About Ballpark Day of Faith

TODay's Mass is offered for the Repose of the soul of our friend Dr. Michael Lovell, President of Marquette University.

“I am completely at peace with whatever happens.
If it's God’s will that I should live, I am at peace.
If it's God’s will that I should die, I am at peace with that also.”
    -  Dr. Michael Lovell

It was just over a year and a half ago, a misty December evening in 2022 and Marquette University President, Mike Lovell and I had just attended Mass together at the recently renovated St. Joan of Arc Chapel on the Marquette University Campus. As was our normal method of operation when we got together about once every two years we’d go to Mass and then we’d hang out and talk for about an hour and just catch up. 

This time was different though as Mike had been diagnosed a year earlier and was fighting the life-threatening bone/tissue cancer called sarcoma and this was the first time we were together since the diagnosis and treatment. We left Mass, he was walking with an uncharacteristic limp for an accomplished runner so I asked him if he wanted me to drive him back to his office. We walked to my car, got in… and sat and talked for about 45 minutes. I felt horrible because I hadn’t reached out earlier to Mike when I first learned of his diagnosis to provide him some encouragement and comfort as one would expect a friend to do. With more than a bit of emotion I told him so.

He told me it was okay and not to worry about it. You see our relationship was pretty much 100% about sharing our Catholic faith, and we both knew it. It was the complete opposite of a superficial male-to-male relationship where there is small talk about sports or even our professions. I mean we talked to each other about our jobs and our families, but it was always, always in the context of our deep love of Christ and of our Catholic faith. 

At that point we had known each other for over 15 years. The second or third time we met, about a decade and a half earlier, he invited me to adoration - just to go and pray with him, quietly in front of the exposed Eucharist. I was new to the concept of praying at adoration so after praying together at St. Robert’s Church in Shorewood we went to have coffee together across the street from the church. He shared with me how a priest that became his spiritual director in Pittsburgh where he went to college introduced him to adoration 20+ years earlier and how life changing it was for him. At the time we were together Mike had just been named the Chancellor of University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. He shared that he went to adoration weekly for at least an hour and he would simply surrender to the Lord whatever was weighing on his soul. For Mike, the result was almost always peace and frequently clarity. Until I came to experience that peace and clarity myself as a result of spending more time in deep, interior prayer in front of the Eucharist, I envied Mike’s quiet confidence that he not only verbally shared with me, but even more so that he exuded.

I think it was about nine years ago when after praying in adoration together Mike asked me about this Ballpark Day of Faith initiative that I he knew I was leading. Because I knew I could, I confided in Mike that leading this initiative was taking its toll on me. We didn’t have very many people helping at the time and I told him I was thinking of abandoning entirely idea of Ballpark Day of Faith and just letting it die. We were walking from his office south across Wisconsin Avenue and walking at a strong clip so as not to be late to attend mass at St. Joan of Arc, when this normally humble and even meek leader stopped, turned to me and looked me in the eye and said very clearly and with conviction: “Bob, just like Pope John Paul II said, “ ‘We are not called to be comfortable, we are called to spread the Gospel.’” 

After that meeting and Mike’s declaration to me I put to pray whether or not I should keep going with Ballpark Day of Faith or not. It was at both adoration and at mass shortly after my meeting with Mike nine years ago that the answer was clarion clear that Ballpark Day of Faith would continue and the Holy Spirit would give me and my small team what we needed and when we needed it.

I’ve since looked up the exact quote from Pope John Paul II that Mike Lovell was paraphrasing that evening and it reads:

“… Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis.” 

Back to December 2022, that cool, misty evening in my car after mass at St. Joan of Arch Chapel together and what was to be my last conversation between Mike and I. He shared with me that he had just come from a brutal round of immunotherapy treatment were the doctor told him if he wasn’t in as good as shape as he was that treatment would have killed him. That is when he said to me with the joy and peace and quiet confidence that I have only seen a handful of times in my life: 

“Bob, I am completely at peace with whatever happens. If it's God’s will that I should live, I am at peace. If it's God’s will that I should die, I am at peace with that also."

I had not a shred of doubt that is how Mike truly felt and what he truly believed. 

Our Catholic faith believes that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. We further believe that when the priest consecrates the host during Mass that is the moment when the communion host stops being a secular wafer and becomes the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. It becomes the Eucharist. We adore the Eucharist at adoration and we literally consume it during communion at Mass. Further, Eucharist literally means “Thanksgiving.” 

I will forever (hopefully in its most eternal sense) be thankful for my friend, Mike Lovell sharing with me his love of the Lord through his devotion to the Eucharist. He could give me no greater gift. 

Rest In Peace, my friend.

Warmly, 

Bob

Father's Day June 16th, 2024