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From Fanatic to Ecclesiastic: Trading Baseball Cards for Holy Cards

I’ve been a huge baseball fan for most of my life, and growing up in Pittsburgh made me a diehard Pirates fan.  With that being said, my first clear baseball memory is Atlanta's Sid Bream scoring the winning run of the 1992 NLCS to end the Pirates’ last winning season of baseball.  The subsequent 19 years of losing has taught me much about fidelity and unreasonable optimism—but I digress.

As a kid, I had accumulated a large collection of sports cards and figurines.  Being aware of the value of an incredibly rare baseball card or figurine led me to think that this was also a good financial move, an investment if you will.  What 10-year-old financial planner could have predicted that the Starting Lineup Company would dissolve and their figurines soon would sell by the dozens on EBay for mere pennies?  So much for my sound investment—but I digress yet again.

It occurred to me recently that I have since traded in my baseball cards and sports figurines for holy cards and statues.  I think both are evidence that I am visual person, as I think we all are as embodied creatures.  We like visual, even physical things.  In the sporting and popular culture worlds, we call them “memorabilia,” in family life “heirlooms,” and in the Church, we call them “sacramentals” and “relics.”    

Much in the same way that a Roberto Clemente rookie card is a vivid reminder of the life and career of the Pirates’ great right-fielder, much like how my grandfather’s Navy photo I.D. card causes me to feel a closeness to the man despite the barrier of death, the holy cards and statues remind me vividly of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds me, urging me on to holiness.  In this way, the statues and holy cards turned out to be the better investment.  While the baseball cards and sports figurines collect dust in a box in the attic as an occasional reminder of my childhood, the statues and holy cards serve as a daily reminder to “store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20).  They are a reminder that other people have succeeded in living a holy life, and I can succeed as well. 

“Fan” is a shortened form of “fanatic,” and in our culture, being a fanatic about a sport or an entertainer is perfectly acceptable.  We can wear their t-shirts, show up early for their events, decorate our homes with their memorabilia, and talk about them enthusiastically with our families and friends.  As an ecclesiastical man, a practicing Catholic, someone associating with the Church, I see no reason why I shouldn’t also show up at least on time to Church events, wearing proper attire, decorate my home with holy objects, and talk about Church affairs enthusiastically with my family and friends.  If it is acceptable for a teenager to pay that sort of homage to Justin Bieber, then why shouldn’t adults give at least as much to Jesus Christ and his Body?

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