Chris Massaro
Episode 387
6 JULY 2026
He has competed in a wide array of sports over the years. In high school he played football, basketball, track, and tennis. He tried to walk on to the college football team as a freshman and ended up playing club rugby and volleyball in college, when he also played pickup basketball. He also participated in a number of intramural sports in college. In 2015 he entered the seminary, where he competed in basketball and soccer tournaments. He had biked sections of the coast of California in 2013 visiting the Franciscan Missions. He has competed in six triathlons and in 2023 he biked from Albany, New York, to Arlington, Virginia, with Biking for Babies, which he serves as president of and unites cycling with the formation of young adults into missionary disciples of Jesus Christ.
Notable guest quotes:
“I went to Sunday school, or what it was called at the time, CCD I think is the acronym for it back then… I went to Sunday school until I was confirmed in sixth grade and then kind of had a little gap before I joined a youth group actually when I was in high school and that’s where things started to kind of move in a more faithful direction for me.”
“I joined the Newman Center at Westchester University, a beautiful Catholic community there and started to get myself involved with the people that were there, with different prayer experiences, I would go there for Mass every Sunday and over the years in college I started to get a little bit more and more involved while I was there. And then when I was a senior in college I kind of had some shuffling of the friend group that I was in that kind of prompted me actually to spend more time around the Newman Center and make more friends of the people at the Newman Center and I really grew to love it and started to … be there regularly during the week.”
“I graduated college, started to go to grad school at Vanderbilt University, and … when I had gotten down there one of the first things that I did when I moved there was go find the Catholic community for Vanderbilt University, which is called University Catholic and just plugged myself in. I just had a beautiful experience of prayer while I was down there and a deepened conversion from that and it really has shaped my life since then.”
“I was actually in the middle of praying a 54-day Rosary novena that my girlfriend at the time asked me to pray with her and I, prior to that, … did not have a ton of experience with the Rosary or that kind of consistent prayer over a period of time like that. So that was new for me and it really, I think God just used it in a beautiful way to start working on my heart and on my soul through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, praying through the mysteries of Christ’s life and meditating on them.”
“I was in the Cathedral, I was at Mass, and I had this profound, really, I would call it an encounter with the living God, who really showed Himself to me to be real and in a real relationship with me and desiring a real relationship from me and it hit me in such a way that I remember almost falling back into my seat. I was standing at Mass (and) I actually had to grab the pew to kind of steady myself.”
“I believe that God’s grace in a profound way invaded my soul, not in a sacramental way because obviously that’s what the sacraments are for, but just in a in a deep way in that moment and I really look at that moment as a defining point in my life; something that changed the way that I viewed God, the way that I viewed others, the way that I viewed how I would live my faith.”
“One of the fruits of that invasion of grace was thinking that maybe the Lord was leading me to the priesthood. And so, I listened, thanks be to God, to the wisdom of many people who told me to just give it some time… and ultimately it just seemed like that was where God was leading… and (I) entered the seminary for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia… seminary… called St. Charles Borromeo.”
“It is very easy to leave and to feel like … I’m letting people down, 100 percent. I felt that a ton when I left the seminary.”
“We do use some biking, that’s why it has the name Biking for Babies, and it’s an adventurous mission at the same time. So, it really combines a deep spiritual component with having an impact in the society around us and also a fun adventurous spirit to it on bicycles across the country.”
“It’s like an event, like a pilgrimage and a mission trip and a retreat kind of on wheels all at the same time.”
“Redemptive suffering is a real spiritual component within the mission of Biking for Babies. We want to offer our sacrifices to the cross for the renewal of the culture of life and in a specific way for the mothers and the families, the fathers, that are served by pregnancy centers.”
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