Baseball and the Eucharist

Around the turn of the century many religious orders bought land in upstate New York for houses of formation where they could train their growing numbers of young men to be priests and brothers. Among these were the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, founded in 1856 in France by St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811-1868). As the community’s vocations grew, they founded Mount Eymard Seminary, a novitiate and college for their men in formation, in Suffern, New York. Eymard closed in 1977. This photo, taken sometime in the 1920’s, shows the seminary baseball team. The community’s symbol is a Monstrance, a device created for displaying the exposed Eucharist, which one of the priests is wearing on his cassock. Note how the bats and ball have been laid out for the picture. A good example of how eucharistic theology can influence even America’s favorite pastime!