At our Eucharistic Convention this year Roy Schoeman gave two presentations. This is the first of them where he talks about the Role of the Holocaust in Salvation History and the second he shared hir personal testimony with us.

Roy had a dramatic conversion from Judaism to the Catholic faith – he is what he says about himself:

My parents are German Jews who fled from the Nazi holocaust and settled here in the U.S.. I was born and raised in a middle class suburb of New York City. Growing up I was quite religious, but drifted away from religion when I went to college — first to M.I.T., where I absorbed the hip scientific “we know better than to believe in God” philosophy, and then to Harvard Business School, where I eventually joined the faculty.

Despite worldly success my life felt irrelevant, meaningless. When I suffered some reverses in both my professional and my personal lives, I hit bottom. It was at that point that the Lord gave me perhaps the greatest grace of my life. While walking on an empty beach, it seemed like I “fell” into Heaven. I directly felt God’s presence and His love. I knew that He existed, that from the first moment of my life He loved me and watched over me, and that everything, every event which happened in my life was exactly the best thing which could possibly happen. I knew that everything I did — for good or for bad — mattered and was weighed in the scales. I knew that we lived forever, and knew that Heaven existed. I knew about the angelic hierarchy. I knew that this was not the picture of God that I had from the Old Testament. I prayed to know the name of my Lord and Master, my God. I prayed “Let me know your name. I don’t mind if you are Buddha, and I have to become a Buddhist. I don’t mind if you are Apollo, and I have to become a Roman pagan. I don’t mind if you are Krishna, and I have to become a Hindu. As long as you are not Christ and I have to become a Christian!”

Roy has an interesting story – we invite you to enjoy watching these videos.