Shia LaBeouf and the Power of Conversion

Shia LaBeouf, a well-known actor, recently converted to Catholicism and recounted his experience to Bishop Barron. Their interview’s YouTube video currently has 1.5 million views. You can see the video here: Bishop Barron Presents | Shia LaBeouf – Padre Pio and the Friars

Multiple reasons could be given for the interview’s popularity. Shia’s fame, for example, probably attracts a lot of his fans, but fame can also attract skeptics greedy to mock a famous person for stooping down to religion. Of course, many Christians and Catholics have viewed it with enthusiasm, encouraged to hear a voice from the popular culture speak positively about the faith.

One viewer, a nondenominational Christian friend of mine, initially complained that Shia’s conversion was too emotional. My friend argued that as soon as Shia’s emotions faded, he would find a new religion or a new distraction or simply return to his old way of life. To be sure, my friend’s idea is at least possible. Too often, people believe that the strength of their faith must relate to the emotional intensity of their faith, unaware that some people reach a higher level of spirituality by passing through times of arid prayer or by feeling completely abandoned by God. St. John of the Cross and Mother Theresa are two examples, humans who experienced dark nights of the soul, but their experiences led to rich interior lives and rich lives of charity. Both would argue that simply equating faith with emotions can be misleading. Emotions quickly pass, but strong faith, the imperishable faith of the saints, endures despite any temporary spiritual malaise.

Anyway, as my friend and I continued to debate Shia’s conversion, we also spoke about the famous conversions of two Christian heroes: Saint Paul and Saint Augustine of Hippo. In fact, I pointed out that those men also experienced powerful emotions during their conversions. A conversion implies a transformation, a revolution in one’s character, so it is no wonder that a convert’s emotions are intensified. My friend and I were reminded of Flannery O’Connor’s words that “grace changes us and the change is painful.” The change is often painful because the sinner wants to continue living life on his own terms, without the aid of grace, but to follow God is to painfully abandon radical independence. Shia, in fact, tears up several times in the interview and speaks passionately about the shame he feels when he remembers his past life, a time when he “was on fire with sin.” That pain, however, is also mixed with Shia’s intense joy at discovering Christ and his church. Again, the intensity of Shia’s story recalls other conversion experiences.

Think of St. Paul, a great sinner before his conversion. In Acts chapter 9, Paul, known as Saul before his conversion, was still persecuting Christians, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). However, on the road to Damascus, he is converted powerfully: “suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him,” and Paul is knocked to the ground. The voice of Christ says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When Paul gets up, stunned, he is temporarily blind, “and for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank” (Acts 9:9). We can only imagine what emotions must have surged through Paul during those three days, emotions that must have caused him great pain, fully aware that he had been persecuting the very Christians he would now defend until his martyrdom. After the pain, however, Paul spends the rest of his life traveling all over the ancient world, joyfully preaching the Gospel despite suffering persecution, despite being shipwrecked, despite imprisonment, and despite the threat of death by stoning.

Or think of Saint Augustine. He openly admits to a life of sexual debauchery in his Confessions. In the same book, he admits to seeking happiness in the allure of a scandalous theatre and in his lust for fame. None of these pursuits bring Augustine happiness. Similarly, Shia admits that he believed becoming a praised and famous actor would make him happy, but it only led to loneliness, despair, and abandonment. In book eight of the Confessions, just before his conversion, Augustine remembers the various paths he has unsuccessfully wandered in search of happiness, and he weeps: “I wept most bitter tears in the brokenness of my heart.” The intense pain is matched later, only after years of struggling search, by the intense joy he feels after finally converting: “At last I was speaking freely to you, my brightness, my wealth, and my salvation, O Lord my God.”

Of course, Augustine and Paul are saints, so let me be clear: I am not saying Shia is a saint or that because of his conversion he will become a saint, but I am hopefully showing how conversion experiences can be and have been emotionally intense manifestations of God’s grace working in the world. In fact, a clear parallel can be drawn between the conversions above and the story of the prodigal son, Christ’s parable about the son who was lost but then was found again. At his lowest point, the prodigal son is eating pig food, but just think of the son and father’s joy when they are reunited, how the father throws a tremendous celebratory feast. Clearly Christ wants us to see the powerful emotions related to conversion.

Granted, the powerful feelings of most converts cannot remain at an intense pitch forever. The prodigal son’s grand feast eventually concluded, but hopefully what remained with him was the persevering faith that endures to the end, as it remained with Saint Paul and Saint Augustine.

A convert myself, I relate to various aspects of all the conversion stories just discussed, to Shia’s shame at the actions committed before his conversion, to Saint Paul’s passion for the Gospel’s truth after realizing he had falsely persecuted the Gospel, to the emotional toil suffered by Augustine, and to the dissipation recognized by the prodigal son when he found himself feeding on swine food.

I also experienced their same profound joy after conversion. Shortly after entering the church, I remember walking to my car after a Saturday night vigil mass. It was dusk. I looked up and noticed the sky ribboned with different shades of purple and orange and pink and red. I stared at the gift with tears. For so many years, I had desperately searched for happiness in the dust without ever glancing up at the heavens. In that intense emotional moment, I recognized that I was once lost, but now was found.

However, as I mentioned earlier, the extraordinary pain and joy of conversion does not last forever. My Christian friend and I had a wonderful dialogue about all of this. We both realized Shia’s powerful story was just the beginning of his new pilgrimage, and we also discussed our own need to continue persevering in the spiritual life.

Today, instead of the wildfire of faith that burned within me at my conversion, my interior life, which is nourished by prayer, scripture, theology, and the sacramental life, resembles more of a steady, eternal candle flame. I have been blessed to understand through firsthand experience the “both/and” of Catholicism. For example, an initial conversion can be a powerful, extraordinary event, but we are also called by Christ to perform a daily conversion: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9: 23).

Many mornings I wake up without an overwhelming or intense spiritual feeling, but I still gratefully study our faith and gratefully kneel down in prayer, and with God’s grace, I always will.

Quoted Sources

All scripture quoted from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. Library of America, 1988.

Saint Augustine: Confessions. Translated by Thomas Williams. Hackett Publishing, 2019.