The Blessing of the Sticks

This week the Saint Ignatius Prep Hockey Team transitioned into the playoffs. Like their brothers in the other winter sports, these Wildcats are tired and sore from a challenging regular season, but excited to start their “second season” and, with any luck, a trip in mid-March to Nationwide Arena in Columbus to vie for the state championship crown.

For the better part of a decade I’ve been privileged to serve as a chaplain for the hockey program. Under the visionary leadership of theology teacher and former hockey coach Drew Vilinsky ‘97, Saint Ignatius has developed the chaplaincy program as a way of enabling our athletes, musicians, actors, and participants in other activities to “find God in all things,” including the activities about which they are so passionate.

When Jim Skerl ‘74 was teaching the Christian Manhood course he developed, he would often have students write the phrase “God is here” on Post-It notes and stick them in places where they spent time: in their lockers, on the bathroom mirror, next to their beds, in their cars. The idea was to enable his students to recognize that wherever they are, whatever they are doing, they are always in the presence of the God Who loves them.

A former student of Jim, I keep this in mind as I begin my “chapel talks” with the boys every few years, asking them if, in the grand scheme of things, God really cares about hockey (or soccer, or theater, or band). It’s a set-up question, one I already know how they will answer. They’re Ignatius men. They want to give the answer they think their teacher (or chaplain) wants to hear, so of course they tell me that God doesn’t care about hockey.

And they’re wrong.

God does care about hockey and theater and band because we care about hockey and theater and band. St Irenaeus famously observed that “the glory of God is Man fully alive.” Leo Buscaglia noted that “Our talents are God’s gift to us. What we do with them is our gift back to God.” St Ignatius exhorted his followers to do all “for the greater glory of God.” For the players—indeed all of us—to recognize our gifts as coming from God and to develop them to the best of our abilities, is a powerful way of honoring Him.  

But sometimes those gifts require tools to manifest them.

To that end, Vilinsky has developed a ritual in which the tools of the trade for our sports and extracurriculars are blessed, usually at the beginning of a season. Thus the scripts of our Harlequins, the instruments of our band, and the sticks of our hockey team—those essential implements—are formally consecrated for service to God.

At work in all of this is what theologians call sacramentality, or the sacramental principle: the idea that God makes Himself known to us—and we respond to Him—through the ordinary things of the world. In our common Catholic worship we therefore use water, oil, bread, and wine. Given that there is an interplay between our worship and our daily lives, it should not be surprising that as Catholics we bless things like tools, seeds, houses, and cars: things that enable us to bring the things of God—goodness, truth, and beauty—to others as we live our lives.  

Fr Matt Donovan, S.J., blessed the hockey sticks of our Prep team so that they can be used, not for cross-checking, high-sticking, or slashing (which in the heat of a competitive, physical game can be temptations), but for the passing, defending, and finishing that makes the game such a joy to watch. More importantly, the sticks represent the sense of teamwork, loyalty, humility, and self-sacrifice that will help make these young men great players—and hopefully even better disciples.

Most teams and groups do their blessings at the beginning of their seasons. This year’s hockey captains asked that we perform the ritual at the beginning of the playoffs, intuitively seeing this moment as being an especially pivotal one, representing a new season, a new set of pressures, but also a new opportunity to grow into the men they were made to be.

They know that the blessing of their sticks will not bring them luck. They understand that a blessing will not win them the state title. Focused practice, a good gameplan, skill, execution, and effort will do that. But hopefully they will come to see through this experience that our Lord is always with them, in everything they do.

And that by using the gifts He has given them, God willing, they can win an even greater crown.

A.M.D.G. /B.V.M.H.