Dying to Baseball

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B
Jeremiah 31.31-34 Psalm 51 Hebrews 5.7-9 John 12.20-33

Our Lenten journey is coming to an end. Today is the last Sunday of Lenten purple – next weekend, we begin the holiest week of the year with Palm Sunday. On the one hand, this might be a good time to reflect on what Lent has been like for us this year, to look at how well we have lived the prayer, fasting, and almsgiving of this season. But our faith challenges us to do something more. In his rule for monks, St. Benedict advised his monks that their entire life should be a perpetual Lent. To live Lent all the time, not just during these 40 days before Easter, means that we should always be in the process of conversion, we should always be about the process of examining our lives and making the adjustments needed so that we become more and more like Christ. We should live each day not just for itself, but looking forward to what comes at the end of Lent: death and resurrection, for Christ, and for us. St. Benedict also told his monks that they should keep death daily before their eyes. The death of Christ, first of all; but also their own deaths. To live with our eyes fixed on the end of our earthly existence means that we also live with our eyes fixed on heaven. And during the perpetual Lent of our lives, we strive each day to become worthy to enjoy the eternal happiness of our heavenly home.

But there’s another way we can follow St. Benedict’s advice. Part of the traditional practice of Lent is to fast, to give up things that we enjoy. Some people fast from food – chocolate or meat. Some people fast from television or movies or whatever else. When we fast from something, we are dying to ourselves, even if only in a small way. Not eating the bowl of ice cream that we love so much is a little death – a depravation, a sacrifice – that, hopefully, helps unite us to the sacrifice of Christ and helps us remember who gave us everything we have in the first place. And if we die to self, if we regularly practice these little sacrifices, then we will be more prepared for the bigger sacrifices and the more powerful sufferings that may come our way. Like the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, when we die to self, we become more like Christ; and, with the grace of God, we can be so much more effective Christian men and women in our daily lives. And the more we are like Christ, the less we are afraid of death. And, believe it or not, this week’s sports page had an example of what this means.

In less than two weeks, on Friday, April 10, the Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball Team will play their home opener at Comerica Park in Detroit. The first pitch is scheduled for 1:05 pm. Michael Ochab has been at every home opener for the Tigers for the past twenty years. But this year, he won’t be there on April 10. Instead, he’ll be at his parish church for the afternoon Good Friday service. Michael says that breaking his 20-year streak of home openers with the Tigers was a “no-brainer,” because enjoying the festivities of opening day for baseball just “doesn’t seem appropriate this year” on Good Friday. Even for a die-hard baseball fan, Michael’s faith comes first. And there is nowhere else he would be on Good Friday afternoon other than in his parish church.*

To make our lives a perpetual Lent. And to keep death daily before our eyes. It changes how we look at the world, it changes how we make decisions, it changes how live our faith. And maybe – just maybe – we could even have the grace to be like Michael, the Detroit Tigers fan, who is dying to his love of baseball in order to commemorate the death of Christ. With God’s grace and a lifetime of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we can die to self in order to live for God. What’s your baseball that you need to die to?

* See the article at Catholic News Service