Fabio Marino
Episode 303
18 NOV 2024
He started playing tennis when he was eight years old and started teaching the sport at age 19. Two years into his college years he started a tennis academy that became one of the biggest such schools in his hometown. In 1990 he started at an exclusive resort in California, teaching the sport there for what would be 32 years. Along the way, one of the kids he taught there not only became a #1 player in college but went on to become a pro athlete in the sport. On the faith side, he pursued a master’s degree in theology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, even though he wasn’t baptized Catholic until age 27. He emotionally shares his story of tragic loss in his family.
Notable guest quotes:
“I wasn’t a Catholic at all. My mother was what I call a baptized unbeliever, and my father was an agnostic, so we never went to church, we never prayed, we never read scripture, no, it was completely a pagan household.”
“I’m from Argentina, so … I played soccer until I was 15. I was playing both tennis and soccer, and then just I had to decide, I couldn’t be playing both. So, I chose tennis especially because in tennis, I win by myself, I lose by myself. I take all the credit for losing or winning. While in a sport like soccer, I might play the best game of my life, and we still can lose. I might play the worst game of my life, and we still can win. So, for me, it was more like, I’ll do it by myself.”
“I don’t know why I got the gift of faith, and my father never did. And my mother got the gift of faith, but she didn’t do anything with it. But somehow, I think God gave me the gift of faith.”
“That’s why I became Catholic. It’s not me. It’s just the grace of God. I don’t know why I got it.”
“It was quite a shift in my life when I received the gift of grace and got baptized.”
“I have eight kids from (ages) 30 to 16, four boys and four girls. And when Thomas, he’s my oldest, was born. I decided that I was going to have to have enough knowledge to answer the questions when he turned a teenager… And… I started doing a master’s in theology, which I stopped when my fifth child was born.”
“I always say that Americans are defined by two characters, two kinds of people. In my opinion, one is the Marines and the second is the cowboy and I couldn’t be a Marine, so I became a cowboy.”
“I teach Bible study… I teach confirmation… And also I’m an altar server… And now I’ve been trained to be a Eucharistic minister, but the ones that go to the hospital and pray with the sick.”
“If you cannot pray a rosary, pray a decade. If you cannot pray for ten minutes, just pray for one. If you cannot read the scripture for a chapter, read half. And if you cannot stop sinning, stop making excuses.”
Related link:
Guest post Fabio mentions having written for Catholic Answers
