Creator Of 'The Cross And The Light' Bringing Extravaganza To Carmel
CARMEL – The Cross and Light is an international, critically acclaimed musical and multi-sensory video experience of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The production is an authentic biblical proclamation of the greatest love story of all time. Based in the Archdiocese of Detroit, TCTL has been performned as far away as Australia. The production comes to Carmel High School on March 10-12. The performance is being sponsored by eleven parishes in the Carmel deanery of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.
Years ago, TCTL creator Kelly Nieto was a happily married mother of two living the good suburbia life outside of Detroit. Nieto said she “had it all” – large house, great husband, successful career as a stand-up comedian and performer. But Nieto said it was her mother’s near-death experience that brought her to her knees crying out to God. “Jesus knocked me off of my egotistical high horse,” said Nieto, “and I’ve never been the same since.” She remembers giving her life to God saying, “God if you’re real, I need you now, I give you my life, just save my mother.”
Describing herself as an atheist who held séances in her house on a regular basis, Nieto became a born-again Baptist in 1998. After her conversion, Nieto said she couldn’t stop talking about Jesus. Her conversion caused quite a rift between Kelly and her husband Dominic, who was a cradle-but-lapsed Catholic. Nieto said she was praying for her husband to leave the Catholic Church, and he was trying to prove to her that the Catholic Church was right. Kelly recalls Dominic saying to her, “You’re not the woman I married. You have become one of those Christians that we hate and make fun of.” She told Dominic, “You’re a Christian too.” He replied, “No I’m not; I’m Catholic.”
Proving that Catholicism was the one true faith was a bit of a challenge for Dominic because he didn’t have a clear reason for asserting it was right, but he knew in his heart it was. This led Dominic to a website called Catholic Answers, a Catholic apologetic apostolate. Kelly said Dominic would come home from work with information from Catholic Answers, lay it down on the table and say, “Read this, and then we’ll talk.”
This went on for months, until after much reading and praying, Kelly said she fell in love with the genius of the Catholic Church and knew she had to become Catholic. She began the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. Nieto entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2000. A day earlier, on Good Friday, she had a vision while praying the Stations of the Cross at her parish. At the second station, Nieto said she experienced horrific spiritual pain when Jesus was flogged. She had a vision of The Cross and The Light production, and she said she heard God say to her in her spirit, “This is why you’re here!” Kelly knew she had found her purpose in life.
“God does not choose perfect people,” she said. “He chooses people who will make themselves available to him.” And that’s exactly what Nieto did.
A former Miss Michigan and Miss America runner up, Nieto worked as a performer and musician, but was not a composer. Yet by God’s grace she wrote, produced and composed the music for the musical production called The Cross and the Light. After roughly 17 years, the mother of five diligently and tirelessly has worked to bring this production to more 90,000 people across the world.
“We live in a post-Christian era,” Nieto said. “We have a powerful, timeless message of the good news of Jesus Christ, but we need to tell this story using today’s high-tech modes of communication to reach a culture that is accustomed to this kind of delivery of entertainment. This is what we are doing with The Cross and the Light.”
Nieto said that Shalom World, an emerging Catholic satellite television network, plans to film the 90-minute production of The Cross and the Light at Carmel High School, and will broadcast the performance during Lent 2017. Following Lent, the show will be available in over 100 countries through Shalom’s mobile app. “We plan to sell the DVD on our website,” Nieto said.
Show times for The Cross and the Light performance at Carmel High School are Friday, March 10 at 7:00 p.m.; Saturday, March 11 at 7:00 p.m.; and two shows on Sunday, March 12, at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
Tickets are $20 or $25 and can be purchased online with a credit card at www.CrossAndLight.com/Tickets. Any questions about the event or ticket purchases can be directed to TCTL event coordinator Wally Veazie at TCTL2017@gmail.com or 317-407-1281.
This feature originally appeared in The Catholic Moment, the newspaper of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.
