Jose Pulido
Episode 316
17 FEB 2025
He competed for four years in track and field in high school and present day is a coach of an evangelical nature. He is the founder of Holy Family Evangelization, a Catholic coaching organization, AND he is the author of a brand-new book just being released, called, “How to Evangelize Anyone,” which is a complete reversal for someone who was an atheist. He has evangelized at universities, Fortune 500 companies, and various non-profits in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia. He has also advised numerous organizations and parishes on evangelization and catechesis.
Notable guest quotes:
“Track and field is just one of those sports where perseverance is very much rewarded, right? It’s just basically you racing against your past time, and I’m someone that perseverance is sort of one of my values from an early age… I also did cross country.”
“I became an atheist because I couldn’t quite grapple with the problem of pain. How does one deal with the fact that there’s a suffering world. And I decided you know what, things don’t quite make sense. So why would there be a God?”
“I like to joke that I came back to the church kicking and screaming. The logic brought me back, but I wasn’t happy about it. Though I was in the church logically, I wasn’t there emotionally.”
“Over the course of a year, 2011, I really drew closer to the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and then all three together in the form of the Holy Family.”
“Around freshman, sophomore year that’s when the logic brought me full force into the Catholic church, but emotionally I wasn’t quite there yet. And then it was at the Newman Center with Father Greg Schaefer and the FOCUS missionary … where just my heart started to beat.”
“It’s really important to both have a logical context for the faith as well as a personal experience to the faith. I think that’s what keeps people in over the long term.”
“It was December 24, 2011, where I had a really profound experience with the Holy Family of Nazareth… it was in the Gothic Cathedral of Barcelona.”
“I didn’t just need to be in the perfect family and to feel that love. I also needed to know that I could give love, that I could be strong, that I could also win. You know, like, nobody wants to be part of an all-star team and be the worst player.”
“All of us at Townsend Harris High School had to take something called the Ephebic oath. And it basically details what a good citizen of the city is. It’s from Athens. And the last line profoundly impacted me… ‘I shall not leave my city any less but rather greater than I found it.’ And as a Catholic it’s this, like, I shall not leave my church any less but rather greater than I found it.”
“The idea is so much of successful evangelization is to see the other person as God might, as the members of the Holy Family might… So, the litany of gratitude is, just what do I see in this other person so that I can then start with love and end with love.”
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