Fr. Scott‑Vincent Borba, co‑founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics and now a Catholic priest, has described a terrifying spiritual encounter with St. Michael the Archangel that he says changed the course of his life, in a recent appearance on Matt Fradd’s podcast Pints with Aquinas.
Former beauty mogul recounts vision of hell
Borba told Fradd that the experience occurred during a party at his home, at a time when he was immersed in a different kind of lifestyle. “I was partying,” he said. “I looked around like, why am I not happy?” In that moment of interior questioning, he said, “all of a sudden, in a mystical way, the entire ceiling of my house kind of disappeared.”
Into his field of vision, he recounted, came a towering figure.
“What I saw come into my peripheral view is St. Michael the Archangel,” Borba said, describing the angel as “about two stories tall, the most beautiful creature you could ever put your eyes on.”
Time itself seemed to halt around him. “He suspended time,” Borba recalled. “It felt like everything else around me stopped, but I was still functioning.”
In that suspended moment, Borba says the archangel granted him an interior grace: “He then gave me the grace
