IndyCar Ministries works with local clergy to celebrate pre-race Mass for drivers and crew
DETROIT ─ Leave it to a Jesuit priest to discern what IndyCar racing and Christianity have in common, but Fr. Gary Wright, SJ, found a way.
Dressed in a rather untraditional checkered-patterned stole – in honor of the checkered flag that marks the end of an auto race – Fr. Wright said the Indy Car Series, which organized the Detroit Grand Prix on the city’s downtown streets June 4, shares a connection with the Vatican through the series’ sponsor – NTT.
“I didn’t know what NTT stood for (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), but it’s a Japanese company that manages big data projects for large companies,” Fr. Wright said in his homily. “They are also the company that helped the Vatican digitize their documents and books for people to see. So there is your trivia: we have the NTT Indy Car Series and the NTT Vatican archives.”
SS. Peter and Paul (Jesuit) Church in Detroit celebrated its Checkered Flag Mass on June 3 in honor of the Detroit Grand Prix. The Mass was celebrated Saturday as opposed to Sunday, as Turn 2 of the track is a stone’s throw away from the church, forcing Sunday Mass to be canceled.
Faced with the challenge of having a large sporting event disrupt the usual routine, SS. Peter and Paul organized a parish open house and Saturday Mass after IndyCar Qualifying on Saturday, inviting parishioners and race fans to come and receive the Eucharist after Saturday’s racing.
“The Checkered Flag Mass is our way to honor the civic events in the City of Detroit,” Rebecca MacMaster, Director of Parish Life at SS. Peter and Paul (Jesuit) Parish, told Detroit Catholic. “We try to do this with the Sneaker Mass, which has a Blessing of the Sneakers before the Detroit Marathon, and the Jazz Mass during the Downtown Jazz Festival. We have a great opportunity to evangelize to the broader Detroit racing community and welcome them to Mass after the races finished.”
Race fans were welcomed to tour the historic church, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary and at one point in its history served the first cathedral in the Diocese of Detroit.
Fr. Wright drew upon fellow Detroit Jesuit Fr. Patrick Kelly’s book, “Play, Sport and Spirit,” on what competitive environments – like the grand prix – can tell us about God and our relationship with Him.
“Our task here tonight is to find God in the grand prix and think about finding God in this experience,” Fr. Wright said. “Like any sports event, the heart of the race is competition. Competition can cause us to be better, to sharpen our skills, to look at our faults and weaknesses and correct them. Competition can be a good thing that helps us improve ourselves in the big picture, becoming the person God wants us to be and helping us develop the gifts God has given us.”
The Detroit Grand Prix returned to the downtown streets in Detroit this year after years of being on Belle Isle. When the track layout was announced, featuring the backstretch on Jefferson Avenue that would greatly hinder people’s ability to go to Mass on Sunday, the parish got creative.
“We asked how we can take this as an opportunity to spread our message of Catholicism here in Detroit,” MacMaster said. “We thought we can do a Mass on Saturday, like we do for the Marathon, and Letty Azar, the Grand Prix Community Affairs director, reached out to us, asking if we can do a Mass for all the spectators.”
MacMasters suspects 75 percent of the Checkered Flag Mass attendees were Detroit Grand Prix spectators, taking the opportunity to experience the Eucharist after a day at the races.
In a weekend filled with speed, loud engine noises, and the camaraderie of fans from across the country converging on downtown Detroit, Fr. Wright said it was right and proper to thank God for the gifts large sporting events can provide.
“God was in play when He made the universe, He didn’t need to make us, we are not necessary,” Fr. Wright said. “It wasn’t to accomplish any particular thing that needed to be done, God was at play when He made the universe. So it is right for us to play, to compete, to celebrate the competition.”
And focusing on the very nature of auto racing, Fr. Wright said the fans had another aspect to celebrate – human ingenuity.
“There is something different about the Grand Prix, it’s not just watching people, you are watching machines,” Fr. Wright said. “So we look at these cars speeding by and think, ‘Wow, look at what human beings can accomplish.’”
God’s presence was felt on Grand Prix Sunday as well, with Bishop Edgar L. Vann II of Second Ebenezer in Detroit giving the pre-race invocation, and Fr. Tim McCabe, S.J., executive director of the Pope Francis Center, celebrating a Mass in the Renaissance Center for drivers and team members the morning before the race.
The Mass was organized by IndyCar Ministries, a separate 501c3 from the IndyCar Series that provides chaplains and religious services to the drivers who will spend a third of the Sundays in a calendar year away from home.
“We exist to bring the hope of Jesus right into the paddock of the NTT IndyCar, IndyPro and USF Pro series, providing a level of care within the motorsports community,” Jason Holt, chaplain and director of IndyCar Ministries, said. “For those who aren’t involved in racing or don’t understand, they just see the cars and the pretty side of racing, we are behind the scenes, which can be incredibly dark. We see the teams working on the cars, the safety teams, spending 30 percent of the year on the road, working 12-, 16-hour days, wresting with the anxiety that everything they do has somebody’s life in their hands.”
IndyCar Ministries strive to minister to the drivers no matter where they are in their faith life, much as any chaplain would do, providing a nondenominational service and a Catholic Mass at each race – a particular detail in a racing series that features drivers from predominately Catholic countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, France and Spain.
“We provide a Catholic Mass as well as a chaplain service at every event, connecting with local Catholic clergy to celebrate a Mass for the driver’s and teams when we can,” Holt said. “We open every driver’s meeting with a prayer, every officials meeting, every safety meeting in prayer. Not saying all drivers prayer, how deep their prayer life is. But we normally have 50-70 people at our Masses before the race.”
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