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His Game-Winner Made ESPN's Top 10. Then He Left Basketball for the Priesthood

Modern Man

His game-winner made ESPN's Top 10. A year into a college basketball scholarship, he was on his knees in a chapel, calling his coach to say he wasn't coming back — he was going to become a priest. Fr. Joseph Rolwing (Diocese of Columbus, co-host of the Logos Podcast) joins Brad, Sam, and Noah for the whole arc: the agnostic girlfriend whose arguments left him lying in the grass staring into a universe without God, the tabernacle across the street from his high school, the rosary moment that crystallized his life, going to seminary against his parents' wishes — and the two-year ‘holiness’ spiral of floor-sleeping and skipped meals that ended with a priest telling him he looked like a cadaver. Along the way: why God is the fulfillment of desire rather than the death of it, the three minutes of silence that built a prayer life, what your kids learn from catching you in prayer, celibacy and intimacy with Christ, confession as a tabernacle of mercy, and why 52 people just entered one suburban parish as a 200-year-old worldview runs out of gas. We exist to rediscover and redeem the heart of man.