if you can tell when that whip actually found its target. The facial expression will be much different, even more amplified. It’s not a bad experience, considering that the scriptures say, if we suffer with Christ, we will also reign with Him. The only difference is, Jesus took all thirty-nine, and not just two
Most of the cast and crew converted after the film.
Because of their experiences through production, many of the cast members and crew converted to Christianism (Catholicism) after the completion of the film. Among those converted was an Atheist who played Judas Iscariot. His name is Luca Lionello.
Being in a film and playing the worst character role in terms of flaws can eventually lead to finding salvation, how much of an impact could the film make on those who watch the finished movie? We believe quite a lot.
One scene was inspired by Michelangelo’s famous statue “La Pieta.”
According to Mel Gibson, the long shot of Jesus lying in Mary’s arms after being taken from the cross was greatly inspired by Michelangelo’s famous statue “La Pieta”. The Pieta is a work of Renaissance sculpture that is housed in St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. It was the first of a number of projects of the same theme by Michelangelo.
The actress who played Mary was pregnant.
Maia Morgenstern, who played Mary, was pregnant during the shoot, but she did not tell anyone, until one day she approached Jim and said in broken English, and a thick Romanian accent, “I have baby in stomach.” Jim got the idea. It must have felt a little awkward playing Jesus at the end of His life, while the woman playing his mother was preparing to give birth to new life.
Gibson recalls many miracles that happened on-set.
Mel Gibson spoke endlessly about the number of miracles that happened to the cast and crew while shooting the film. Gibson recounted in an interview that there had been some unusual things happening on the set. Some of the miracles that took place were people being healed of diseases, sight and hearing restored, and the greatest of all, salvation. There was one little six-year-old girl, who was a daughter of a person connected with the crew, who had epilepsy since she was born. She has had up to 50 epileptic seizures a day. She was apparently near cured of her condition and did not have any fits and seizures for over a month after the film was released. It was also reported that she has been coping with her condition a lot easier.