A Holy Relic Under Second Base
In the 1960s there was a St. Kevin’s parish but not a St. Kevin’s church. The St. Kevin’s community held their Sunday liturgies in the Hendricken gym. We had a portable altar used by Saint Kevin’s and the school community for liturgies. After one of the student body liturgies, students and I were dismantling the altar. I instructed one of the students to take the altar stone and put it in a designated cabinet off the stage of the gym. The young man dropped the altar stone, and it broke into numerous pieces, even though it was encased in a linen cloth. Embedded in the altar stone were the relics of the saint.
In those days, the nuns in grade school taught us that if a sacred object was no longer viable, it should be buried in the ground. At that time, I was aligning the baseball field behind the school, and it was time to put the stanchions in to hold the bases in place. I decided to place the smashed altar stone under second base. I dug the hole, placed the stone and the stanchion in, and shoveled in the cement.
But then I had to acquire a new altar stone, so I called the bishop’s office in Providence and told them about the broken stone. I drove to Providence to get a new one and was met by Father Dan Reilly. He asked me where the previous stone was, and I simply said under second base. I told him the story, and he looked at me and laughed.
Every time I met Father Dan Reilly, who later became a Monsignor and then a Bishop, he would ask me how the Hendricken infield was doing with double plays around second base. My response was always, “Very well, Father, they have an extra infielder under the bag.”
-Mike Roper