Do you remember where you saw Mel Gibson’s epic drama “The Passion of the Christ?” I watched it with hundreds of other pastors at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. I will never forget being handed a package of Kleenex as we entered the packed auditorium that seats some 7,000 people. The free gift was in anticipation of the emotional impact the film documenting the final hours of Jesus life would have.

A year ago it dawned on me that the twentieth anniversary of the film’s release was approaching. I decided I would attempt to get an interview with Jim Caviezel, who played the part of Jesus in Gibson’s blockbuster hit. And so, my passion this past year has been to find a way to contact the Hollywood actor raised just north of Seattle. I reached out to friends who knew his brother without success. I enlisted the help of people with media connections. I emailed Jim’s agent after a friend who produced one of Jim’s earlier movies came through for me. But no response.

My passion to accomplish my goal was beginning to ebb when a business leader in our community emailed. Doris wanted to know if I’d like to have dinner with Jim Caviezel. She had no idea of my yearlong pursuit. Of course, I’d be delighted. And so my wife and I joined our dear friend for an evening I will long remember.

It didn’t matter that “dinner with Jim” included over 500 others who wanted to hear this gifted actor share his life story. I was grateful to discover this one who personified Christ in The Passion was passionate about living out the message of the One he portrayed in the film.

There on the stage, standing under a light fixture that ironically boasted the shape of a cross, Jim admitted to the sacred privilege he felt to be cast as the Savior he faithfully worships as a devout Roman Catholic. With a wry smile he indicated that the reason Mel Gibson chose him for the part was more than the fact that his initials were J.C. and that he was 33 years old.

Jim described the incredible physical toll the crucifixion scene took on his body. What we witnessed in that realistic reenactment was not created by stunt doubles or special effects. Jim indicated he nearly lost his life from the intense suffering. He could not have anticipated what he signed up for.

But chronicling his role in The Passion was not the primary purpose of Jim’s presentation. He also talked about his most recent film The Sound of Freedom that deals with freeing children from the sex trafficking industry in Latin America. As he described what was involved in playing the life of Tim Ballard, whose true story is documented in the movie, he waxed eloquent on the topic of freedom.

His desire is to awaken a sleeping culture to the trafficking that is occurring not only south of our border and in Southeast Asia, but in our own country as well. And so Jim is committing himself to freeing innocent victims from a plight worse than death.

Jim is also concerned that we not take our personal freedoms for granted. He believes freedom must be courageously defended on the frontlines and in the public square. Employing his amazing impersonation of Ronald Reagan, Gibson’s “Christ” passionately challenged me and the others in the crowd with the actor-turned-President’s words from October 1964.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it’s a simple answer after all.

Guest columnist Greg Asimakoupoulos is a former chaplain at Covenant Living at the Shores in Mercer Island.