Football and the truth

    When it comes to sports, San Antonio is certainly Spurs country. However, football is also very popular amongst San Antonio and all Texas sport fans. As you may know by now, I love sports. I enjoy playing sports and I am also an avid fan. For me sports are a source of physical and mental health but also an excellent human and spiritual resource.

    As the summer comes to an end, the fall begins and with it a new football season. One of the reasons I enjoy football — a sport that is hard to understand in its complexity for those who are not familiar with it — is because I find it to be a very good metaphor for Catholic life.
    Certainly I’m not the only one or the first to find this similarity. The unforgettable Vince Lombardi said, “Football is like life, it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.”

    In fact, few sports have such meticulous and demanding planning and strategic preparation. Besides the physical training, the players must have an exceptional memory to remember the x’s and o’s, plays, passing lanes, etc., that they have to execute with the mere mention of a number or name.

    On the playing field, each man has his own responsibility. No one can blame anyone else for his own mistakes; and yet it is a team sport. Without the team, the individual simply cannot survive.
    Some movies about football have glamorized the individuals capable of deciding a game by themselves, making their own calls and disobeying the coach.
    But in real life, football players know very well that if they win it is because they have followed the norms, and allowed their talents to be guided by the principles, and rules designed and established by the coaches.

    Lou Holtz, the legendary University of Notre Dame football coach, said that “winning teams are goal-oriented. They win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specific objectives.”
    That is precisely where I find a close relationship with Catholic life. We Catholics know that our happiness and salvation are played on the “field” of life. Not even the greatest personal talents will be of value or get us real victory — in this life or the next — if we don’t follow the objective principles of our faith, the Truth revealed by Jesus Christ, the real “divine coach” of our life.
    The believer can play his “own subjective game,” turning into a rule a personal subjective idea or sentiment, but the result will compromise the final outcome of the game and the player will end up, not only hurting himself, but the entire “team” of humanity.

    We Catholics live in an increasingly relativist context, which believes that the objective truth is, in itself, an “insult” to plurality. In fact, it is not. Objective truth is a real fact that every human being has to face. Things are as they are: the laws of nature, good and evil, material and spiritual, sickness or health.
    On the other hand, reality shows us that subjective desires are nothing more than wishful thinking! No one believes that the typical Hollywood phrase “follow your heart” is worth anything when you’re stuck in traffic. Reality is real, wishful thinking is unreal.

    Spiritual life, Christian life is no different. God has created a plan, because he knows us perfectly and loves us absolutely. Objective truth is a consequence of his love and knowledge of human nature. God did not establish laws and principles as a personal caprice, but as a way to help us to make the best of our humanity and to win the game of life.
    Freedom does not consist of twisting the truth in order to do what my subjective feelings tell me to. It consists rather of knowing the objective truth of God and knowing how to apply it on the “field,” with my own abilities and virtues, as successful football players do.

    I’m sure that we’ll enjoy the new football season. Our team may win or not and there will be another season. But we have to make sure that we are successful in the game of life, so let us ask God the Father, with humility, through his Son Jesus Christ, to make us able to know the Truth, love it, and put it into practice in our lives, that we can be successful in reaching the goal of our life, having a good and successful lifelong Catholic season.