WE need to develop a sportsman’s
attitude toward life,
since life is like a game. Yes, life is like a game, because we set
out to pursue a goal, we have to follow certain rules, we are given
some means, tools and instruments, we train and are primed to win and
do our best, but defeats can always come, and yet, we just have to
move on.
It would be unsportsmanlike if we allow ourselves to get
stuck with our defeats and failures, developing a loser’s mentality.
That would be the epic fail that puts a period and a finis in an
ongoing narrative, when a comma, a colon or a semi-colon would have
sufficed.
We need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can
come only when we choose not to have hope. That happens when our
vision and understanding of things is narrow and limited, confined
only to the here and now and ignorant of the transcendent reality of
the spiritual and supernatural world.
Besides, life involves a till-death struggle against all
sorts of enemies, starting with our own treacherous self, the ever
seductive world, and most of all, the spiritual enemies who certainly
are more powerful than us.
Finally, life involves pursuing a goal that is much
greater, yes, infinitely greater than ourselves. We should not be a
bad sport who gives up easily without even trying, or who surrenders
in the middle of an exciting and suspenseful game.
We therefore have to develop a strong spiritual
sportsmanship in the tenor expressed in some words of St. Paul: “Do
you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives
the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” (1 Cor 9,24)
Aside from a strong sense of self-discipline and
submitting ourselves in a continuing training program, an
indispensable ingredient of this healthy sporting spirit is the sense
of acceptance and abandonment that we need to deliberately cultivate.
This does not come automatically, as if it’s part of our genes. We
have to develop them.
We have to learn to accept things the way they are or the
way they can be. Yes, it’s true that we can shape things and events in
our life. We can even shape persons to a certain extent.
There’s a certain validity to the saying that “life is
what we make it.” But this cannot be true all the time. We cannot
succeed in all our plans all the time, no matter how pure our
intentions and heroic our deeds. That’s simply because life has
aspects outside our control. There certainly are predicaments that are
humanly insoluble.
And yet in all these, we are given a game plan that
assures us of victory. It’s the game plan of hope in the ever wise,
omnipotent and merciful providence of God. What is needed here is
precisely a healthy sense of acceptance and abandonment in the hands
of God.
A certain sense of abandonment is needed in life. It
surely is not the type where we just do nothing. It’s an active,
intelligent abandonment, driven by faith and love for God. It involves
a lot of patience and optimism, the capacity to absorb setbacks and
all forms of suffering without compromising our hope in God’s
providence.
We can know God, and know him a lot. We can cooperate with
him, and cooperate with him a lot. But we cannot know him completely,
nor cooperate with him 100%. But this should not bother us too much.
We just have to exercise our faith, hope and charity to keep ourselves
going.
Someone said that if anyone claims to know God completely,
and by corollary, to cooperate with him completely, we can be sure
that that God is not the real God, for God, while knowable and
relatable, always transcends our ways. So trust, a sense of
abandonment, is unavoidable.
Christ, the fullness of divine revelation, himself taught
us to live a certain sense of abandonment. And he lived it to
perfection when he abandoned himself to the will of his Father by
accepting his death on the cross.
Let’s meditate often on his passion and death, since in
this we have the standard and norm for our ability to accept things as
they are and abandon ourselves in the hands of God.
This exercise will train us to be tough, and to find
meaning even in our darkest and most painful moments. This will even
keep us cheerful, which is never an expression of hypocrisy but rather
of a strong faith and hope in God.
since life is like a game. Yes, life is like a game, because we set
out to pursue a goal, we have to follow certain rules, we are given
some means, tools and instruments, we train and are primed to win and
do our best, but defeats can always come, and yet, we just have to
move on.
It would be unsportsmanlike if we allow ourselves to get
stuck with our defeats and failures, developing a loser’s mentality.
That would be the epic fail that puts a period and a finis in an
ongoing narrative, when a comma, a colon or a semi-colon would have
sufficed.
We need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can
come only when we choose not to have hope. That happens when our
vision and understanding of things is narrow and limited, confined
only to the here and now and ignorant of the transcendent reality of
the spiritual and supernatural world.
Besides, life involves a till-death struggle against all
sorts of enemies, starting with our own treacherous self, the ever
seductive world, and most of all, the spiritual enemies who certainly
are more powerful than us.
Finally, life involves pursuing a goal that is much
greater, yes, infinitely greater than ourselves. We should not be a
bad sport who gives up easily without even trying, or who surrenders
in the middle of an exciting and suspenseful game.
We therefore have to develop a strong spiritual
sportsmanship in the tenor expressed in some words of St. Paul: “Do
you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives
the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” (1 Cor 9,24)
Aside from a strong sense of self-discipline and
submitting ourselves in a continuing training program, an
indispensable ingredient of this healthy sporting spirit is the sense
of acceptance and abandonment that we need to deliberately cultivate.
This does not come automatically, as if it’s part of our genes. We
have to develop them.
We have to learn to accept things the way they are or the
way they can be. Yes, it’s true that we can shape things and events in
our life. We can even shape persons to a certain extent.
There’s a certain validity to the saying that “life is
what we make it.” But this cannot be true all the time. We cannot
succeed in all our plans all the time, no matter how pure our
intentions and heroic our deeds. That’s simply because life has
aspects outside our control. There certainly are predicaments that are
humanly insoluble.
And yet in all these, we are given a game plan that
assures us of victory. It’s the game plan of hope in the ever wise,
omnipotent and merciful providence of God. What is needed here is
precisely a healthy sense of acceptance and abandonment in the hands
of God.
A certain sense of abandonment is needed in life. It
surely is not the type where we just do nothing. It’s an active,
intelligent abandonment, driven by faith and love for God. It involves
a lot of patience and optimism, the capacity to absorb setbacks and
all forms of suffering without compromising our hope in God’s
providence.
We can know God, and know him a lot. We can cooperate with
him, and cooperate with him a lot. But we cannot know him completely,
nor cooperate with him 100%. But this should not bother us too much.
We just have to exercise our faith, hope and charity to keep ourselves
going.
Someone said that if anyone claims to know God completely,
and by corollary, to cooperate with him completely, we can be sure
that that God is not the real God, for God, while knowable and
relatable, always transcends our ways. So trust, a sense of
abandonment, is unavoidable.
Christ, the fullness of divine revelation, himself taught
us to live a certain sense of abandonment. And he lived it to
perfection when he abandoned himself to the will of his Father by
accepting his death on the cross.
Let’s meditate often on his passion and death, since in
this we have the standard and norm for our ability to accept things as
they are and abandon ourselves in the hands of God.
This exercise will train us to be tough, and to find
meaning even in our darkest and most painful moments. This will even
keep us cheerful, which is never an expression of hypocrisy but rather
of a strong faith and hope in God.
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