Chris Godfrey
Episode 62
6 APR 2020
He played guard in the NFL for the New York Jets, New York Giants, and Seattle Seahawks, including winning a world championship with the Giants in Super Bowl XXI. He also played on three University of Michigan Rose Bowl teams. He is the President and Founder of Life Athletes and nowadays is an attorney in Indiana. He even talks here about a conversion experience as well as having met (Saint) Mother Teresa!
Guest quotes:
“My faith at that time, I was loyally Catholic, but, not necessarily, oh, I went to Mass and stuff like that, but I didn’t really have, maybe mumbled a few prayers at night, but wasn’t the first thing on my mind.”
“My new freedoms and the horizons and all these new things I was learning and seeing really distracted me from thinking much about my faith.”
“I remember hanging up the phone and falling to me knees and saying, ‘Lord, I give up. Whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, You’re the boss now.’ And I’d never really prayed like that before and I meant it.”
“I just knew that I knew that God had a hand in the whole thing and that He was close to me. And because He was close to me I wanted to get close to Him.”
“I was a Seattle Seahawk at that time and our fourth child was due right at the time I would have to leave to go to Seattle for camp, so a lot of things were making me realize that, well, it’s been a good run, but I’m going to retire. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet. And so I went on retreat and the prayer in my heart was, ‘Lord, what do you want me to do next’?”
“All of a sudden the parable of the rich young ruler came to mind. That’s, ‘Lord what do you want me to do,’ well, ‘Give away everything that you have and come follow me.’ And I can remember just kicking the ground and going, ‘Ah, jeez, I’ve been tithing, going to Mass… doing all these difficult things and now you want me to give it all away’?”
“It’s not so much our money that God wants, He wants our hearts.”
“One of the things that I’ve been doing out here for several years — and it’s really a nice fit with some of my other charitable interests — is that we brought the Lourdes experience back here to our friends and family members in northern Indiana.”
“We invite the young people to join us – over 300 professional and Olympic athletes – to live lives of virtue, abstinence, and respect for life. And we invite them to make the same commitment that we’ve made. We call it the Life Athletes commitment.”
“Our Super Bowl rings are as much a symbol of perseverance as they are success, and, if perseverance is important in something like football or sports, it’s way more important in our personal lives.”
