Sporting Spirit in the Spiritual Life

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

IF there’s one aspect in our life that most needs a sporting spirit, I would say it should be in our spiritual life, in our relation with God and with others. It’s there, in the game of life, where we should play our best, knowing that regardless of how the earthly outcome of our game goes, we are already assured of victory, since with God, whether we win or lose in a particular game, we always win in the end. God does it for us and with us!

Of course, this assurance of victory should never undermine our duty to do and play our best. Neither should it undercut our duty to go through the proper, even rigorous, training we ought to undergo to prepare ourselves to face all the challenges, trials and different conditions of our life.

If we have a good sporting spirit, we would play with cheerfulness and confidence. And there would be times when out of charity and fraternity, we give way to somebody else to win a particular game. That’s how a good sportsman is.

Yes, we have to be sport and adventurous in facing the different conditions of our life. And it would greatly help if we too can have an abiding sense of humor. Otherwise, we would just easily fall into states of sadness, pessimism and despair when conditions are not favorable to us in a given situation.

This we can do if first of all we have a strong and deep faith in God, our Creator and Father. If we have that faith, we know that God holds everything in order through his providence. He takes care of everything, irrespective of how things go. Ours is simply to relate everything to him and to go back to him everytime we get astray and especially at the end of the day.

When we have this sporting and adventurous spirit, we, of course, would like to play to win and to get as much enjoyment as possible. We would give our best shot. But we also know that this is not going to happen all the time. There will be times when we lose in a game or when we get lost in our adventure. But regardless of how things go, we can always go back to God as we should, and everything would just be all right.

Thus, whether we win or lose in a game, succeed or fail in our adventures and projects, we can still manage to have fun and, more importantly, to learn precious lessons, as in, we get to know more about ourselves and others, about our strengths and weaknesses, about the virtues we need to develop and grow, etc.

There’s now a great need to promote this good sporting spirit as widely as possible. For sure, the world would be a much better place to live in, all bright and beautiful regardless of how things turn, if we manage to assume a good sporting spirit.

Obviously, to be able to do this, we need to have a certain sense of detachment from things in general even as we try to immerse ourselves in them. We have to learn the appropriate art and skill for this. We have to learn to flow with the times and to roll with the punches.

While we cannot avoid being affected in some way by the ups and downs of life, we should see to it that at the end of the day, we are at peace with God and with everyone else, asking for forgiveness from God for whatever mistakes we commit, as well as asking and giving it to others as the case may be.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com