The Last Friday post before Lent begins and the First Friday post after pitchers and catchers have reported. Two of my favorite things in the world, both are great blessings from God and both are spiritually enriching and worth pondering in many different ways.
If you didn’t know by now, I am a life-long Los Angeles Dodgers fan…both in the good times and the bad times I bleed Dodger blue. Coming into my sports fandom in the late 60’s and early 70’s I was blessed to see the young infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Ron Cey and Bill Russell form the nucleus of a decade of Dodger glory. Of the four, my favorite was always Bill Russell at shortstop. He wasn’t the glamorous iron-man that Steve Garvey was at first base, he didn’t have a funny nickname, the waddle, and the power of Ron Cey (The Penguin) at third, nor did he have the speed, the flair and the outward fire of Davey Lopes at second. In truth he always seemed the forgotten guy who was a good solid major league shortstop (3 time all-star) who was never a great hitter (.286 was his best season), a very good and dependable fielder, he does not seem remarkable and yet from these tools he lived out an 18 year major league career.
Now the God part…Lent is a journey where we are challenged to seek a deeper relationship with God, to grow in the practice of the faith and to live out our call to discipleship in following the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Living out this journey is often challenging and at sometimes frustrating. We can often look around, see the example of the great saints of the Church and even the saints that live within our communities and often think how little are our gifts and how small our relationship with God seems to be. Often times in our faith life we can look around and see the glamorous iron-man of prayer, the funny and quirky power hitter of service or the speedy and fiery minister who seems to be everywhere and has limitless energy and can think our gifts are not good enough or are too limited to make a difference to God. Yet, we know that God desires our gifts, even when they are small and seem insignificant in our own eyes.

And I think this is where the career and the gifts Bill Russell brought to baseball and his team can be helpful for our understanding of the spiritual journey. He seemingly had none of those flashy, powerful or glamorous gifts his infield teammates possessed and yet he used the baseball gifts that he had to remain the center of that remarkable foursome. If he had tried to be the power guy, the speed guy, the everyday guy his career would have soon been over because those weren’t the gifts he was given to lead others with, to share with others and to play with others joyfully. And certainly he wouldn’t have been my favorite Dodger from that era of history.
As we look forward to our Lenten journey, let’s remember that we are called to share our gifts; our time, talent and treasure for the blessing of our team, our community, our Catholic Church trusting, if we use these gifts as God calls us to do, then we participate in the will of God and the salvation of all people. Looking at the three disciplines of fasting, prayer and almsgiving, how are you called to give and share the blessings of God’s presence with others? Take time this weekend to pray and prepare to renew our life with God and share the life given with joy.
Go Dodgers
I mean
God Bless