Joey Gerber

Hey everyone! My name is Joey Gerber, and I am a professional baseball player. I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN, graduated from the University of Illinois in 2018, and made my Major League debut for the Seattle Mariners in 2020. I was also raised Lutheran by my awesome, hard-working, and conscientious parents. There are a lot of different angles from which I could tell this story, but since I grew up Lutheran and am now a Roman Catholic, I’ll focus my attention on why that’s the case....

My family was active in our church community when I was a kid, but religion wasn’t something that I personally gave much conscious thought to outside of when we went to church. Even so, my parents made sure that I said grace before eating, prayed every night, and had habits and activities that kept me out of trouble. With this background, it is not too surprising that there came a point--I was probably about eleven--when I grasped the reality of sin in my life and the world around me a little more acutely, and tried to make more sense of it all by reading the Bible. This was also around when my older sister started her Lutheran confirmation classes, and soon I had a heightened awareness that there were divisions among Christians. I was fascinated with the different denominations and wanted not only to know why I was Lutheran, but why it was good that I was Lutheran and not some other type of Christian. Given the historical connection of Lutheranism to the Catholic Church, it was only natural that I became interested in Catholicism and all of the reasons why I wasn’t Catholic. Thanks to the internet, I was able to get answers and develop new questions with impressive speed. In typical Protestant fashion, my main concerns involved not only the corruption, hypocrisy, and violence committed by members of the Catholic Church down through the centuries, but also some more specifically Christian theological topics. While the former issues are extremely important and can’t be overlooked, the probably overused adage “don’t leave Jesus because of Judas” will have to do for now in order to keep this short enough to briefly focus on a few of the latter problems, which in general were bigger obstacles for me.

So, without further ado, to the crux of Luther’s Reformation: justification. Are we justified by faith alone or by faith and works? How do I find a gracious God? Without getting deep into some of the nuances of the issue, suffice it to say that at first it seemed immediately obvious to me that the break with the Catholic Church was itself “justified”. But my understanding of justification at the time, while giving me a sense of confidence that the Church was incorrect on some important issues, was also responsible for difficulties I had in reconciling certain parts of the Bible--some even from St. Paul--that indicate our cooperation with grace in our actions, a cooperation which is at all times possible only by grace, plays a role in our salvation. This helped serve as a catalyst for me to realize that the Catholic Church actually had reasonable things to say about grace, even if I wasn’t willing to accept it all right away. Once the walls started coming down around justification and grace, and especially when I saw that the differences were not nearly as vast as I had once thought, I was much more willing to at least hear what the Church had to say on other issues.

While I was trying to deepen my knowledge about Christianity in general, I ran into some Patristic era writings. I was struck by how the Church Fathers spoke in a way that seemed to reflect an understanding and way of living out the Gospel that was in line with Catholicism. This was noticeable in many areas, but perhaps most relevantly in ecclesiology. One can look at St. Irenaeus as an obvious example, who emphatically supported the unity of the Church and the primacy of the bishop of Rome. But even just a few years after St. John the Evangelist died and already St. Ignatius of Antioch said that “wherever the bishop is, there let the people be; wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”. This doesn’t even touch upon the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the Church since the very beginning, but suffice it to say that its importance was not lost on me and that ultimately it is truly the crowning reason to be a Catholic.

With these developments, it wasn’t long until I realized that the community sent by Christ to “make disciples of all nations” was Catholic from the start. It is this Church that is the “pillar and foundation of the truth” over which “the gates of hell will not prevail”. While the Church is never above the Word of God, the canon of Scripture itself is evidence of the living Tradition that presupposes an external community established by Christ, and it is only within the community that you really get access to the full picture as a unified whole. After all, Scripture is not a “matter of one’s own interpretation”. On this note, as a Catholic I’ve found knowing that the Church of Christ continues on as a currently existing visible community in no way takes away from the spiritual aspect of the Church, but actually enhances it. Participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, could not make that any clearer, and it goes to show how important it is not only to believe in union with the Church but also to live in union with the Church. Faith is incarnational, sacramental, and ecclesial by nature; we don’t become members of Christ’s Body abstractly. To sum up my perspective, if our personal relationship with Jesus is to have concreteness in our lives in terms of what we believe and how we live while having a basis that transcends our purely subjective experience, if faith is to have historical continuity with the risen Lord and to be a living faith that is not merely grasping at an increasingly distant past, then, whether we realize it or not, we need the Catholic Church. So, after a few years of reading the Bible, Catholic and Lutheran catechisms, a bunch of other random things on Google, and spending some time in prayer, by the grace of God I (along with my sister!) made my first Confession on Good Friday in 2013, and the next day at the Easter Vigil received Confirmation and Holy Communion.

It’s worth noting that when I entered into full communion with the Catholic Church, I really didn’t feel as if I was abandoning the Lutheran heritage that I received from my family. After all, we share a common baptism and there is still much more that unites than divides us. This is not to minimize the differences that still separate Lutherans and Catholics, or the difficulties that this separation entails, but to me joining the Church and accepting the Catholic faith in its entirety was a natural development of authentically living out my life as a Christian. Related to this, I can’t fail to mention how valuable the ecumenical work of the past 50+ years has been in overcoming past prejudices and in developing ways of communicating that can help bring about reconciliation. Without the progress made, it would have been way more difficult than it already was for me to have had any sort of openness to Catholicism. Finally, it was a blessing that my family did care about Jesus and lived out their faith on a daily basis. The way you are raised truly makes a great impact on your perspective; the faith I received and grew in thanks to my family allowed me to be able to clearly see that the Gospels present to us the “real Jesus”, that Christ’s love emanating in the witness of the saints and various other signs corroborates the truth of our encounter with Him. For this, I am forever in debt to them.

I became Catholic almost nine years ago. A lot has happened since then, but one constant through everything has been my faith. Not only that, it has honestly been instrumental in my career as a baseball player. Grace perfects nature; faith and sports truly go hand-in-hand to experientially teach you about life: how to work with others and communicate with a diverse array of people, learning how to be resilient in handling failure and suffering, living in the present moment and doing so with joy, not losing sight of the little things but also appreciating them, while constantly striving to always improve and get better, focusing on what you need to be focusing on when you need to be focusing on it. Both faith and sports also help you learn how to deal with unpredictability and things beyond your control. For instance, in 2020 I spent most of the shortened season in the Major Leagues; this year, I ended up needing back surgery and didn’t play in a single game after Spring Training. Honestly, neither was really expected, especially the timing and manner in which they came about. But, that’s just a snapshot of life; whether you are on the peak or in a valley, you really don’t know what will come next. Viewed in a certain light that could seem disturbing, but in reality it is freeing. We can always have hope because God, who is Love, is in control and working for our good.