A Good Winner and a Good Loser

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

SINCE life is like a game, where we play hard to achieve something, we should not be surprised that there will be times when we win and succeed, and times when we lose. We should not be surprised and be unduly affected by this fact of life.

If we are guided by our Christian faith, we know that irrespective of how the earthly outcome of our efforts turns out to be, as long as we do everything with God and for God, the final victory is assured.

We should just try to be a good winner, gracious and humble, when we win, or a respectful and congratulatory loser, when we lose. We should just go on with the game of life, training ourselves to be a better player, but always for the glory of God. That should be the abiding motive of all we do in this regard.

With this motive, we will always play with the very charity of God, the very standard we ought to pursue in all our endeavors. We avoid playing with only human or animal and earthly standards to guide us.

With this motive, there will even be times when we allow ourselves to lose to make others win. We would be willing to make personal sacrifices if only to attain a greater good for the family, community and the world in general.

To achieve this kind of attitude, what we have to do is to unite our whole life, and everything in it, to the very passion, death and resurrection of Christ that is made a sacrament in the Holy Mass. It’s in the Holy Mass where whatever drama we can have in our life, including the worst scenario, is resolved into the victory and success of Christ’s redemptive work.

That is why we have to realize that the Holy Mass should be the center and foundation of our life. In it, we live our life and play its game with Christ who came to redeem us, giving us the proper “way, truth and life” meant for us, in the context of our wounded and sinful condition in this life.

We have to remember that for us to be truly human, to be a real person who is both grounded and oriented properly, and to be a good sport in life, we need to be Eucharistic in mind and heart, because the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is where we have our most precious treasure, our everything, our light, our purification, our salvation.

That’s where we have Christ not only in real presence, as in the Blessed Sacrament, nor as spiritual food, as in the Holy Communion, but primarily as our savior who continues to offer his life on the cross for us, as in the Holy Mass.

We need to be theological in our thinking to capture this reality and live in accordance to it not only from time to time, but rather all the time and everywhere, whatever our situation is.

We have to overcome the very common phenomenon of treating the Holy Eucharist as just a special part of our life that we may attend to in some special moments of the day or on Sundays and holy days of obligation only.

Our whole life should, in fact, be a Holy Mass, uniting everything in it in the ultimate sacrifice Christ made for our salvation. With it, regardless of how our earthly life goes and ends, the victory of Christ’s resurrection is assured for us.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com