Steven Thomas
Episode 300
28 OCT 2024
He spent years playing basketball, including grade school, high school, and college, and then went on to coach basketball for close to 15 years. Along the way he also coached football, including jobs at two Catholic high schools. Two years ago, he walked with a group of guys in the form of a cross across the United States, covering approximately 4,500 miles. He spent five years in the seminary, has written a novel called, “Catholic Joe: Superhero,” and is working on another book to be called, “The Team,” which he talks about during this interview.
Notable guest quotes:
“I went to all Catholic school until I got kicked out of Catholic school in sixth grade, and then they sent me to the public school. And then I went to Catholic high school, which was just a really, really great influence on me. And we had Nashville Dominicans. I think it was their first year teaching at that school, Providence Catholic High School. And just had some great role models. Had a priest who was a principal, Father Kaffer, and he was very instrumental in my life, as well as Father Lee Ryan. He was another person who had great influence, as well as one of the Nashville Dominicans, Sister Philip Joseph. She was probably the most influential because she had such a presence and such a sense of peace.”
“The principal would always have, for instance, when we played football, would always have confessions and then Mass… He was like a father figure. He ended up becoming bishop in our diocese in Joliet. And he was there for me in a lot of different ways.”
“Basketball, for me, was kind of my outlet. It was kind of my God, because I would turn to basketball when, you know, you start feeling down and whatnot.”
“I think I was 16, 17 years old. I read this story of Fatima, and it just changed my life.”
“I would go at lunchtime, there were a lot of girls that were going to pray the rosary during lunch. I would go in and pray the rosary at lunchtime and these girls were looking at me like, ‘What the hell is he doing here?’ But it was really where I would say God just kind of infused me with His grace.”
“When you experience God’s goodness and His love and His mercy, you want to kind of reciprocate. You want to do, ‘What’s the best I could do for God?’ And I thought the best that I could do for Him was to be a priest.”
“I was… praying; I’m saying, ‘Blessed Mother, what’s something I could do just for your Son, just for Jesus?’ And the whole idea of a national eucharistic procession was really given to me, very powerfully.”
“We decided to walk in the form of a cross. We had a relic of the true cross. So, the cross that Jesus shed his blood on, we had a little tiny sliver of that cross, and we, basically, we prayed as we walked. So, I walked from the east coast to the center. So, we walked from the shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the grotto at Notre Dame. It was about 650 miles.”
“When you see these teams that don’t really have any, like, really great superstars but they play so well as a team, there’s something so selfless and something so beautiful and holy about that. And so, to me that’s just so, that’s just, again, to see everybody executing for the sake of the team and not themselves is a really awesome, beautiful thing.”
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