Jonathan Roumie: If it’s a symbol to hell with it

Recently, on July 20, he walked into a thunderous applause and standing ovation from the attendees at the National Eucharistic Revival Congress. The Catholic actor who plays Jesus from The Chosen arrived fresh off the set where he was 'coincidentally' filming the Last Supper scene for the next season of the Chosen. Jonathan Roumie proceeded to give a very heartfelt talk about the importance of recognizing the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. His bold witness as a revert to the Catholic Faith and his arduous love for the Eucharist was evident. He said, “The Eucharist for me is healing. The Eucharist for me is peace. The Eucharist for me is my grounding. The Eucharist for me is His heart...within me.”

Another way he gave witness to the Real Presence was through his appearance. For this special occasion, he chose to wear a white, size medium T-Shirt with Flannery O’Connor’s famous quote in black letters, “If it’s a symbol to hell with it”.

The context of that T-Shirt is key. It comes from the very Southern, very Catholic short story writer's recollection of a dinner party that she attended. Flannery recalled a conversation she had shortly after her conversion to Catholicism.

“Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.” -Flannery O’Connor

Jonathan Roumie really wanted the audience to know that he takes the role of Jesus very seriously and he desires for theological accuracy but quickly pointed out that he was not a theologian. He shared his disappointment that the popular TV Series so far has left out the Bread of Life Discourse. It’s almost as though the message on his shirt, ‘If it’s a symbol to hell with it’ was a protest against that omission in the overall script of The Chosen. Though he is not a theologian, he is a serious Catholic so he knows the Bread of Life Discourse is the necessary context for getting the theological significance of the Last Supper narrative and especially the Words of Consecration.

When Jesus holds up the bread and later, the cup and says the words, ‘this is my body’ and ‘this is my blood’ they are to be taken literally because they should be understood in the context of what he said earlier in his ministry at the synagogue in Capernaum. To underscore this point, Roumie, in his Jesus voice,  read dramatically  a section from the Bread of Life Discourse (Jn 6:47-59).

He said, since it wasn't in The Chosen, he wanted the audience to hear what it could have been like when Jesus, Himself said these words:

 “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world… “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats  my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”

To portray the Last Supper in any kind of TV show or film without first having the Bread of Life Discourse is to fall into the trap of taking the words of Jesus spoken at the Last Supper out of context and consequently as merely symbolic. To that gross omission and distorted theology, we all ought to echo Flannery and now Jonathon, ‘Well if it’s just a symbol then to hell with it’.