Paul Joel
Episode 269
25 MAR 2024
He has a miraculous health-related story. On the sports side, he played football in high school and college, including in the Glenwood Football League and training camp with the New York Jets’ farm team. During his first two years he became the best table tennis player in college. As a Pulmonary Fellow at Mass General Hospital, he worked with some of the world-class runners competing from the Boston Marathon. He is the author of a novel called, “A Man Like You and Me: A Supernatural Adventure Story,” whose purpose, he says, is to increase faith in God in the reader, and is about supernatural events that started in his life in 1982.
Notable guest quotes:
“I had a kind of a rough childhood, kind of I was always alone… the only way that I made friends was on these sports teams. So, sports was kind of like a saving grace – suddenly you have friends.”
“We were high school kids, and we were playing against men who were like 25, 26, 30 (years old). I played four years in that league, and we won the championship three times.”
“I woke up in the middle of the night and the orthopedic surgeon, a resident, sawed open the cast and my foot was paralyzed and numb. So, I had a numb, semi-paralyzed — the strength came back but since 1971, that was the end of football and that was also the end of being an orthopedic surgeon.”
“All of the Boston Marathon elite athletes would come through and they would get tested. And, of course, they could do much more exercise than I could because they were world-class athletes, but when it came to the anaerobic threshold, the part where you’re now making lactic acid because you’re using up more oxygen than you’re taking in, I was able to go further than any of those people.”
“I get a message. I don’t hear anything, it’s just somebody who’s just talking right into my brain. ‘I love you, your sins are forgiven,’ and suddenly I’m all happy and I’m excited and the creator of the universe just communicated with me.”
“My wife… she’s a firm believer… a fine graduate of Catholic high and very devout Catholic.”
“I look back where the light is and I see a Christmas tree for a few seconds. That disappears. And I see an Easter candle for a few seconds. That disappears. And then I see the face of Jesus and I’m petrified.”
“We’re in Rome… in October 1982, western Europe, on Europasses, and I’m walking up the Spanish steps and I look up and I see the Holy family with baby Jesus… and that’s important because that’s the reason why we went to Barcelona, to see the sacred family church.”
“On April 29, 2022, miraculously my memory comes back. What’s even more of a miracle is all the MRIs showed that the parts of my brain responsible for memory were destroyed.”
Related link:
