Play Hard, Pray Harder…

(Part 1 of 2)

Prayer and Power

Prayer has power. It can change our lives. It can make us capa­ble of doing what we had never imag­ined. In this les­son we will look at two exam­ples of prayer and the impact prayer has on our lives.

Giv­ing it all up

He had it all: a promis­ing sports career, a pretty girl­friend, an excit­ing future. And he has left it all. For God. For others.

His name is Chase Hilgen­brinck. This sum­mer he left his pro­fes­sional soc­cer team, the New Eng­land Rev­o­lu­tion, in order to enter a sem­i­nary. Chase is prepar­ing to become a Catholic priest. Let’s look at some high­lights of Chase’s life and how prayer has opened him up to a big­ger mis­sion.

Seeds of faith and sports

Chase grew up in Catholic fam­ily in Illi­nois. When they were boys, Chase and his older brother Blaise were altar servers at their parish. Blaise liked serv­ing Mass. Chase did not.

They both liked sports, how­ever, espe­cially soc­cer. And they were good at soc­cer, so good in fact that they had to give up serv­ing Mass, much to Chase’s delight, because they were on travel teams that spent most week­ends out of town.

Their par­ents accom­pa­nied them to all the games, but also taught them that God is the most impor­tant per­son in their lives.

Sur­prise discovery

Soc­cer was Chase’s pas­sion. He and his brother improved each year. Yet when he was a junior in high school, some­thing spe­cial hap­pened in his rela­tion­ship with Christ.

He went on a week­end retreat with his parish youth group. God was wait­ing for Chase in that retreat. Some­how, through the talks, prayer, and activ­i­ties Chase found a new rela­tion­ship with Christ. He found Christ as a per­sonal friend. Not every­thing changed in Chase’s life, but some­thing new was def­i­nitely happening.

Soc­cer excitement

In high school, Chase made the United States 17-​​under national team. He began to travel even more.

Chase and his older brother Blaise both ended up play­ing divi­sion 1 soc­cer in col­lege. Chase played at Clem­son Uni­ver­sity, where he was a three year starter, play­ing on the same defen­sive line as future U.S. senior national team fix­ture Oguchi Onyewa.

The light bulbs come on

Often the val­ues of faith are chal­lenged in col­lege. It was no dif­fer­ent for Chase. But in fact col­lege became a time of growth for Chase.

“I was away from my fam­ily for the first time. I no longer had to go to Mass, no longer had to prac­tice any faith if I didn’t want to. But just out of habit, I con­tin­ued to go. And actu­ally, the light bulbs came on, and I real­ized what my faith was, what the Church was all about. I was pay­ing atten­tion in Mass. I started to have a pas­sion for Scrip­ture. That was the time I truly made the faith my own.”

New adven­ture

When he fin­ished col­lege Chase was hop­ing he would be drafted into a major league soc­cer team in the United States, but that did not hap­pen. A coach sug­gested that he could prob­a­bly play soc­cer in Latin Amer­ica, and put him in con­tact with some teams in Chile.

Chase moved to Chile to try out for a team called Huachipato. He spent four sea­sons in Chile, with three dif­fer­ent clubs, and grew to become a star player.

Lonely begin­ning

But the begin­ning of his pro­fes­sional career was tough. For the first six months in Chile he did not even have a con­tract. He was unwel­come by his team­mates, because they saw him as com­pet­ing for their jobs. He did not speak the lan­guage and had lit­tle or no friends.

Strength from pas­sion & faith

But he had pas­sion and he had faith. His pas­sion was soc­cer. His faith was in God’s friend­ship.  He threw him­self into his soc­cer train­ing, yet he had plenty of free time after the prac­tices and games.

He started to use some of the extra time to go to church and pray qui­etly in front of the Blessed Sacra­ment. There he found real peace and true friend­ship. He started to talk to Christ while he played. He talked with him at other times dur­ing the day as well.

Suc­cess

Lit­tle by lit­tle his career began to flour­ish. He started get­ting noticed, and he helped lead his new team, a team called Nublense, from sec­ond divi­sion to first divi­sion. Then in first divi­sion Chase improved even more and became a key player, well known on the national scene.

He also found a pretty girl­friend and, even though the rela­tion­ship was not too seri­ous, he started to think in depth about who he was going to marry.

A new hori­zon opens

But, as he found suc­cess on the field and in friend­ship, some­thing else was hap­pen­ing. He felt the desire to excel in some­thing even greater than soc­cer. He began to think about big­ger goals.

These thoughts scared Chase, but he could not put them away. What mis­sion did he have in life, besides soc­cer and mar­ry­ing the girl of his dreams?

The thought of the priest­hood started to sur­face. He imme­di­ately put up a lot of men­tal bar­ri­ers. Still, the ques­tion would not leave him, so he started to bring it to prayer.

Strug­gle

For two and a half years he strug­gled with the ques­tion of his voca­tion, yet the thought of the priest­hood kept get­ting more attrac­tive. He found him­self pray­ing about his voca­tion even when he was playing.

One day he finally real­ized that all the bar­ri­ers had come down. He was given the grace to really want to become a priest. The change had hap­pened slowly. God had qui­etly, respect­fully won over his heart.

The other part of find­ing out

But Chase knew that, even though he had kept his strug­gle pri­vate, the priest­hood is not a pri­vate voca­tion. He needed the advice and help of a priest who had experience.

So he con­tacted the voca­tion direc­tor of his dio­cese, Fr. Brian Brownsey. After a few, very long phone con­ver­sa­tions, they both agreed that Chase could apply for accep­tance to the dio­cese. Chase filled out a series of writ­ten answers and required essays about his life and sent them to Fr. Brian. Then he had to sched­ule a time to visit per­son­ally with Fr. Brian and do some in-​​person examinations.

Home

About that time, Chase reached another goal in his soc­cer career. Amer­i­can teams began to inquire about him. He decided to move back to the States and try his luck with the MLS.

When Chase went home at Christ­mas 2007, he met with Fr. Brian and also did the in-​​person inter­views and tests to deter­mine whether he might be accepted. He not only was accepted for entrance to the sem­i­nary, but he also was given a con­tract with an Amer­i­can soc­cer team while he waited for sem­i­nary life to begin.

Chase played for a few months for the New Eng­land Rev­o­lu­tion, and began to get noticed here in the States. Then came the sur­prise: he announced that he was leav­ing soc­cer to become a priest.

The REAL excitement begins

His announce­ment made head­lines all over the world, but Chase is no longer inter­ested in head­lines. He just wants to be a priest, a good priest. The rest was fun, but this is truly excit­ing. This time, as a priest, he will be play­ing for keeps. The souls he wins for Christ will be the real win­ners. They will be with God for all eternity.

Let’s pray for Chase and for all those called to the priest­hood. Let’s also pray that each of us lives our own per­sonal voca­tion to the full.  Prayer gives us power to do that.

Click HERE to read Part 2: Prayer, Strug­gle, and Victory