Skip to main content

Roma Downey on Being an Everyday Angel to Others

Share This article

BE AN ANGEL 

Roma is perhaps best known for her nine years playing “Monica,” one of the angels on the hit series, Touched by an Angel, which aired 1994 -2003. That experience gave her plenty of opportunity to consider what angels really are and do. “The simplest definition of an angel is ‘a messenger, especially from God.’ In the nearly three hundred references to angels in the Bible, we find angels speaking the words of God, and doing the work of God. Angels repeatedly told people not to fear,” she explains. “Angels speak the truth. God loves us and we are never alone.”  

Roma says we can all emulate angels in our lives by looking for ways to bless others. She offers examples of the many ways we can do so: by showing kindness, love, courage, forgiveness, hope, faith, gratitude, friendship, trust, grace, encouragement, joy, and being the change that we’d like to see in others or the world as a whole.

Love is a choice, Roma says, citing the example of Nelson Mandela, famous for his 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa. Quoting him, she writes, “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

Roma made the choice to love rather than hate as a girl growing up in Northern Ireland. In the 60’s and 70’s, when political and nationalistic conflicts gave rise to 30 years of what are termed “The Troubles,” Roma didn’t want the hatred she experienced to remain a part of her. She clearly remembers bomb threats and riots. “There are few words to describe the terror of being caught in a riot. The imminent danger – the bricks, rocks, and bottles thrown by raging neighbors – horrified me quite enough. But the venomous words, the expressions of loathing and disgust on people’s faces – these were almost worse.”  

She says we can make a daily choice to love rather than hate … by not posting a mean social media comment, or withholding ungracious words at a party.  “Are your words – at home, at work, online – filled with love or with something else? Pause for a moment and take stock of what your life is currently teaching the people around you.”  

“Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.” These words, part of a longer poem penned by 19th century poet Robert Browning, are on a plaque in Roma and Mark’s home. She loves the hope and anticipation they embody, and reminds us that we all need hope for the future, especially later in our lives. Roma says she has girlfriends who seem to view the future as a series of losses rather than focusing on the joys which lie ahead. “Trusting that ‘the best is yet to be’ changes us for the better. Holding hope close to our hearts becomes a beautiful and empowering way to regard the future,” she believes.

Some ways we can do that, she says, are to anticipate simple joys, like a walk in nature, or our favorite foods, or ways we can make someone else feel special. Roma also advises spending time with people who help us feel brighter and more hopeful about the days to come.   

Gratitude is a discipline Roma chose to practice in her days on Touched by an Angel. The show was filmed in Utah, and the call times often meant she had to get out of bed at 3:30am on freezing mornings. While she says she didn’t enjoy getting up in the cold before dawn, she would choose to be grateful for something.

On many days, she’d start her car, rub her cold hands together, and pray, “Thank You, God, for Roy.” Roy was a man she hired to shovel her driveway after every snowfall so she could make it to the set on time. “I was so grateful for this man’s hard work and faithfulness,” she says. “Whether you are facing another freezing morning commute, find yourself trapped in a dead-end situation, or feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, gratitude is the first and best step closer to the light. And if you feel the sun shining down on you today, why not share that joy with someone else?”     

LIGHTWORKERS MEDIA

Roma and Mark launched LightWorkers in 2011. Their mission is “to create engaging, uplifting, and inspirational content that breaks through the clutter, building a community of sharing and igniting a movement in the real world that motivates people to celebrate and share the good all around them.” It is now an MGM company with Roma serving as its creative lead. “We are blessed to combine what we do and what we believe,” she says.  

LightWorkers.com has become an online destination for encouraging short-form digital and social content with over 300 million monthly video views. By doing something positive and uplifting daily, they are part of the solution. They also produced the ten-hour hit miniseries The Bible, which was viewed over 100 million times in the U.S. and nominated for three Emmy awards. The series generated a feature film adaptation with Son of God, which became one of the highest faith movie openings of all time when it debuted at the box office in 2014.  

It also gave rise to a successful sequel miniseries, A.D., The Bible Continues, which premiered on NBC the following year. Other television series they have produced under MGM’s LightWorkers division include the reality hit series Country Ever After for Netflix, Messiah for Netflix, The Women of the Bible for Lifetime, The Dovekeepers for CBS, and Answered Prayers for TLC.

They were also executive producers on the feature films Little Boy for Open Road Films, Woodlawn for PureFlix, Ben-Hur for MGM and Paramount, and the documentary, Faithkeepers, about the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle-East. LightWorkers also produced the feature film On a Wing and A Prayer for MGM, which starred Dennis Quaid. 

Share This article

About The Author

Julie Blim
Julie
Blim

Julie produced and assigned a variety of features for The 700 Club since 1996, meeting a host of interesting people across America. Now she produces guest materials, reading a whole lot of inspiring books. A native of Joliet, IL, Julie is grateful for her church, friends, nieces, nephews, dogs, and enjoys tennis, ballroom dancing, and travel.