Local pastor dives into his birthday celebration
Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published June 23, 2006
Detroit – As pastor of St. Malachy Parish in Sterling Heights, Fr. Joseph Gembala is used to having an audience.
But recently, Fr. Gembala had some new company: nine-foot-long Caribbean reef sharks, complete with plenty of sharp teeth. He made the dive in part to celebrate his birthday.
Although he likes to climb mountains and partake in other adventures, he said this shark dive tops the list. “It’s the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done, intentionally,” he said.
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Fr. Joseph Gembala, of St. Malachy Parish in Sterling Heights, recently dove with Caribbean reef sharks to celebrate his birthday. | The dive allowed him to become a certified shark diver.
Fr. Gembala, 49, said he didn’t have a lot of opportunities to go exploring growing up, so he decided to be more adventuresome as he got older.
“I always liked the outdoors,” he said. “I always liked to get out and see things and do things.”
Right about the time he turned 40, he said, he started participating in more extreme adventures. He has a godson in Maine, which opened up some opportunities to do some white-water rafting and mountain climbing there, he said.
He’s been diving for a couple of years, going on a whale shark dive a couple of years ago off the Baja peninsula of California. However, whale sharks feed on plankton and krill, and aren’t a threat to humans, like the Caribbean reef sharks are.
Because those sharks can kill humans, Fr. Gembala said he had to sign all kinds of waivers before he could do the dive. Since he has a law degree, he’s heard plenty of lawyer jokes since he returned, joking himself that he hadn’t seen that many sharks since the bar convention.
He tries to go white-water rafting once a summer and tries to make two dives a year. He likes mountain climbing, too, calling it a “hoot.”
This summer, he’s going to give Mount Katahdin, which at 5,270 feet is the highest mountain in Maine, a second try. He got about three-quarters of the way up on his last try, but he says it was very hot that day.
“This year’s a different story,” he said.
If Mount Katahdin goes well, he’ll consider trying to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain at 10,340 feet, early next year. He’d also like to visit Machu Picchu, the Incan ruins in Peru (7,710 feet high), and go diving with great white sharks, which has to be done in a cage.
He’s made it to Pamplona, Spain, but decided not to run with the bulls when he saw how big they and their horns were. “With the priest shortage the way it is…” he joked.
St. Malachy’s office manager, Marge Stano, said Fr. Gembala is very down-to-earth and is on good terms with his parishioners. She joked that he’d probably like to inspire others to take up similar adventures, but they probably couldn’t keep up with him.
Fr. Gembala said most of his parishioners think he’s a bit crazy, but many of them admire the fact that he does things that keep him young at heart, he said. “I don’t think most of them would do it,” he said of his adventures.
He said he finds himself braver as he gets older, and he probably wouldn’t have done any of his recent adventures when he was in his 20s.
Fr. Gembala doesn’t just go on adventures for the thrill, but to make connections to God, to his ministry and to his parishioners. “I get great homilies out of this stuff,” he said.
He was able to compare his most recent shark dive to life, since all he had to defend himself from the reef sharks was a rock and his faith in God. “Isn’t that like life?” he said.
Also, once while on a white-water rafting trip, he did an unintentional 360-degree flip into the water, which he said was evidence he was “no threat to Olympic divers,” and was carried underwater with the raft for a time. When the guide was able to pull him out, he was reminded of when the apostle Peter tried to walk on water and fell in, and the Lord pulled him out.
As God is the great creator of the Earth, he said he feels people should be spending their lives as creators, too, building communities, Gospel messages, parishes and groups. He said he finds that when he does things outdoors, he’s inspired to continue to create in that sense, as God created the big, natural world.
“I’m overwhelmed by majesty and awe,” he said.
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