A Theology of Sports: Part Four

Last in a four part series

Success in athletics requires discipline, strengthening, proper nourishment, and good decision-making. The Christian life is no different. Like an athlete in training, a Christian is often tempted to abandon their “workout routine” for other activities that may seem more enticing at the moment. The Christian life is demanding, success requires strength to endure to the end. Without the proper nourishment-the Body and Blood of Christ-Christians have no life in them.

“This is my body, which will be given up for you,“ is not only Christ’s institution of the Eucharist, it is the credo of every Catholic who engages in athletic competition. When an athlete commits to participate in a sport they make this pledge--whether or not they are consciously aware--to their teammates, coaches and fans: “This is my body, which will be given up for you.” An athlete sacrifices his or her body and all that dwells within--mind, spirit and will--to better someone and something beyond themselves. As people of the Eucharist, Catholic athletes make this sacrifice not merely in imitation of Christ, but truly in him and through him, as branches of the Eucharistic vine. When we feed on the Bread of Life we become bread for others, and our sacrifices for others, whatever they may be, are made in and through Christ in the Eucharist. Sports are thus a powerful avenue for Eucharistic living, and this good news needs to be shared with Catholic athletes everywhere.

A Theology of Sports: Part Three

Third in a four part series.

The body is the central image of the Church. We are the Body of Christ, and the source and summit of our life is the Body and Blood of Christ made truly present to us in the Eucharist. Catholic athletes can use sports to contemplate that image.

The importance of teamwork is an obvious connection, in context of St. Paul’s writing on the body of Christ. A team is made up of individual members, but functions as a group to advance a common goal while also trying to defeat an opponent. The Christian life is similar. We have noble goals set before us, which are difficult to obtain because there is always an opponent working against us who does not want us to attain our goal. Yet there is goodness in facing opposition; Thomas Merton noted: “Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.”

While the importance of teamwork may be obvious, it can be overlooked when individual accomplishments are given too much emphasis. Professional sports offer many examples. I will offer two from the history of the World Series.

Bill Mazeroski is often remembered as “winning” the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates with a dramatic home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game, breaking a tie with the New York Yankees. Yet had his teammates not worked together to score the other runs (and prevented the Yankees from scoring more) Mazeroski never would have had that moment. If he and his teammates had not won three previous games, they would not have been in a position to win the series. If the team had not allowed the Yankees to have won three games, there would not have been a game seven!

On the negative side, Bill Buckner is often remembered as “losing” the 1986 World Series for the Boston Red Sox by letting a ground ball roll through his legs at first base--allowing the New York Mets to tie and eventually win the World Series--when the Red Sox were one strike away from winning. Again, if the Red Sox as a team had been able to score a few more runs that night, or had kept the Mets from scoring more, or had the Red Sox won more games earlier in the series, they would never have been in that position in the first place.

Games are won or lost by teams, not by individuals. While an individual player’s actions may seem to win or lose a game, the pivotal situation was provided by the entire team throughout the whole game.

While as Christians we ultimately contribute our individual efforts to an overall team effort, we still have individual struggles; we all battle personal opponents. Yet our personal battles all contribute to the greater good of the body. This is an essential truth to the sacrament of Reconciliation. All of our actions affect the greater body, even though they may not seem to. When we sin we make ourselves a weaker member of the body, and thus the body is weaker. That is why we have the chance to reconcile with the body through this sacrament.

Next: The Eucharistic Implications of Sports.

Please also check out my article "Healing Football's Spiritual Wounds" at www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=35654

A Theology of Sports: Part Two

Second in a four part series

For centuries sports have been universally recognized as a means of religious expression. The Greeks celebrated the Olympics as a festival to honor their god Zeus. Ancient Egyptians employed ball and stick games in their religious ceremonies; the ball represented fertility, and ritual hitting, catching and throwing were believed to encourage spring rains. In fifteenth century England and France ball games were often played to celebrate religious holidays, especially Easter.

In the United States, the YMCA was formed using sports to lure youth to their Christian ministry, giving them a wholesome alternative to other pursuits. In 1901 a writer describing the YMCA’s physical education programs proclaimed: “We are soldiers of Christ, strengthening our muscles, not against a foreign foe but against sin, within and without us.”

Sports can truly play a central--not peripheral--role in contemporary Catholic faith formation. Foundational to Catholic theology is that God made human beings body and soul united, inseparable, both now and for eternity. The health of one affects the other. Jesus sacrificed his earthly body so we could be restored to eternal life. How we live in our earthly bodies will affect how we live in our heavenly bodies; sports, and the sacrifice and physical discipline they entail, can play a major role in this scheme.

God’s original plan was for humanity to live forever in our earthly bodies. But our bodies, like our souls, became tainted through sin, and so both must be purified before we can enter heaven.

St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians: "What you sow doesn’t come to life unless it dies! What you sow isn’t your body as it will be--it’s a bare kernel, like wheat or something of that sort. God gives the body he’s chosen for it, and each type of seed has its own body.... There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of heavenly bodies is one thing and the glory of earthly bodies is something else." (1 Corinthians 15: 36-38, 40)

At the resurrection we are promised “glorified bodies,” but bodies nevertheless, for that is how humanity was fashioned. We remain human in death, but glorified to what God intended humanity to be in the first place: body and spirit united in the divine image.

Sometimes Christians view the body as inferior to the spirit, but this has dangerous consequences. Pope John Paul II, writing of the “culture of death” in Evangelium Vitae, stated: “Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a proper personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency.”

We would do well to revisit this famous passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: For the body isn’t one member-it’s made up of many members. If the foot should say, “I’m not a hand, so I’m not part of the body,” it would still be part of the body for all that, and if the ear should say, “I’m not the eye, so I’m not part of the body,” it would still be part of the body for all that. If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? But as it is, God arranged the members of the body-each one of them-as He wished them to be. If they were all just one member, what sort of body would that be? As it is, though, there are many members, but one body. The eye can’t tell the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor can the head tell the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body which seem the weakest are much more necessary, the members of the body which seem less honorable are the ones we grant the most honor to, and our private parts we treat with more modesty, whereas there’s no need to present our more presentable parts that way. But God has formed the body in such a way as to give greater honor to the members which lack it, so that there will be no discord in the body and the members will feel the same concern for one another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice. (1 Corinthians 12: 14-26)

Next: Implications for Sports in the Body of Christ

A Theology of Sports: Part One

First in a four part series.

“As a boy I played ball games, and that play slowed down the speed at which I learnt letters…. I was disobedient not because I had chosen higher things, but from love of sport.” St. Augustine

It doesn’t seem to have slowed him down that much.

Although he was one of the greatest philosophers and theologians in history, St. Augustine may have missed the importance of athletics in the life of God’s people, and the possibilities of finding God in our games as in any of our activities. In his Confessions he laments his childhood abuse of sports: “In competitive games I loved the pride of winning. I liked to tickle my ears with false stories which further titillated my desires…. Look with mercy on these follies, Lord, and deliver us who now call upon you.”

Yet as with any gift from God which can be abused, we sometimes view the abuse as the norm and thus become ashamed of it, losing sight of the beauty of the gift itself. Such can be the case with sports. They have sometimes been considered an inconsequential element of our society; athletes who bring their faith to their games have been accused of trivializing religion by doing so.

But when we truly understand how limitless God’s love for us is, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as an activity too “trivial” for God not to be interested and involved. God cares deeply about every aspect of our lives, and he wants to be included in our every activity. God can be found on an athletic field just as he can anywhere else--there is no place God can’t be found. Why then can he be difficult to recognize in our “insignificant” moments?

Perhaps it is because we tend to downplay sports and recreation as merely a break from the more “important” business of life--the inconsequential opposite of our essential work. Yet former baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti observed that leisure is, “in Christian terms, a moment of contemplation…. Contemplation is the result not of work but of an activity freely assumed whose goal is to so perfect the self that for a moment we see what lies beyond the self…” Our relationship with God is not (or should not be) forced upon us, but freely chosen. Why not use our athletic and recreational activities--also freely chosen--to explore the depths of that relationship? Recreation indeed means “re-creation,” when God uses seemingly trivial activities to build us back into the body he created us to be. Sports provide us with a ripe opportunity to do so.

In three subsequent part of this series, we will explore some theological implications of sports. Stay tuned.

Reflections on the Church and Sport

Sorry it's been over a week since I've added anything. I've been working on a big writing project which I hope to be able to post soon.

In the meantime, enjoy these quotations reflecting on the importance of sports in the life of a Christian disciple:

The Christian life is a contest and a struggle against the powers of evil. Therefore, as an athlete of Christ the baptismal candidate is anointed with oil, signifying that he is willing to engage in the contest, and that he is being given suppleness and strength for this purpose. In olden times the entire body of the candidate was anointed, in imitation of wrestlers and athletes who anointed their entire bodies with olive oil prior to entering the arena. (Commentary in the 1962 Roman Missal, Rite of Baptism)

The Church looks at sport with great sympathy, since it considers the human body as the masterpiece of creation. God the Creator gave new life to the body, thus making it the instrument of an immortal soul. Man became a living being; moreover, redemption by Christ turned the human body into a temple of the Holy Spirit, thus making man a member of the Christ destined to be resurrected from his own ashes to live in eternity thereafter. When sport is practiced in a healthy way, it exalts the dignity of the human body without risking idolatry. The Church sees sport as a mighty element of moral and social education. (Pope John Paul II, address to the International Olympic Committee, May 27, 1982)

Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a man courageous, a generous loser, a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole man, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth and helps man to achieve that end to which all others must be subservient, the service and praise of his Creator. (Pope Pius XII, “Sport and the Spirit”)

Sport is one of the human activities which is also waiting to be enlightened by God through Christ, so that the values it expresses may be purified and elevated at both the individual and the collective levels. (Pope Benedict XVI, Message to the 20th Winter Olympics).

Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity. (Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain)

The world of sport is an important areopagus of modern times, awaiting apostles who are ready to boldly announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Vatican Office of Church and Sport, preface to The World of Sport Today: A Field of Christian Mission)