With his Lenten and Holy Week duties finally winding down, Cardinal Timothy Dolan turned his attention to one of his favorite secular pursuits in a Sunday New York Post op-ed: baseball.

“With spring comes light, warmth, the renewal of nature, fresh growth, and the end of the chill and darkness of winter. With Passover and Easter come God’s deliverance from sin, death, and oppression, the promise of new life and revival. And with spring comes another potent force in our culture: baseball! “

Cardinal Dolan, who counts himself as a fan of the Yankees and Mets, along with the Milwaukee Brewers and his boyhood team, the St. Louis Cardinals, drew parallels between religion and baseball.

“Both have a keen sense of ritual and tradition, reminding the player, the fan, and the believer that we’re part of something beyond us, something that fascinated generations before us.,” he wrote.

“Judaism and Catholicism both have a start and a finish, which happen to be the same place. We Catholics, and our fellow Christian brothers and sisters, rejoice that Jesus, our Savior, has conquered death itself, as He rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday,” the Cardinal wrote.

Read the full op-ed piece here.