What’s so beautiful about the straight, level throw of a frisbee,
a perfectly tight spiral touchdown pass, an accurate cross on a corner kick, or
a graceful bump-set-spike? The answer is simple: Athletic feats are excellent
in themselves. They’re beautiful when they are done in exactly the right way,
conducive to victory. Holiness of life is governed similarly by
excellence-in-itself. We pray because it is good to do so. To be holy, to be a
person of prayer, is to be an excellent person.
More than 140 young men from the Arlington diocese including
campers, seminarians and religious lived out this connection between sports and
holiness last week at Quo Vadis Days. Quo Vadis is a summer camp for high
school boys built around Mass, common prayer, brotherhood and athletic
competition. While the mornings featured classroom lectures on the spiritual
life and ample time for confession, silent reflection and contemplative prayer,
the afternoons and evenings found all of the men competing in about a dozen
different sports and games. While many participants are considering a call to
the priesthood, Quo Vadis is not primarily about seminary recruitment. The goal
of the program is to help young men live and pray well.
Why use sports in service of this goal? What does pick-up soccer
have to do with men fostering brotherhood, learning about prayer and sincerely
striving to draw closer to Jesus Christ? What unites all these is excellence,
so clearly visible in the feats of endurance, speed, precision and talent found
on the fields of friendly rivalry. The drive for excellence we experience in
sports teaches us something about the drive for holiness. Just as athletes are
at their best when they play in the way most excellent for their sport, we as
human beings are at our best when our lives are in accord with the way of our
nature: the Way himself, source of all excellence and beauty.
Courtney, who is from St. Rita Church in Alexandria, is
entering his first year of theology at the Pontifical North American College in
Rome.
© Arlington Catholic Herald 2019