{"id":10818,"date":"2012-09-28T07:45:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T12:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/?p=10818"},"modified":"2017-01-24T17:56:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T22:56:08","slug":"drafted-by-god-the-story-of-frater-matthew-desme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2012\/09\/drafted-by-god-the-story-of-frater-matthew-desme.html","title":{"rendered":"Drafted By God, The Story of Frater Matthew Desme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Image Credit: Rick Belcher\/St. Michael\u2019s Abbey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I said I\u2019m gone readin\u2019 and I am. In fact, I just read the best sports story I\u2019ve seen in a while covered on Yahoo! Sports, and it\u2019s so good, I have to share it with you. Naturally, as something related to God, Heaven, and our vocations as Christians, it\u2019s wrapped up in baseball. Jeff Passen shares the story with us. Have a look,<\/p>\n

\n

SILVERADO, Calif. \u2013 On the morning Grant Desme ceased to exist, he was at peace. He spent years searching for serenity, convinced it was coming soon, next, now. It never did. Life was a blaring stereo, and he had become numb to its noise. The sound finally abated when he arrived here. He believed God muted it.<\/p>\n

So on Christmas Eve two years ago he and seven other men marched into the church at St. Michael\u2019s Abbey and readied for a transition the church considered spiritual death. Grant Desme would go by another name. His plainclothes would become a head-to-toe white habit. For the next two years, he would commit to the dual life of a priest-in-training and a monk in the Norbertine Order. The naming ceremony bound him to the virtues of chastity, poverty and obedience.<\/p>\n

To determine his new name, Desme submitted three choices from which St. Michael\u2019s abbot and spiritual leader, the Rt. Rev. Eugene J. Hayes, would choose. Desme liked Paul, Louis and Moses. None sounded right. Neither did Desme\u2019s second round of choices. On his vestition day, he knelt before the Father Abbot Eugene, who handed him a copy of the rule of St. Augustine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in our order,\u201d he said, \u201cyou will be called Matthew.\u201d<\/p>\n

One day later, Frater Matthew Desme approached Father Abbot Eugene. For the rest of his life, people would call him Matthew. He wanted to know why.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said it struck him because [Saint Matthew] was a rich tax collector,\u201d Frater Matthew says, \u201cand I was a rich baseball player.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

On the afternoon Grant Desme retired from baseball, he was at peace. The world in which he had immersed himself was shocked and dumbfounded, of course, that a strapping 23-year-old center fielder with power, speed, smarts and just about everything baseball teams want in a player would quit. Sports is a place of great myopia, insular thinking and exaggerated accomplishment that conflates excellence and holiness. In baseball, God is the home run. And Desme knew that God well.<\/p>\n

He hit 31 of them during the minor league season and another 11 in the prospect-laden Arizona Fall League, where he won the Most Valuable Player award in November 2009. He emerged as the talk of the league, and the team that drafted him in the second round and signed him for $430,000, the Oakland Athletics, started dreaming on Desme\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was going to be a major leaguer, absolutely,\u201d A\u2019s general manager Billy Beane says. \u201cHe looked like he\u2019d gotten over that hump. And he could\u2019ve been a lot more. A great talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

People in the game scrambled to understand why Desme would give up the riches and the platform baseball affords to spread the word of God. The decision wasn\u2019t met with derision as much as wonderment. Athletes leave when their talents or bodies or something tangible betrays them. Desme left ascendant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had everything I wanted,\u201d he says, \u201cand it wasn\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, you will want to read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a way, it\u2019s providential that I saw this story so soon after cracking open Blessed John XXIII\u2019s Journal of a Soul<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0So far, I\u2019ve only read the first entry for the year 1895, when Angelo Roncalli was all of 14 years of age. Written like a future Hall of Famer for Christ, his Rules of life to be observed by young men who wish to make progress in the life of piety and study,\u00a0<\/em>is simply amazing coming from so young a person.<\/p>\n

But when God calls, nothing else can satisfy our hearts. What good does it do for a man to win the world and lose his soul<\/a>? The world alone, and what it offers, \u00a0is not enough to satisfy us. Frater Matthews\u2019 story is still in the first innings, as is our own. Reorienting our lives towards Christ and service to God always seems foolish on the surface. That is, until you realize that true foolishness is to live like the world,<\/p>\n

For, not thinking rightly, they said among themselves:<\/p>\n

\u201cBrief and troubled is our lifetime;
\nthere is no remedy for our dying,
\nnor is anyone known to have come back from Hades.<\/p>\n

For by mere chance were we born,
\nand hereafter we shall be as though we had not been;
\nBecause the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
\nand reason a spark from the beating of our hearts,<\/p>\n

And when this is quenched, our body will be ashes
\nand our spirit will be poured abroad like empty air.<\/p>\n

Even our name will be forgotten in time,
\nand no one will recall our deeds.
\nSo our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud,
\nand will be dispersed like a mist
\nPursued by the sun\u2019s rays
\nand overpowered by its heat.<\/p>\n

For our lifetime is the passing of a shadow;
\nand our dying cannot be deferred
\nbecause it is fixed with a seal; and no one returns.<\/p>\n

Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are here,
\nand make use of creation with youthful zest.<\/p>\n

Let us have our fill of costly wine and perfumes,
\nand let no springtime blossom pass us by;<\/p>\n

let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.<\/p>\n

Let no meadow be free from our wantonness;
\neverywhere let us leave tokens of our merriment,
\nfor this is our portion, and this our lot.<\/p>\n

Let us oppress the righteous poor;
\nlet us neither spare the widow
\nnor revere the aged for hair grown white with time.<\/p>\n

But let our strength be our norm of righteousness;
\nfor weakness proves itself useless.<\/p>\n

Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is annoying to us;
\nhe opposes our actions,
\nReproaches us for transgressions of the law
\nand charges us with violations of our training.<\/p>\n

He professes to have knowledge of God
\nand styles himself a child of the LORD.<\/p>\n

To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
\nmerely to see him is a hardship for us,<\/p>\n

Because his life is not like that of others,
\nand different are his ways.<\/p>\n

He judges us debased;
\nhe holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.
\nHe calls blest the destiny of the righteous
\nand boasts that God is his Father.<\/p>\n

Let us see whether his words be true;
\nlet us find out what will happen to him in the end.<\/p>\n

For if the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him
\nand deliver him from the hand of his foes.<\/p>\n

With violence and torture let us put him to the test
\nthat we may have proof of his gentleness
\nand try his patience.<\/p>\n

Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
\nfor according to his own words, God will take care of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

These were their thoughts, but they erred;
\nfor their wickedness blinded them,<\/p>\n

And they did not know the hidden counsels of God;
\nneither did they count on a recompense for holiness
\nnor discern the innocent souls\u2019 reward.<\/p>\n

For God formed us to be imperishable;
\nthe image of his own nature he made us.<\/p>\n

But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
\nand they who are allied with him experience it<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bad trade, that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said I\u2019m gone readin\u2019 and I am. In fact, I just read the best sports story I\u2019ve seen in a while covered on Yahoo! Sports, and it\u2019s so good, I have to share it with you. Naturally, as something related to God, Heaven, and our vocations as Christians, it\u2019s wrapped up in baseball. Jeff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,36],"tags":[56,82,64,31,45,55,12,35,62],"class_list":["post-10818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-living","tag-baseball","tag-clarity","tag-faith","tag-in-the-news","tag-scriptures","tag-sports","tag-truth","tag-virtues","tag-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\nDrafted By God, The Story of Frater Matthew Desme<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I said I'm gone readin' and I am. 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