Matthew Plese
Episode 329
19 MAY 2025
He is an amateur marathoner and active member of the Chicago Catholic Run Club, saying that running has become a key part of his spiritual and personal life. He has completed five of the six World Marathon Majors and is just one race away from earning the coveted Six Star Medal. On the faith side, he is the president of CatechismClass.com, an online-based organization whose mission is to make the best in Catholic religious education and Sacramental preparation available for those who need it. In addition, he has authored several Catholic books and has written for different Catholic publications.
Notable guest quotes:
“Thanks be to God it was really after 9/11 my family started looking at, ‘We got to get back to some sort of a faith life and I guess it was natural that my father coming from a Catholic background looked at that and thankfully that God really led us there.”
“I was just so happy that really it was God himself who led us to the truth and ever since then I’ve had no hesitation that – going deeper and deeper and deeper into the faith – that it was truly the real faith established by God himself.”
“That’s something that I tell people pretty often that anybody can get into sports because in high school I wasn’t involved in sports at all.”
“I’ve also gotten into hiking. At the same time, that can very much be a great physical activity for you. It can be a great time for prayer and reflection, at the same time great physical activity.”
“I went to the University of St. Thomas, a great school, and they’re also known for a number of different programs there and one of which was their philosophy program, they have the Catholic studies program. So, I did very much enter that university with the intention of furthering the faith and getting a philosophy degree.”
“Ever since I became Catholic, I felt like this was truly what our Lord said was the pearl of great price in the field.”
“Really by the grace and thanks be to God that since then I’ve written for a number of great publications, I’ve authored over five books, I present at different conferences around the United States, I’ve become a bit of a subject matter expert in some areas, especially fasting and absence … I even teach this to priests at seminaries.”
“If this is the truth and this is real and this is the only thing that remains for all eternity and everything else is gonna pass away one day, why am I gonna put such an exorbitant amount of time in things that really don’t matter. If I just look at it from that perspective, and the faith obviously is number one and I try to tie really anything about the faith into my life. And I’ve done that with my work, getting into marathon running and a number of things, even the accounting work that I do. I try to go out of my way to help priests do their tax returns for cheaper, or religious orders too.”
“Whatever you can do, you should be trying to do something charitable every single day to a family member or a friend, online, in-person, just one charitable act a day and you’ll find that over time at the end of the year you’ve done so much work building up the faith.”
“I found personally that all this training… it’s very liberating because I can offer all this up for penance… So, I have found running to be very enriching and spiritually edifying.”
“The thing that I devote most of my time to is how can I continue to get more people to learn the fullness of the Catholic faith their entire life from cradle to grave.”
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