It’s a wrap! Roumie’s moving goodbye to “The Chosen”
Jonathan Roumie, known for portraying Jesus in the series "The Chosen," announces the end of his final season and reflects on his journey. He shares an emotional Instagram message quoting 2 Timothy 4:7, thanking fans, the cast, and crew for their support. Roumie discusses the difficulty of finding words to describe his experience after years of embodying Christ, highlighting the spiritual weight of the role. He recalls his pre‑filming prayer, "Let people see Your face and not mine," emphasizing his intent to focus on Jesus rather than himself.
11 days ago
Jonathan Roumie has completed filming for The Chosen, ending his years-long portrayal of Jesus. In an emotional message, the Catholic actor thanked supporters, cast, crew, and his team, while saying he needed time to find the words to describe the experience.
Roumie marked the conclusion by quoting St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” He ended his message by promising that more would come once he had found the words, signing off with affection for his followers.
The farewell reflects the unusual nature of Roumie’s work on the series. For years, he has had to interpret Jesus’ words, gestures, and expressions while carrying the responsibility of portraying a central figure of Christian faith.
Roumie has described the role as more than a professional performance. His pre-filming prayer asks that viewers see and hear Christ rather than the actor himself: “Let people see Your face and not mine. Let them hear Your words and not mine.”
That spiritual dimension makes the end of the role especially significant. The routines of wearing the robes, appearing before the cameras, and attempting to let his own identity recede behind the character have now come to an end.
Although Roumie has finished filming, viewers have not yet reached the end of his story as Jesus. Season 6, which covers Jesus’ final day and Crucifixion, is scheduled to premiere on November 15, while the seventh and final season will portray the Resurrection.
Roumie’s wording—“the hour has finally come”—echoed language associated with Christ’s approaching Passion and was also used in the introduction to Season 6. For Roumie, however, the phrase referred to the completion of his own chapter in the series.
Examine Catholic portrayals of Christ in contemporary media
Contemporary media portrayals of Christ can make Jesus vividly present to modern audiences, but they also risk reducing him to a political symbol, moral teacher, therapeutic figure, or historically reconstructed personality. Catholic evaluation must therefore hold together two truths: Jesus was a real historical man, and he is the eternal Son of God, the unique Savior and mediator.
The Church does not treat Jesus as a myth or abstract religious idea. The International Theological Commission emphasizes that he lived in a concrete historical setting and died within human history. Historical inquiry is therefore legitimate—and even required by Christian faith—but the New Testament is not merely a modern biography. It presents Jesus as Christ and Lord and seeks to awaken faith.
This has important consequences for film and television. A production may imaginatively reconstruct dialogue, settings, or private moments, but it should not imply that the “real Jesus” is simply whatever can be established by modern historical methods. The Gospel portraits unite historical testimony with faith’s recognition of Jesus’ divine identity. The New Testament itself transcends a merely retrospective account of the past because Christ has universal and eschatological significance.
Pope Benedict XVI therefore proposes a fruitful relationship between historical reason and the “hermeneutic of faith”—an interpretation shaped by faith rather than opposed to evidence. He argues that a deeper understanding of Jesus must seek his real figure, not merely a cultural symbol or an invented religious ideal.
Many modern portrayals emphasize Christ’s humanity: his friendships, humor, weariness, compassion, and emotional depth. This can be valuable. Catholic faith teaches that the Son truly became man; Jesus did not merely appear human. His historical life, relationships, suffering, and death are essential to Christianity.
The danger comes when humanity is detached from divinity. A portrayal can make Jesus psychologically plausible while leaving unexplained why people worship him, why his death saves, or why his resurrection changes history. The result is a sympathetic but incomplete Jesus: perhaps an inspiring teacher, but not the incarnate Word.
Catholic theology can affirm that Christ’s human knowledge was culturally situated and expressed through the language and symbols of first-century Judaism, without concluding that he was intellectually confused or merely a product of his environment.
Contemporary media often presents Jesus primarily through compassion, inclusion, opposition to hypocrisy, concern for the poor, or resistance to oppressive structures. These themes are genuinely biblical, but they become distorted when Christ is reduced to a spokesperson for a modern political program.
Cardinal Ratzinger warns that modern culture can transform Christ into a symbol: a symbol of humanity’s need for God, liberation from injustice, or resistance to patriarchy. Once Jesus is treated merely as a symbol, other figures or ideologies can supposedly replace him as alternative expressions of the same meaning. The result is that Christ is no longer regarded as the unique mediator between God and humanity.
A Catholic portrayal should therefore show Christ’s concern for human dignity and justice while preserving the deeper source of that concern: he is not simply an activist for a better society but the Son who reconciles humanity to the Father.
Another common portrayal presents Jesus chiefly as someone who understands personal pain, heals loneliness, and offers emotional reassurance. This can communicate something true. Benedict XVI describes Jesus as the one who dispels loneliness and sustains hope amid evil and death.
Yet a therapeutic Jesus is insufficient if he never calls people to conversion, sacrifice, obedience, holiness, and communion with the Church. Christ comforts sinners, but he also commands, judges, forgives, and summons them to follow him. His compassion cannot be separated from the Cross.
The resurrection is especially decisive. A portrayal that ends with Jesus’ death, or treats resurrection only as a metaphor for hope, does not present the full Christian faith. The earthly Jesus and the glorified Christ are one and the same person; his earthly life cannot be separated from his exaltation and saving work.
Some media portrayals adopt the methods of historical-critical scholarship and present Jesus as a prophet, healer, apocalyptic preacher, or moral teacher. Historical research can correct sentimental or anachronistic depictions, and Catholic theology does not reject serious study of the historical Jesus.
But historical reconstructions often depend on prior assumptions. They may treat Gospel accounts as literary constructions whose theological claims need not correspond to Jesus’ real identity. Other reconstructions fit Jesus into familiar historical categories, such as prophet or charismatic healer, and thereby risk explaining away his uniqueness.
The Church’s position is neither naïve literalism nor skeptical reductionism. The Gospels are theological witnesses, but that does not make them fictional. The Catholic reader seeks the historical Jesus through the Gospel testimony, the Church’s faith, and sound historical reasoning together.
An actor’s face and manner can strongly influence how viewers imagine Christ. This is not automatically a problem. Sacred art has always used human forms to make the mystery of Christ accessible. But the actor’s performance may unintentionally replace the Gospel Jesus with a modern personality: excessively casual, politically partisan, psychologically fragile, or emotionally theatrical.
The most faithful portrayal will allow Christ’s humanity to be genuinely recognizable while preserving his authority and mystery. He should be capable of tenderness without sentimentality, anger without loss of self-control, humor without trivialization, and suffering without defeatism.
Above all, Christ must remain a person, not merely an idea. Ratzinger identifies “symbolization” as a major modern danger precisely because it converts Jesus from a real person into a vehicle for meanings selected by the audience.
A Catholic viewer can ask:
Media can awaken interest in Christ, but it cannot substitute for the Gospels or the life of faith. Benedict XVI observes that Jesus continues to be “contemporary” because his earthly life has entered eternity and remains active in believers. A successful Catholic portrayal, then, does not merely make Jesus seem relevant to the present. It helps viewers recognize that the living Christ addresses the present because he is not confined to the past.
The strongest Catholic portrayals of Christ combine historical concreteness, theological truth, and spiritual depth. They show a Jesus who is genuinely human, yet more than a teacher; compassionate, yet demanding; embedded in first-century history, yet Lord of every age. Contemporary media becomes misleading when it turns Christ into a symbol tailored to modern preferences. It becomes fruitful when its artistic imagination remains accountable to the Gospel’s central claim: the man Jesus is the incarnate Son of God and the unique Savior of the world.