“Well I Imagine when we were all children, we had people we looked up to. And I remember growing up, my heroes will probably always be the 1968 Tigers. I remember I was in the sixth grade when they won it all, and I’ll never forget it. There was Bill Freehan, you know, catcher, backup Ricky Price and Don Wert, who recently passed away, on third base, Ray Oyler at the short.
McAuliffe at second on the bench, on the mound was Earl Wilson Mikhailovich and Denny McLain. And then there was Norm Cash, Willie Horton, Al Kaline, Jimmy Northrup, pinch-hitter Gates Brown, Mayo Smith in the dugout, and his assistant manager, Dick Zuki. How’d that go? Pretty good. That’s pretty good. Yeah. Don’t forget this.
You don’t forget the winning team of your childhood. I’ll never forget that team. But, you know, we grow up and we realize athletes are human beings. Nevertheless, it’s normal. You look up to people, but as you grow up, you realize that your role models are really the people who helped you become the person that you are.
You know, good teachers you may have had, or maybe scout leaders or maybe coaches and especially your parents. Hopefully your parents were able to teach you your prayers and have you grow up to be a good Christian person. And that’s all very important. Well, we also need spiritual role models and that’s who the saints are.
They are our spiritual role models. And they cover every facet of life, every continent, every race, every age. I did 365 videos called Saint of the Day. So feel free to go on our website if you have two- to three- minutes to spare every day. And I know all of you do.
You can actually click and for three minutes, you get your saint of the day. Learn something about a saint that may inspire you to be a little bit more. As the scriptures say, a little more humble, a little more compassionate, a little more merciful, a little more clean of heart. As the Gospel says, these are the characteristics of the saints.
And reading about them, we realize they lived real, honest to God lives. They weren’t coming out of the womb with a halo on their head. Many of them struggled. Many of them were sinners and then converted. So, once you get to read about lots of the saints, you realize they’re just like you and me.
Except they were able to be persistent in their faith. They were able to overcome obstacles, just like we’re called to overcome the obstacles of sin. So I commend to you our daily Saint of the Day. But if you’re not online, well, here’s something for you.
Think about the saint you chose for your Confirmation name. Do you remember? I hope you remember who that saint was. Looked at saint up. You could go to the library and get out the encyclopedia and look that saint up and learn something about that. What inspired you to choose that saint so many years ago?
And have you lived up to that saint’s attributes?”
~Fr. Joseph Gembala
