“God does wondrous things. He gives these doctors and nurses incredible skill, incredible talent, incredible technology to do these things. All this stuff comes from giving people the brains, the creativity, the talent, the bedside manner. All those things, all those gifts, all those graces that God gives are incredibly important."
Welcome to "Fields Full of Grace: The Faith at Play," casting a spotlight on the devotional practices of college and professional athletes and coaches on and off the field.
By Jay Sorgi
Big moments and big names typically don’t faze Jon Greenberg. The president of the American Hockey League’s Milwaukee Admirals, formerly a long-time public relations executive with the top-ranked Milwaukee Brewers, has encountered plenty of high-pressure moments when the spotlight of the sports world shined on the Brew City, and he had to be “on” just as much as the athletes he worked beside in those world-class competitions.
No pressure moment, however, could match the range of emotions Greenberg has endured in the last year since entering his doctor’s office for a physical exam and suddenly discovering he was facing off against prostate cancer.
Nor could any moment perhaps illuminate God working in the way that He and the Blessed Mother accompanied him and his medical team in meeting the challenge.
Shock, then determination
“There’s a punch in the stomach at the beginning of it,” admits Greenberg. “There was a bit of shock to find out that you have cancer, but then just a feeling of determination that I’m going to do everything that my medical team tells me to do and do it the right way and not cut any corners. Then gratitude, which is frankly overwhelming, a feeling of wanting to help people at some level.”
A cradle Catholic who attended 12 years of Catholic school in the Milwaukee area, Greenberg has always felt that final feeling for most of his life, particularly with his Jesuit background attending Marquette University High School in Milwaukee’s central city.
“I felt that closeness to God from grade school through high school and beyond,” he says. “I served as the finance chair of my church for many years and served on the board at St. Thomas More High School (on Milwaukee’s southeast side), and I’ve been on a committee at Marquette High for many years.”
He has also made a career about not only drawing thousands every night to hockey games in a football, baseball, and basketball town, but drawing his franchise and those thousands of nightly fans toward compassionate action.
“I got taught by former Milwaukee Brewers Owner and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig a long time ago that you do community work to help your community, not to get credit for it,” Greenberg says. “It’s not to pat ourselves on the back, but it’s to help make Milwaukee a better place.”
Sometimes, it can be hard for givers to think about the need to receive.
Greenberg, who is usually subtle about his faith, recognized it was time for God to do the giving through His loving hand and those of his doctors.
Power of the Rosary
“Rosaries have been very important in our family,” he says. “My daughter, for her graduation gift, got a Rosary from my brother which came from Rome. We have many May birthdays. My mom and my aunt — their Rosaries are out and being said on a regular basis.”
They all came out in droves in July when Greenberg informed them he was undergoing prostate cancer and hernia surgery. Yet he felt confidence in God’s providential hand the entire process through the work of modern medicine.
“My doctor didn’t really give me a whole lot of time to feel sorry about it, because the immediate message was, ‘We’re going to take care of this and you’re going to be okay,’” Greenberg recalls, emphasizing the need for regular checkups to detect cancer early.
“I didn’t have time to really feel like I should have some type of sadness, because of what he told me and because we were catching something early on, which was so important.”
Winning
But as Al McGuire — the man whose 1977 NCAA Final Four-champion Marquette Warriors played in the Admirals’ current home arena in downtown Milwaukee — once said, winning is only important in surgery and in war.
Greenberg, who admits that he rarely prays for himself, reached up to God as surgery day commenced.
“I asked God to take care of me and my medical team to be the best they could possibly be to make sure that I was getting past this,” he recalls. “The nurse that was standing to my side squeezed my hand. That was a sign to me. I think she saw a tear coming from me and it was like, ‘You’re going to be okay.’”
The following Monday, he heard the words from his doctor that confirmed the confidence God gave him: “This cancer is gone.”
“I just sat down and started crying.” the normally mild-mannered Greenberg said while repeating a few joyful tears. “God does wondrous things. He gives these doctors and nurses incredible skill, incredible talent, incredible technology to do these things. All this stuff comes from giving people the brains, the creativity, the talent, the bedside manner. All those things, all those gifts, all those graces that God gives are incredibly important.
“I am blessed that I have had such a wonderful team to surround me and be grateful to God for putting them in my life.”
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