Recently, former child star and Transformers actor Shia LeBeouf sat down with Bishop Robert Barron on his Word on Fire Catholic Ministries YouTube channel to discuss Shia’s recent conversion to Catholic Christianity. Shia gives a powerful testimony that, on the heels of abuse claims by an ex-girlfriend and his life falling apart, God moved powerfully through both his participation in Alcoholics Anonymous and the preparation for his upcoming film, a biopic about Padre Pio, which included staying at a Catholic seminary, studying the Scriptures, and reading Christian works including St. Augustin’s Confessions.
Repeatedly in the interview, Shia recounts how God’s prevenient grace moved on him to draw him to the fold of God and defeat his ego when he was at the lowest points of life.
Shia: “At that time in my life… I had a gun on the table. I was outta here. I didn’t wanna be alive anymore when all of this happened. Shame like I has never experienced before, the kinda shame you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go. You can’t even go outside to get a taco.”
Bp. Barron: “And that’s where you are when you’re up there [at the seminary] reading the Gospel and thinking about playing Padre Pio? You’re in that state?”
Shia: “Yes, but I’m also in this like deep desire to hold on.”
At one point in the interview, Shia recounts how the grace of God in the Eucharist deeply affected him and changed him.
Shia: “I start feeling like this um… deep reprieve. It’s not just a cracker anymore, I start feeling a physical effect from it… it starts to feel regenerative. I start enjoying [the Eucharist] to such a degree I don’t want to miss it ever... I am feeling safety.”
His comments echoes' many sentiments expressed in the hymns contained in the Wesley’s Hymns on the Lord’s Supper:
Raise, and enable me to stand,
Save out of the destroyer’s hand
This helpless soul of mine,
Vouchsafe me then thy strength’ning grace,
And with the arms of love embrace,
And keep me ever thine.1
You can watch the entire interview here, I highly recommend it.
To learn more about submitting to The Earnest Wesleyan for publication, please click here:
https://divinity.duke.edu/sites/divinity.duke.edu/files/documents/cswt/27_Hymns_on_the_Lord%27s_Supper_%281745%29_mod.pdf