Patricia Sheridans Breakfast With ... Roma Downey December 1, 2014 12:00 AM by Patricia Sheridan She grew up Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland. Her faith and her father helped her cope with her mother’s death when she was just 10 years old. Actress Roma Downey is best known for her role on television’s “Touched by an Angel,” and it seems she has indeed been inspired by a divine source. She and husband Mark Burnett produced “The Bible,” a miniseries for the History Channel in which she played the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. It was the No. 1 downloaded TV show on iTunes. “A.D.,” the sequel to “The Bible,” will be coming to NBC on Easter Sunday. The couple have a foundation to help displaced Christians in Syria, Iraq and neighboring areas called The Cradle of Christianity Fund. Ms. Downey, who has a master’s degree in spiritual psychology, narrates “The Women of the Bible,” a two-hour special on Lifetime airing 7 p.m. Sunday. When you were putting together “Women of the Bible” was there anything you learned that surprised you? One of the reasons we wanted to do this is because so often we regard the whole experience as being so much of a boys club and there are so many amazing women’s stories in the Bible. We wanted to focus on them and have these amazing women comment on them. I don’t know that there has ever been a group of women with such extraordinary leadership joining together to speak. I’m sure you’ve seen the list that we have. Yes, impressive. We have Victoria Osteen, Kay Warren, Sister Rosemary. I am such a fan of the work that she did. She spearheaded that whole movement to bring those girls back from Nigeria last year. She is such a leader. Christine Kane, who has an extraordinary story. She was born unnamed and unwanted and abused as a child. Now she in turn speaks to millions of people. She’s an inspiration to women all over the world. She runs an organization to free trafficked women. I think the collective social media reach of this group is more then 15 million people. To hear their thoughts and their interpretations of these stories in helping the audience understand just how contemporary many of these stories still are. One of the stories that we have beautiful footage from is the story of Sarah and Abraham. This is an opportunity to explore these stories in a deeper way. Was there ever a time your faith was tested or really shaken? Well, yes, of course. I struggle like everybody else, but I had a profound loss when I was a little girl. My mother died when I was just 10 years of age. It was as if the lights had been turned off. I know that if it had not been for my faith, the power of prayer and for the love of Jesus and how that worked through my life — the light was turned back on. It was more that I realized the light had never been turned off. It has been such a source of strength for me. I have been so fortunate that I have been able to combine what I believe with what I love to do. Not everybody gets to do that. What a privilege that has been for me in my career. I got to step up as an angel on “Touched by an Angel” and tell everybody every week for almost 10 years that there is a God, that he loves you and wants to be part of your life. What a joy that was. Then we had the opportunity to bring “The Bible” series to television. Having no idea if people would watch, we just felt a call in our hearts to do it. We did it as well as we could and we were just so blown away by the response. A hundred million people tuned in. It only speaks to the hunger in our country for this kind of programming and the hunger for the word of God. So it seemed a beautiful opportunity to put together these amazing stories of the women of our Bible and to have women speak out about the women. It’s very powerful. So, did playing the role of the Blessed Mother in the miniseries “The Bible” affect your relationship with Mark in any way? I mean, the whole series certainly affected our relationship. I think that it ultimately deepened our relationship. Playing that role was so moving. Of course, Mother Mary is one of the stories in the Bible that we speak of in the special. It’s very hard to imagine what she must have gone through knowing this was her baby boy, this was her son, and yet he was born for this life. Those moments at the foot of the cross, I know as an actress, it was heartbreaking. Jesus only said seven things from the cross and one of those things was asking John to take care of his mother. I think it says so much about who he was, who he is. You seem so good. Did you ever have a rebellious phase? [Laughing.] Was I the eternal good girl? Oh, I see where you were going with that Mother Mary question! Listen, for many years I played an angel on TV, but I’m not an angel. Believe me, there have been times in my life where I prayed for an angel to show up, you know, as I’ve struggled through. I just keep trying to do the best I can. Some days I am better at it than others [laughs]. I can get my Irish up like the best of them. I’m a red-head Irish woman, what can I tell you? [Laughing.] I have learned that between stimulus and response there is a space — and I like to call that my space of grace. I have learned over the years if I just take a moment, and usually it is in prayer, to just stop me from lashing out or speaking out or being angry or upset. The last few years I take that space of grace and it has made all the difference. My friends and my family will tell you that has made a big difference. It’s a very easy thing to remember. I encourage your [readers] and listeners to find a space of grace in their day. Another thing I have learned is to just start your day in gratitude. When I get up from bed in the morning and I put my first foot on the floor, I say, “Thank,” and my second foot hits the floor and I say, “You.” I say, “Thank you, God” all the way into the bathroom in the morning. Those are just two tools in my tool kit. Do you believe things happen for a reason? I do believe that, yes. I do. I believe God has a plan for each of our lives and we can’t always see what that might be. But I have learned to trust. And you and Mark have a foundation to help displaced Christians in Syria? We are very concerned about what is going on in that region. We wanted to speak out because many, many, many hundreds of thousands have been displaced and are living on streets. They don’t even have tents. Winter is coming and we need to take care of each other. Normally when my husband and I are of service we have a personal preference to not scream it from the rooftops, but in this case we both felt that if drawing awareness to the situation by using our platform to make some noise ... it was important to do, so that is what we’ve been doing. Hear more of this interview with Roma Downey by following link: tinyurl/o58os85 Patricia Sheridan: psheridan@post-gazette, 412-263-2613 or follow her on Twitter at @pasheridan. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 20:04:42 +0000
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