The hard-working team of blogging professionals over at The Word, Catholic Colbert, have directed my attention to this terrific piece on My Close Personal Friend Stephen Colbert, from Parade.

Among the highlights:

Colbert was the youngest of 11 children growing up in Charleston, S.C. It was a big, bustling, Irish-Catholic family—”a humorocracy,” Colbert recalls. “Singing around the house highly encouraged.” On Sept. 11, 1974 everything changed. His father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash. With his other brothers and sisters either working or heading back to college that fall, the household was suddenly diminished to just two: 10-year-old Stephen and his mom. “The shades were down, and she wore a lot of black, and it was very quiet,” he remembers.

In sixth grade, Stephen switched to a new school. The nerdy newcomer who had just lost his father and two brothers had a rough time. “I was beaten up on a regular basis,” he recalls. Eventually, he started making jokes. “The beginning of my junior year, nobody knew me at school. A year later, I was voted Wittiest, and people were happy when I showed up at parties.”

Always a devout Catholic, Colbert lost his faith after graduating from college. “I was very depressed about it,” he says. “I wanted the idea that I would see my father and brothers again, and it was heartbreaking to think that that wouldn’t happen.” Then, one winter day, as Colbert walked down a street in Chicago, a Gideon handed him a Bible. “It was so cold I had to crack the pages,” he recalls. “I flipped it open, and it had a list of things to read about if you were feeling different ways. Under ‘Anxiety,’ it said ‘Matthew V,’ the Sermon on the Mount.” He paraphrases: “‘Who among you by worrying can change a hair on his head?’ It spoke to me.”

[snip]

Now living in New Jersey with his wife and three kids, Colbert says he just wants to be normal. “To have a wife and kids, and live in a suburban house, and wear khaki pants, and pick them up from the dry cleaner—I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think a lot of people who perform have a fear of being ordinary. They confuse ordinary with common.”

This uncommon man even manages, when he can find the time, to teach Sunday school. Colbert remembers the lesson of the Sermon on the Mount: “That’s being fearless,” he says. “Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid.”

Perhaps that’s why Pope John Paul was pictured so often smiling.

The rest of the story can be read when Parade arrives in your Sunday paper this weekend.

UPDATE: Parade’s website has some out-takes from the interview that are both revealing and moving:

ON THE STRANGE CONNECTION BETWEEN IMPROVISATIONAL COMEDY AND RELIGIOUS HUMILITY:
Stephen Colbert: One of the things that I like about improvisation is that, literally, there are no mistakes. There are only opportunities.

James Kaplan: You embrace the bomb.

SC: You embrace the bomb. And that idea is so appealing to me, because it’s also about valuing suffering, and gratitude for bad things — because really, what’s the option? Mother Theresa said, “Smile and accept.” I love that.

IN THE TRAGEDY OF HIS FATHER AND BROTHERS’ DEATH:
In a way that’s not easy to explain, I am grateful. I am grateful to be given the gift to have seen [my mother] survive it and to have had the suffering myself, because there is no escaping suffering. So you have to be grateful for it.

ON HIS YOUTHFUL LOSS OF FAITH:
The minute I went to college, I didn’t believe in God. The minute I had an opportunity to sort of be out from under the constant exposure to my faith, I accepted the opportunity to not believe. And I was very convinced of my atheism for a long time, and I was very depressed about it. I wanted very much to believe… I wanted the idea that I would see my father and my brothers again, and it was heartbreaking to think that that wouldn’t happen. The fool says in his heart that there is no God, and I was sad to be that fool. I would rather have been a fool for God, but I was so convinced that believing in God was foolish. There were five years maybe when I couldn’t think of why to get up. That wasn’t good. But the desire to believe always was there. The fact that thread was never cut was helpful. Then one day, a Gideon gave me a Bible walking down a street in Chicago….

Photo: by Andrew Eccles for Parade