Sporting spirit in the spiritual life

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo)

We ought to be patient with ourselves in the spiritual life.  Life in general is a battle that we have to engage.  But more so in the spiritual life.  No one is born virtuous since virtue is a moral choice.  We have to choose to be good intentionally and firmly, otherwise events in life will just carry us and before we know it, we have drifted much from a life of virtue.  No one becomes virtuous by a single stroke.  It takes a lot of practice.  No one becomes a person of vices too by just one mishap.  It takes a lot of repeated bad acts with each act becoming easier than the previous one.   This is so because we humans are a creature of habits.  We need to repeat many actions in order to make it ingrained in us.  But we should be wise enough to choose a good habit instead of a bad one because as harmless as it may seem at the start, bad habits could become our destiny.  As the famous saying goes, “Sow a thought, reap an act.  Sow an act, reap a habit.  Sow a habit, reap a character.  Sow a character, reap a destiny.”

The overall goal of practicing the virtues is to be like God, and be holy.  “Be holy, because I am holy.”  (1 Peter 1:16) It is not just being virtuous to succeed in life, but most importantly for success in the spiritual life.  But there will be times when we slacken, we lose it, we get defeated in some areas or with a certain virtue, we give in to some comfort, lose our temper, etc.  Usually, our failures can be from any of the seven capital sins of pride, lust, greed, envy, anger, gluttony and laziness.  They are called capital sins for a reason.  They are the main roots of all the sins we can commit.

If you fail at times, it’s okay.  Life is a process.  If you lose, just start again.   The important thing is not to give up the war even if we lose some battles.  That’s why there is a spiritual practice in the Church recommended by many saints to have the habit of going to confession regularly called frequent confession.  There is a good book dedicated to this by the late German abbot Benedict Baur, first published in 1922, entitled “Frequent Confession: Its Place in the Spiritual life.”  It makes a very good case of growing abundantly in the spiritual life through regular confession.  Some do it monthly, weekly or twice a month not because they have been committing big or mortal sins regularly but just the grace of the sacrament itself is so precious and effective in the spiritual struggle even if you just confess venial (small) sins.  St. John Paul II for example goes to confession weekly, whom we know is already holy to begin with or perhaps he precisely became holy because of the regular graces he received from frequent confession.

Sporting spirit in the spiritual life means we can at times lose some skirmishes in our struggle to be like Christ, but we readily begin again and not lose our bearing because the losses are part of the process of developing a virtue or getting rid of a vice.  In sports, being a good sport means a person who is not rude or angry about losing and looks forward to competing again.  Over time we will acquire positive substantial changes in our spiritual life, but it won’t happen all at once.  No one is going to bat 100 percent or even close to it.  All that is important is we are doing our best to be holy and that we are moving in the right direction.  When we have this perspective even if we lose some fights, we’ll be on our way to a holier and happier life.  “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”  (Proverbs 24:16)