FirstLadyB | Connecting Faith and Hollywood
Late Night host Stephen Colbert is very open about being a Catholic, but that hasn’t always been his story.
For a period in his life, Colbert was an atheist.
The comedian told Father James Martin on his Catholic talk show “Faith in Focus” that there was a time in his life he turned away from God. However, a moment in 1986, when he was 22 years old, changed his life forever while walking down the street in Chicago.
“I had lost my faith in God, to my great grief,” he explained. “I was sort of convinced that I had been wrong all this time that I had been taught something that wasn’t true.”
“And I was walking down the street and somebody handed me a little, green New Testament Proverbs and Psalms,” he said.
“And I open it up to a little glossary in the front and it said verses to read based upon if you [have] anxiety,” he recalled.
The passage of scripture was from Matthew Chapter 5. The scripture spoke to the Late Night host, and changed his life forever.
“For the first time I understood the real meaning of the phrase, it spoke to me. Like it read off the page. The words of Christ read off the page. There was no effort. I stood on that street corner in the cold and read that sermon. And my life has never been the same,” Colbert shared.