Speaking in a recent interview with Fox News Digital, Jim Wahlberg, the brother of Mark Wahlberg and Donnie Wahlberg who is now a Christian filmmaker, explained how he found Jesus and became a Christian in an unexpected way. He said that he heard a speech by Mother Teresa while he was incarcerated and that speech changed his life, leading him to God.
According to Jim Wahlberg, he ended up in prison in Massachusetts because he, as a young man, lived a life full of illegal narcotics and crime. While that could have destroyed his life, it instead led to his renewal; while incarcerated in 1988,k he heard Mother Teresa speak during a prison Mass.
Explaining to Fox News Digital how that changed him, Wahlberg said, “There was a certain point in that Mass when I thought I was looking at God.” He continued, “I thought she was God. That’s my understanding of who she was at that moment.”
Wahlberg then explained that once he had that startling experience, he realized that he needed to change his life, saying, “Once I had this experience—that the missing element for me to try to live a different life was a relationship with Christ—other things made sense to me…It made sense to me that I could be sober and live a different way when I got out of prison.”
Building on that sudden realization, Wahlberg spoke to the prison priest and told him that he wanted to learn more about God, particularly the way that Mother Teresa had spoken about him. he said, “After having this experience with Mother Teresa, I ran back to the priest and said, ‘I need to know more about this Jesus she’s talking about.’”
He explained why it shocked him to such a large degree, saying that the Christian faith he had grown up with was somewhat different than what he heard from her at that life-changing Mass, saying, “It’s not what I grew up with. I want to—I need to know more about this Jesus who died for me and who loves me in spite of all the things I’ve done wrong.’”
Speaking about his faith in a video posted to Instagram for a promotion for the prayer app Hallow, one his brother Mark Wahlberg is heavily involved with promoting, Wahlberg said, “I remember seeing humility for the first time in my life—as the cardinal processed in, with his big hat and his big staff up onto the stage, which served as the altar. He had his own special chair, and next to him, he had a special chair for Mother Teresa. And he beckoned her to come. And she politely refused. Instead, as she did with praying hands on her forehead, she just humbly backed up and knelt on the floor with all the inmates. This confused me, I didn’t understand why. This was her moment to shine, this whole event was about her.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: By Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Mother Teresa best © copyright 2010, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74493804