During the mid-1980s, there was a weekly television series called The Equalizer. The show aired on CBS for five seasons, and was about a former CIA spy who had a mysterious past and used his knowledge and skills to obtain justice for innocent people who had no one else to turn to.

In 2014, 25 years after The Equalizer TV show was canceled, a movie was released by the same name. The man in the movie who is the equalizer is Robert “Bob” McCall, a retired Marine who formerly worked for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The movie begins with McCall living a quiet life in a small community. He works in a big-box hardware store where he has made friends with several of his coworkers.

No one knows about McCall’s past, which includes a history of working as a professional assassin for the DIA. McCall is a frequent customer at a local diner where he drinks tea while reading a book that he selected from a list of historical books. A friendship develops between him and Alina, a young lady who periodically stops by the diner to eat dinner. At one point, McCall learns that Alina has been forced to work as a prostitute for the Russian Mafia ever since she was brought to the United States by the mafia.

Alina ends up in the hospital after being brutally beaten by one of the members of the mafia. McCall takes the law into his own hands and kills several members of the mafia. He then launches a one-man war against the mafia. In the end, he is able to free Alina from the control of the mafia.

The 2014 movie was so popular that a sequel — The Equalizer 2 — was released in 2018. In that movie, one of McCall’s old friends, Susan Plummer, is murdered. McCall and Susan’s friendship dated back to the time when they worked together at the DIA.

After McCall finds out about Susan’s death, he learns that she was killed while she was investigating the assassination of a young couple in another country.

McCall contacts Dave York, a man who was his partner when he worked at the DIA. Dave was the person who found Susan after she was killed. He tells McCall that her murder was the result of a botched robbery by a couple of hoodlums who beat up Susan and stabbed her.

McCall is not satisfied with Dave’s conclusion, so he personally travels to the site where the murder occurred and conducts his own investigation. He reads all the crime reports, including Susan’s autopsy report. He then meets with Dave and tells him that Susan was killed by a professional assassin, not a couple of inexperienced criminals.

He explains that Susan’s autopsy showed that her stab wound was two millimeters over from the area of the third lower rib on her right side. Upon hearing those details, Dave immediately identifies the stabbing as one that involved the “closed-quarter technique,” which he and McCall both learned when they were professional assassins.

The stab wound on Susan was at the precise location of the body where a knife strike causes an instant or rapid death. The knife that was plunged into Susan’s side pierced her right lung and her heart, which caused her lungs to quickly fill with blood. When that happened, she was no longer able to breathe, which caused her to drown in her own blood.

Experienced deer hunters know that the best way to quickly kill a deer is to aim for the deer’s heart and lungs. If there is not a direct hit to the heart and the lungs get hit, the deer quickly dies by drowning in its own blood. When president Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a 22-caliber bullet hit one of his lungs. Even though he was quickly rushed to the hospital and had some of the top doctors in the country working on him, he almost died because his lungs quickly filled with blood.

Because it was Dave who found Susan after she had been robbed, McCall concluded that it was Dave who stabbed her. McCall tricks Dave and puts him in a position where he has to admit that he was the one who killed Susan. The reason he killed her was because he was concerned that she would discover that it was him and some other men who had assassinated the young couple.

I would like for you to read a passage from the Gospel of John. After you read it, take a guess as to the exact point where the soldier’s spear pierced the side of Jesus.

Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him; but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. John 19:13-35.

According to Saint Bonaventure, when the soldiers approached the crucified men to break their legs, the Blessed Mother was still standing at the foot of her son’s cross. She pleaded with the soldiers not to break His legs and to leave Him alone. While she was talking to the soldiers, another soldier came up and thrust his spear into the side of the body of Jesus. The tip of his spear cut through our Lord’s flesh and pierced His right lung and heart, which caused blood and water to flow out of His chest cavity.

The soldier was a professional assassin who was trained on how to kill a man with one strike of a lance to a specific area of the body. While it was believed that Jesus was already dead, the soldier wanted to make sure that if He wasn’t dead, He would quickly die after the tip of the spear pierced His lung and heart.

The men who tortured and murdered our Savior were no amateurs. They were highly trained and experienced assassins who were paid well to do the dirty work of their corrupt leaders.

Last month (February 2021), CBS launched a new television series called The Equalizer. This time around the equalizer is Robyn McCall, an African American single mother who has a mysterious past and uses her extensive knowledge and skills to help people who have nowhere else to turn.

There will always be a demand for shows that have equalizer-type characters who bring hope and justice to people who have nowhere else to turn. It’s in our nature to desire fairness, justice, and when we feel it is appropriate, revenge.

But there is only one equalizer who has ever lived who can provide us with what we all truly desire: love, hope, justice, happiness, and joy. His name is Jesus Christ. He was the Savior and Redeemer who, because of His love for each of us, came to the earth to secure eternal salvation for those of us who are willing to take up our cross and follow Him.

We should all be eternally grateful that our Lord paid the ultimate price for our salvation — death on a cross — so that we would be allowed to enter into His Kingdom after we die, where there will be perpetual love, hope, happiness, and joy for all eternity.

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