A Deeper Victory: 9/​11 Hero & Olympian

This past sum­mer the Olympics gave us the oppor­tu­nity to watch some of the great­est ath­letes in the world achieve suc­cess in a wide vari­ety of sports. Many stood in the spot­light for their extra­or­di­nary ath­letic tal­ents, and shone for the virtues they exhib­ited under pres­sure. One of these men, Jason Read of the United States men’s row­ing team, had already demon­strated a great con­fi­dence and faith in him­self in the Sep­tem­ber 11th res­cue squad. How­ever, the Olympics chal­lenged him to take a step higher, to a deeper faith and con­fi­dence in God rather than himself.

The great­est day of this athlete’s life was not the day he lead his eight-​​man row­ing team to win the Olympic gold. He had already cel­e­brated a golden day in the Easter Vigil Mass of 2002 when he became Catholic. As the pace­set­ter at the head of the first-​​place team, Jason Read not only crossed the fin­ish line first, but set an exam­ple of faith for all to follow.

The begin­ning of the training

In eighth grade, Read became inter­ested in the pow­er­ful sport of row­ing, and worked hard to play even though every­one thought he was too small to be a com­pet­i­tive rower. As an adult, he is only 6’1″, and weighs 180 lbs, while most row­ers are big­ger and heav­ier, but he has faith in him­self: “I hate to lose, no mat­ter what the endeavor. I will do every­thing in my power to win. Most of my row­ing com­pe­ti­tion pre­sup­poses that because I’m small, I some­how won’t be able to beat them. You must have con­fi­dence in your skills and con­tin­u­ally strive towards reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing your own weaknesses.”

The ter­ror­ist attack of Sep­tem­ber 11th

Also as a young teenager, Read became inter­ested in giv­ing his time to help oth­ers, and vol­un­teered with the Hopewell, New Jer­sey Fire Depart­ment at age 14. Two years later he was an emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian, and at 21 became the youngest per­son in his state to be chief of the res­cue squad.

Only one hour out­side Man­hat­tan, Read’s life changed com­pletely on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. He received one of the first calls after the first plane hit the Twin Tow­ers, and raced to a com­mand post to help coor­di­nate 800 res­cue work­ers, set up a field hos­pi­tal, and finally go per­son­ally to Ground Zero to free the vic­tims trapped below.

Along with many other 9/​11 heroes Read worked for five days straight, stop­ping only once to sleep for eight hours at a hotel. He explains how this was pos­si­ble: “In the face of entire shifts of fire­fight­ers killed in a mat­ter of sec­onds, there was hope we would find peo­ple alive. Hope we would bring joy to a fam­ily that had loved ones miss­ing. That kind of tenac­ity and gump­tion enabled many of the res­cuers to work for days and days with­out sleep.”

The expe­ri­ence was so strong that Jason began to take a look at the mean­ing of his life on earth. What was the pur­pose of every­thing that he was doing, if he would not live for­ever? What was wait­ing for him after his death? “I had a sense of apa­thy about all things in the world that had meant so much to me,” he said, “Did I want to row any­more? Did I want to be chief of a vol­un­teer res­cue squad? What did it mean? All those peo­ple had been killed. Game over. Mor­tal­ity became real­ity in a mat­ter of seconds.”

The deci­sion to become Catholic

Read already had a strong faith in him­self, but now he knew that he needed a stronger faith in God. Even though he was not Catholic, the day after return­ing from Ground Zero he went to Mass. “It was emo­tional and revi­tal­iz­ing,” he said, “I prayed very hard -for the first time in my life.”

Father Tom Mul­lelly, chap­lain of the Olympic row­ing cen­ter at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, had been a friend of Jason’s. Now he helped the ath­lete in his search for a deeper faith. That next Easter, Jason expe­ri­enced the hope of a real res­ur­rec­tion. He described this day as “one of the hap­pi­est days of my life. Fel­low­ship, becom­ing Catholic as an adult and my uncanny abil­ity to be relent­lessly opti­mistic no mat­ter how tumul­tuous and ugly life can be helped bring me back to life.” The con­fi­dence he had in him­self had been shaken when he real­ized that he was not going to live for­ever, but it was replaced by some­thing more steady, a con­fi­dence in God.

Fam­ily also played a key role of sup­port, and Jason’s younger brother, Gun­ther, was bap­tized along with him. Jason’s faith became real and active in help­ing him live these rela­tion­ships in a bet­ter way. “I’m a bet­ter brother, uncle and son. Now I under­stand how pre­car­i­ous life can be, how quickly things can change. And I am grate­ful for each and every moment.”

Vic­tory on all fields

This spir­i­tual vic­tory went hand in hand with ath­letic suc­cess, and Read began to win medals and cham­pi­onships till the moment he earned the key seat in the Olympic team. How­ever, even though he and his team’s vic­tory is also the fruit of tremen­dous ded­i­ca­tion and effort, Jason, like many other Olympic ath­letes, is grate­ful to God for his suc­cesses in sports. This does not mean that God makes some ath­letes win and the oth­ers lose. “Although prayer does not guar­an­tee vic­tory, it helps play­ers put things in per­spec­tive and do all for God’s glory and not just their own” says Fr. Kevin Lixey, L.C. of the new Vat­i­can sports depart­ment, “The virtue of grat­i­tude, by which we rec­og­nize that all good things come from God, is both an act of humil­ity as well as of praise and adoration.”

Jason was awarded the U.S. Rowing’s Man of the Year Award, but more impor­tant than what he did was why he did it. Before, he was row­ing for him­self, after his expe­ri­ence at Ground Zero and at the foot of Christ’s cross he learned to row for some­thing besides him­self. He rows for love of the sport, for love of his coun­try, and for love of God who gave him the tal­ents of an ath­lete. “After 9/​11, I changed my approach to row­ing. I no longer was fueled by vengeance and anger to beat other crews. My desire was to become the absolute best rower for Amer­ica.” St. Paul says “Run so as to win (1 Corinthi­ans 9:24),” but also empha­sizes that any activ­ity we do, if it is with­out love, is empty. Jason mas­tered both aspects, dri­ving his team to win the gold while doing it not for him­self, but for God.

Bible Blurbs

• “I do not think of myself as hav­ing reached the fin­ish line. I give no thought to what lies behind but push on to what is ahead. My entire atten­tion is on the fin­ish line as I run toward the prize to which God calls me-​​life on high in Christ Jesus.” Philip­pi­ans 3:13-14
• “Jesus told her, ‘I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life; who­ever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and every­one who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’” John 11:25-26
• “I myself am the liv­ing bread come down from Heaven. If any­one eats this bread he shall live for­ever.” John 6:51
• “Do you not know that in a  all the  , but only one gets the prize?  in such a way as to get the prize.” 1 Corinthi­ans 9:24

Saints and Heroes

Pope John Paul II

As a young man he had the dream of becom­ing a teacher, a writer, and an actor, but God had a big­ger plan. Dur­ing the tragic events of World War II and after the death of his father he felt the call to be a priest. His ded­i­ca­tion and faith have even­tu­ally led him, to his own sur­prise, to be called to be a bishop, car­di­nal, and also the Pope, the vis­i­ble head of our Catholic Church. He has often been called “God’s ath­lete” because of the mil­lions of miles he has trav­eled to encour­age his broth­ers in the faith in every part of the world, and because nei­ther an assas­si­na­tion attempt nor numer­ous ill­nesses have stopped his efforts. Dur­ing his time as our Holy Father he has helped in the fall of Com­mu­nism, cre­ated the World Youth Days, and inspired thou­sands of young men to become priests. His deep­est pur­pose is the new evan­ge­liza­tion of the mod­ern world. His ral­ly­ing cry is: “Be not afraid!”

Edel Quinn

Born in Ire­land. After a happy child­hood she felt the call to be a con­tem­pla­tive nun, but the death of her mother obliged her to help care for her fam­ily for a num­ber of years. Then tuber­cu­lo­sis (a sick­ness of the lungs) made it impos­si­ble for her to enter the con­vent. Nev­er­the­less she con­se­crated her­self pri­vately to God and became very active in door-​​to-​​door evan­ge­liza­tion in the poor­est neigh­bor­hoods of Dublin through an orga­ni­za­tion called the Legion of Mary. In spite of her poor health she insisted with the lead­ers of the Legion of Mary that she wanted to go to Africa to spread this good work. She even­tu­ally received per­mis­sion and worked tire­lessly in as a lay mis­sion­ary in spite of her poor and fail­ing health. Her ded­i­ca­tion and love resulted in much suc­cess in that continent.

Vocab­u­lary

Con­fi­dence: Firm belief, trust

Faith: (In self) Con­fi­dence that one can do a good job.
(In God) Per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God. Trust in God’s love and readi­ness to do God’s will

Hope: (Human hope) Belief that what one desires can hap­pen
(The­o­log­i­cal hope) Con­fi­dence in God’s gift of eter­nal life, Confidence in God’s mercy

Humil­ity: Free­dom from pride and arrogance. A mod­est esti­mate of one’s own worth

Tenac­ity: Abil­ity to per­se­vere in the midst of difficulties

Fel­low­ship: Friend­ship and encour­age­ment of oth­ers with the same values. Christian friendship

Grat­i­tude: Thankfulness. Ability to honor the help of God and others

Dis­cus­sion Questions

1. What are the dif­fer­ent moments when this story speaks about hope? Are they dif­fer­ent kinds of hope? What are some exam­ples of the dif­fer­ence between hope in other peo­ple, and hope in God?
2. What are the dif­fer­ent moments when this story speaks about faith? Are they dif­fer­ent kinds of faith? What are some exam­ples of the dif­fer­ence between faith in other peo­ple, and faith in God?
3. Would you say that Sep­tem­ber 11th was a tragedy for Jason, or an impor­tant moment in his life? Why? What made it either neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive for him?
4. Was there some­thing deeper that Jason dis­cov­ered in the faith than just a solu­tion to death? What was it?
5. What was the dif­fer­ence in the way that Jason played sports before and after Sep­tem­ber 11th? What were the things that moti­vated him before and after?
6. When ath­letes thank God for their tri­umphs, is it because he makes them win? Does he make the other peo­ple lose? If you lose dur­ing a game, does that mean that you did not pray as hard as the other per­son did?
7. Jason Read became Catholic, but it was more than just a name that he called him­self. How can you tell that he began to live as a real Catholic? How did he live his Catholic faith in his daily life.
8. Let’s try to pick out some the key moments that God was work­ing in Jason’s life. Let us try to imag­ine how God was try­ing to do some­thing to help Jason and make him into a great per­son. What moments can you see in his life where God was working?
9. Does receiv­ing Christ in the Eucharist give you con­fi­dence and hope? Does it push you to be bet­ter? Why? Is the Eucharist just a sym­bol of God or is it some­thing more? What more?

Writ­ing Activities

1. Try to imag­ine how God is work­ing in your life right now. What are some things that have hap­pened recently, either big or ordi­nary, that might be ways God is try­ing to help you become a bet­ter per­son, stu­dent, son or daugh­ter, friend, Chris­t­ian, etc.?
2. Do you thank God for the tal­ents and suc­cesses he has given you, or do you for­get? Take some time to write a thank you let­ter to God, for all of the things he has done for you recently, the happy moments, and the good things he has given you.

Res­o­lu­tion Ideas

• In small groups, look for other inspir­ing cases of Olympic ath­letes, how they lived dif­fer­ent virtues in their games. Write a short biog­ra­phy on these ath­letes, pick­ing out 2-​​3 virtues that they demon­strate, and present it to the rest of the class. Some exam­ples might be: Mariel Zagu­nis, Cesar Gar­cia, the Iraqi soc­cer team, etc.
• Go to Mass as a class, and try to imag­ine what it was like for Jason in that first Mass where he “prayed like he never did before.” Invite the pas­tor or a local priest to the class to speak moments when he has seen the power of the faith in oth­ers. Stu­dents each write a para­graph to try to answer this ques­tion: “What’s so great about your Catholic faith?”
• As a class, brain­storm ways that an ath­lete can give credit to God in sports (if they have the chance to say some words after the game, wear­ing a medal in the game, doing a team prayer before the game, giv­ing a good exam­ple, show­ing joy, show­ing ded­i­ca­tion in train­ing, con­grat­u­lat­ing and encour­ag­ing oth­ers, using good lan­guage, etc.). If there are enough stu­dents on one of the school sports teams, encour­age them to start a trend in the team to remem­ber to ask God’s help and thank him for the suc­cesses he brings.

Web Resources

More infor­ma­tion on Olympic athletes:

http://www.usatoday.com

http://www.nbcolympics.com/index.html

Infor­ma­tion on becom­ing Catholic:

http://www.ecatholic2000.com/rcia/rcia.shtml