“I miss rain delays…I miss getting jammed in cold weather..i miss batting gloves…I miss long replay reviews that don’t get overturned even though he was safe.. I miss umpires..I miss long flights at 3 am after a tough loss… I miss the shift..I do.. I miss it all…” (a tweet from Matt Carpenter)

In case you don’t know who Matt Carpenter is; he is a baseball player who for 9 years has played for the St. Louis Cardinals. I am tired writing about the “shelter-in-place” the “quarantine” the sadness and heartache of “live-stream Mass” and not being able to see or be around those I am called to serve. I could talk all about this again but like Matt Carpenter, I miss baseball, I miss Mass and miss you.
You may have also noticed how the “miss it all” isn’t the glamorous side of baseball. The things he describes are those areas that are often the most onerous and frustrating to a ball player. But in many ways he is describing to us life and the fullness of life and how the annoying things of life give flavor, enrichment and understanding to the joys, graces and gratitude of life we all desire and wish to live in day by day.
Baseball, for me, is one of those blessings where life slows down. With all the talk about speeding up the game, some of it I do understand, my heart is always in the conservative romantic place of let’s keep the pace and grace of the game where it is. The meandering movements, the moments of excitement, the delays and the celebrations all fill the time and allow the emotions of the second to flow into the joy of the hours in recognizing the conversation occurring on the field and in the in-between moments of play.
And this is how, even during these strange and difficult times, life continues but is often missed too because so many of the personal interactions which fill life are missing. It is missing sitting next to another and holding the conversations full of both meaning and memory, sometimes profound and other times mundane. It is missing the slow movements of live interspersed with the brief moments of excitement drawing us deeper into conversations of knowing and blessing. It is watching others frustrate you, annoy you and anger you and then in the next moment cause you to jump with such great joy and excitement it seems impossible to contain the energy.

So, if as a priest I were to write this tweet…I miss people showing up late for Mass…and the people leaving early…I miss last minute questions as the opening hymn begins…I miss the multiple announcements at the end of Mass…I miss sitting in the confessional and no one comes…I miss the squirming kids, the bored teens and the distracted parents…I miss the glitches in the sound system…I miss the sleepy altar servers…I miss 7:00 a.m. Mass…I miss it all.
Just as I love baseball, I love life and with Matt Carpenter I miss those little things that can be distractions and annoyances because the in-between is so filled with God’s presence in serving others and sharing his love in the great and small blessings of life.
I look forward to seeing you all (hopefully soon) including my sleepy altar servers, the distracted parents and yes, even those who are a little late to Mass.
God bless
Fr. Mark