"Lord, I don't ask that I should win, but please, please don't let me finish behind Akabusi."
Living the Eucharist through sport
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James Penrice, New York, St Pauls, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8189-1292-4
The approach of the book is largely to look at similarities between sport and the Christian life and to explain spiritual truth through sporting analogies. For example page 1 compares an athlete sacrificing his body for the team with Jesus’ sacrifice.
The sub-title of the book is “A guide for Catholic athletes, coaches and fans”. The word American could have been added. As such the book is a bit inaccessible to the non-American, non-Catholic reader. All the sports analogies are to American sports. When he argues that a priest could no more preside over the eucharist in a suit than an athlete could play in a suit, the point is totally lost on the non-conformist. The non-catholic will equally have difficulty with the assertion that “Mary is assumed body and soul into heaven, as she is sinless and full of grace”.
There are some excellent insights into how an athlete of faith can integrate their faith into their sport, for example: “Sports provide a good training ground for learning how to forgive. There are many instances when we feel that an opponent, official, teammate or coach has wronged us.”
There is also a challenge to all of us: “Our participation in sports needs to lead us closer to Christ, not away from him. It truly can if we keep focused on Christ and view sport as a sacred vocation, not a secular avocation”.
The chapter “Run to win but should we pray to win?” looks at humility and the purpose of prayer but not sure it really answered the question. The answer is ‘sort of: Yes but we must be willing to accept any answer’.
The following quote sums up the author’s position: “In the same way God wants us to honestly tell us our real desires, whether or not they are truly the best for us, God wants us to openly share our wants with him because only he can properly sort them out and help us learn what we should really pursue. Yet while we honestly tell him what our will may be, God calls us to accept his will, whether or not it coincides with out wants. If we desperately want victory, we should tell that to God, who understands our heart better than we do, and knows if our motives are pure or tainted by sin. God can then take our prayer and answer it with the wisdom and counsel we truly need.”