By Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz
I should confess to being just a bit distracted as I begin to write this column. That is because I am watching the opening innings of the first game of this year’s World Series.
Former New York University President John Sexton, a Roman Catholic who graduated from Brooklyn Prep and taught religion at St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights, wrote a book titled “Baseball as a Road to God.”
The book begins with the story of Sexton and a friend on their knees in front of a radio praying – while holding a crucifix between them – that the Dodgers would beat the Yankees in game 7 of the 1955 World Series, and their prayers were answered!
Baseball and God
If Sexton is right and baseball can be a road to God, then the theologian Carmen Nanko-Fernandez also has a point when she suggests that baseball “follows the rhythms of its own liturgical calendar. There is Spring training, like Advent, a time of anticipation and preparation; ordinary time with its grinding 162 daily game schedule,” and so on.
If that is true, then the World Series must be Major League Baseball’s version of Holy Week, and that makes my distraction a venial sin at worst, and perhaps even an act of popular devotion of a sort.
Lifelong Mets fan that I am, growing up in the shadow of Shea Stadium, it wouldn’t seem that I have any skin in the game with a matchup between the Dodgers and the Red Sox. I’m rooting for the Dodgers though, and not only because I live just a few blocks from where Ebbets Field once stood.
My father was a die-hard Dodgers fan, and it pleased him mightily when the fledgling Mets soothed the souls of New York National League fans – scarred by the departure of the Giants and the Dodgers from Gotham – by adopting versions of Dodger blue and Giants orange as their team colors.
On top of that, what self-respecting Mets or Yankees fan could ever get away with cheering for the Red Sox, even with fellow Puerto Rican Alex Cora having such a great first year as their manager?
What does any of this have to do with Sunday’s Scriptures? Let me assure you that, curiously enough, it can help explain the historical background for the first reading, taken from the Book of Deuteronomy.
The ancient Israelites lived in a world that seemed to be full of gods (and goddesses, for that matter). Joshua challenges the Israelites whom he has gathered in solemn assembly, “If it is displeasing to you to serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve, the gods your ancestors served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are dwelling.” He adds, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
The Amorites had their gods, and so did the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Jebusites and all of Israel’s neighbors, each of whom assumed that their god – or gods, or goddesses – were on their side. None of them denied the existence of each other’s gods, but they owed exclusive allegiance to the god whom they understood to be their people’s patron and protector.
So it was with Israel. Joshua urges the assembly to “cast out the gods your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14).
Mets fans like myself can’t deny the fact that some fellow New Yorkers happen to be Yankee fans, but we dyed-in-the-wool devotees of the blue and orange hang in there even when our team melts down, many of us resisting the persistent temptation to cheer on the pinstripes from the Bronx, with whom we share a common aversion to the denizens of Fenway Park!
Fear the Lord?
In this Sunday’s reading from Deuteronomy, Moses encourages the people to “Fear the Lord, your God, and keep, throughout the days of your lives, all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you.”
Why does Moses tell people to fear the Lord? What does that mean?
Pope Francis has explained this: “This does not mean being afraid of God: we know well that God is Father, that he loves us and wants our salvation, and he always forgives, always; thus, there is no reason to be scared of him! Fear of the Lord, instead, is the gift of the Holy Spirit through whom we are reminded of how small we are before God and of his love and that our good lies in humble, respectful and trusting self-abandonment into his hands. This is fear of the Lord: abandonment in the goodness of our Father who loves us so much.” How awesome and boundless is the love with which our God loves us!
The Israelites were to make a decision that would have important consequences, called upon to pledge their allegiance to the God who had brought them out of slavery into freedom: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!”
This is often understood as a profession of faith in the one true God – and it is – but there is much more to it than that. The word “Lord” as it appears here is a reverent way of referring to the God who spoke to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, the God who saw the misery of the Israelites in Egypt, who listened to their cries and brought them through the wilderness into freedom.
Israel would come to recognize not only that it was the Lord God alone who deserved their loyalty, but also that the God who first chose them and invited them into an everlasting covenant of faithful love was the one and only true God.
As for the so-called “gods” of the nations that surrounded them, the Psalmist declares, “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear; nor is there breath in their mouths” (Psalm 135:15-17).
Concrete Commitment
In this week’s reading from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus repeats the words of Deuteronomy, reaffirming its clear and direct summons to faithful allegiance to the one true God, and making it clear that this call applies to us as well.
In our own world, full of idols that may be subtler, but no less alluring than those of eras long past, we are invited – just as the Israelites were – to commit ourselves to the true God. That commitment finds its concrete expression in love, the love of God that is inseparable from the love of our neighbor. The neighbor we are called to love – with the very same love that we have for God – is not only the neighbor who shares our Christian faith, not only the neighbor who shares our country of origin or first language, not only the neighbor who voted for the same candidates as we did or cheers for the same team as we do, and by no means is it only the neighbor who loves us in return.
We cannot honestly claim to love the one true God unless our love extends to all of those on whom the Creator has conferred equal dignity by making all of us in the divine image and likeness.
By the time these words appear in print, the World Series will be over, and winners and losers alike will be looking forward to next season. When it comes to the love of God for us, though, there is no off season.
Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 6: 2-6
Psalm 18: 2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Mark 12: 28b-34
Father Ruiz, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is a professor of theology at St. John’s University.