Luke Kaliszak

Hi! My name is Luke Kaliszak and I was born up in Erie Pennsylvania to a wonderful family of Polish Catholics. While the Polish are notorious Catholics, following Jesus was neither a deep nor personal faith. The main reason I practiced at all was because of my mom. I love my mother dearly. She was my whole life- my best friend, counselor, confidant, and advocate. You better believe I was going to church and saying prayers in the morning to make my momma happy! That all changed when I went away to boarding school for high school. There, no one was making sure I was going to church or that I was praying. I was more concerned with my swimming career and having fun with my friends.

For college, I was blessed to swim at the great University of Alabama (Roll Tide). I went there to pursue my athletic endeavors and to pursue medical school. Sadly during that time, I followed the way of most college students. I had the experience of being intellectually unprepared for the disdain for faith found at most colleges. I’m going to biology lecture to hear that we don’t need to believe in God because of such-and-such experiment, and I’m reading excerpts about how religion is the “opium of the people” in American literature class. I ate up the irreligious ideas with religious conviction. I didn’t believe there was a God. I thought that all religion was just for people who couldn’t deal with the harsh reality of life. Venerable Fulton Sheen has one of my favorite quotes when he says, “If you do not live as you believe, you will believe as you live”, and I was living like everybody else who didn’t believe in God. I got more into drinking, partying, and living a disordered life.

Like most athletes, growing up it was hard for my sport not to become the meaning of my life. That changed when I didn’t believe in God because then I voluntarily poured myself entirely into my athletic career. It became the dominant idol in my life, and it was my primary source of my purpose, desire and all of the deep things about me. How I competed and the way that I either succeeded or failed was what dictated my worth. I had amazing coaches and teammates at Alabama, so my swimming was continuing to improve and gain attention. I put more of my heart into competing until I came through a series of unrelenting loses. While I recognize that swimming is niche sport and unimportant relative to the grand scheme of life, It was important to me because I made it so. A downward spiral took place that swept the bottom from under me. Going into my junior year, swimming wasn’t there for me anymore and neither were the parties, girls, etc.. I found myself in the nightmare that I couldn’t make myself happy anymore. I fell into depression while maintaining the mask of normalcy.

The grace of God was abundant at Alabama. They have a ministry called FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) and the leaders name is Gary Cramer. Every week he would open up his apartment to have a Bible study.....and free Chick-fil-A. You know I was going for those free nuggets and warm cookie! One night I was doing my usual dine-and-dash when he stopped me and just asked if we could grab breakfast the next day and catch up. When I met up with him the next day at the Panera bread, I remember the experience of him just looking at me with eyes that really “saw” me and saying, “Luke, how are you doing?”. Before I could stop myself, I heard myself breaking down in front of him saying, “I hate my life and I think I want to kill myself. If this life is all about making yourself happy, making money, and having a family before dying, I don’t want to keep doing this.“ Unfazed he gently replied, “Luke, I’m so grateful that you told me. I’m so thankful to be here, and I want to keep being here for you. I love you.“

We agreed to meet each week, and he was true to his word for months on end. As we had these encounters each week, the sheer presence of this man in my life brought about healing to my infirmity. As I am finding a new found way of being loved and being fathered by him, Gary started to ask me questions, “Why do you swim? What do you wanna do when swimming‘s over? What’s the point of your life? What’s the point of everyone’s life?” I remember coming up with answers and then going back to my apartment knowing that was just a bunch of crap pulled straight outta of my posterior. I didn’t actually believe what I said. I never seriously thought about the deeper questions a day in my life. One afternoon Gary asked me, “What do you think about God?” Upset and annoyed, I replied, “I think that’s a joke for ....”. Immediately he challenged me asking, “Luke, are you man enough to look at the evidence to see if that is true?” I shot back, “Yeah, sure. I’m game”.

Gary had me read CS Lewis “Mere Christianity” and then CS Lewis “The Problem of Pain”. I started going to Gary‘s place to watch Dr. Habermas give evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the validity of the Gospels. Then we’re watching a philosophy professor give an account of why it’s credible to believe in God. Over the course of the following summer I was watching lectures, debates, and arguments in order to find out what is true. I was obsessed because either my life is continuing down the dark road from before or I was wrong about the most fundamental thing in reality and everything about my life had to change. There got to be a point in my study when I realize that there wasn’t a question, comment, struggle, or desire of the human heart that wasn’t answered in Jesus Christ.

I knew I needed to change my life and make changes, but I didn’t have any idea how to go about turning my whole life upside down. The one thing I knew was that Christians go to church. I then embarked on a search for which church was going to be able to teach me the absolute truth on all of the fundamental issues: free will, salvation, sacraments, etc. I used all of the skills Gary had showed me about searching objectively for truth. I used the metrics of church history (when did certain churches and ideas come into being), the Bible (where did it come from, what evidence is in there for Christ’s church), and the writings of the Early Church Fathers (surely those closer to Christ and the apostles have more say than a pastor 2,000 years later). Looking at all of these, I came back home to the Holy Catholic Church with joy and appreciation beyond words.

After graduating college, I tried to pursue professional swimming, I worked as a medical assistant to a family doctor, and was applying to medical school. This all came to an abrupt stop when I chose to go into ministry. The main reason was because of Gary Cramer. His willingness to love and preach Jesus Christ to me not only changed my life but also impacts my current friends/family, and future family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. It is my great desire to find my “one guy”. All of this would be worth it if I can be a part of one man falling deeply in love with Jesus Christ. Nothing would be the same.