The Chosen actor Jonathan Roumie is proclaiming the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist through his new line of T-shirts that came out on Thursday.

Those present (or watching via EWTN or livestream) at the National Eucharistic Congress (NEC) might’ve seen Roumie, who plays Jesus in the popular TV series, wearing a shirt with novelist Flannery O’Connor’s quote on the Eucharist, “If it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

“The fans’ reactions, and the subsequent, immediate production of knock-off T-shirts, led me to believe that this expression of my faith in a fun and creative way — using fashion and design — was one many people wanted to share and support,” Roumie told the Register by email on Aug. 1. “So why not give people exactly what they want?”

Roumie wore the shirt while discussing the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, where Jesus speaks of his flesh and blood as true food and true drink in the Eucharist. The actor used the accent with which he depicts Jesus to read the discourse during his talk at the NEC.

“The Bread of Life discourse in John 6 is the foundation of our understanding of how and why Jesus makes himself present to us within the Eucharist and the consequences of rejecting his instructions,” Roumie told the Register.

Famous for her shocking, yet thought-provoking, short stories, O’Connor was a 20th-century Catholic author from Georgia. She was a daily communicant who faithfully prayed the Liturgy of the Hours. The 60th anniversary of her death is Aug. 3.

Surrounded by southern American Protestantism, O’Connor found the denial of the Real Presence upsetting, according to Lorraine Murray, author of The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey.

O’Connor was at a dinner party where the hostess, novelist Mary McCarthy, referred to the Eucharist as “a pretty good symbol,” to which O’Connor responded, “If it’s just a symbol, to hell with it!” She added that the Eucharist “is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”

“Flannery’s quote immediately reveals a gut reaction framed by an intensity and commitment to her faith that we as Catholics should all possess,” Roumie said.

Murray said O’Connor’s short story A Temple of the Holy Ghost demonstrates O’Connor’s devotion to the Eucharist, as it tells the story of a mean-spirited little girl who is transformed during adoration.

“It’s the only story in which it’s so clear, O’Connor’s belief in the Eucharist,” Murray said. “It’s one of her few stories that has explicitly Catholic characters and a Catholic theme.”

O’Connor intended her work to “get down under” the empirical world to explain the metaphysical world, O’Connor scholar Jessica Hooten Wilson told Register Radio when a new movie about O’Connor’s life came out in theaters this spring.

“For Flannery, she was always wanting to get at the eternal things that were happening,” Hooten Wilson said. “She was looking metaphysically, or some people have described her as sacramental, so [she asks] what are the things happening on the metaphysical plane when what we see and experience has to do with our five senses.”

Roumie’s T-shirts can be purchased online at his pop-up store.

“Perhaps this is God’s way of pushing me in an unexpected direction to further my mission to make Jesus more known to our modern culture,” Roumie said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing that is in line with everything he has brought me through already, and in only the way that he could have conceived. Not one step of my path in life these last six years has unfolded in any way I could have ever conceived. And praise God for that.”