Sport Challenges and Issue

Profiles in Catholicism

1 day ago22 min read

Updated: 10 hours ago

A baseball pitcher in a gray uniform with the number 20 is captured mid-pitch on the mound. His right arm is extended back, and his left leg is fully stretched forward as he throws the ball. The background features a stadium with spectators and empty seats.

A Message from the Editor

When I asked the Baseball Priest, Father Burke Masters. Catholic Chaplain of the Chicago Cubs, How can sports bring us closer to God? he replied “Sports have taught me some great things – discipline, hard work, dedication, endurance, perseverance, winning with class, losing with grace, and working with many different types of people. I often use sports analogies when I preach and teach because they are so relatable to people. Just as Jesus used farming examples a lot in his parables because so many people related to farming, I think we can use sports to get peoples’ attention, and then we bring them the Gospel of Jesus Christ while we have their attention.”.

Pope Francis, Cardinal Blase Cupich,, and the US Conference of Bishops to name a few and which are featured in this issue, have severely criticized Donald Trump’s on many of his initiatives.- especially immigration, We may have to change the message on the Statue of Liberty to “Don’t give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We don’t want them.”

A Quote to Remember

"I ask that you live your sport as a gift from God, an opportunity not only to bring your talents to fruition, but also as a responsibility"

Pope Francis

Prayers

A prayer for women athletes

“Women in Sport”

Dear Mary, you were a child once, maybe once running around and chasing other children and being chased, perhaps playing tag and running in and out of the washing lines or up and down the hills.

Did you race down, and tumble down, running and rolling down, or race back up, maybe not calling the loser a slug, but helping up who had fallen, heading back home for lunch, a clean-up and a rest too?

and yet there are those who love like you, your Son, who were full of the zipping zest for sport.

Did these zealous women, train harder, faster and higher, competing all the while to win medals of a glittering, temporary kind, and maybe they thought of St. Paul racing for an everlasting reward?

Dear Mary, you know how fashions have changed, once women were covered in cumbersome garments but now, the other extreme,

pray for a step-back from barely enough to suitably modest clothing.

Did the media pick out the fastest, most graceful, delightful of faces, noting how the second helped the lead who collapsed to cross the line, leaving behind a ruthless win and winning in her humanity?

Dear Mary, women are not a race behind but leading the course, some live the active life to the full, singing and dancing,

tennis and horse riding, yielding only to death after entering religious life.

Did women believe the lie that there is no nobility and purpose in motherhood, so their hearts shrink while their influence seems to resound around the world, glamorizing singleness, only to regret all?

Dear Mary, did your family watch you play and then, calling you in, send you on an errand to the elderly, the housebound, those in need, and were you happy in these visits and on these missions to others?

Did you feel cheated of your childhood, visiting here and there, or are you shockingly happy to be sung through time, rejoicing in your

Son’s love, calling you out of total obscurity to light a way to Him?

Dear Mary, pray for the call to be like you, whether running on the field, jumping the bars of achievements, raising the level of love’s

loving the gift of womanhood, or just being you, loving to love all.

Did it matter that no one recorded your fastest run, your highest jump, your longest leap, as you outstripped us all in the race to pass through eternity’s opening, as you ran home ahead of all mankind?

Dear Mary, turn our hearts and the hearts of all women, to the irreplaceable gift that each one is given, whether in the glory hall or the lowest place of all places where only the poorest are to be found.

by Francis Etheredge Catholic married layman, father of 11,3 of whom are in heaven, and an author. Just published: The Word in Your Heart: Mary, Youth, and Mental Health

Prayer for Athletes

O Christ, we fix our gaze on you, who offer every person the fullness of life.

Lord, you heal and strengthen those who, trusting in you, accept your will.

Today, during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000,

athletes throughout the world are gathered here in spirit, above

Be present to those who have lost their homes,

Their livelihoods, and their sense of security.

Grant them strength in their weakness,

And hope in their despair.

Holy Spirit, move among the emergency responders,

Guide the hands of those who heal and rescue,

Give wisdom to those who lead and organize,

And unite their communities in compassion and service.

We pray for those who are missing,

For families awaiting news of their loved ones,

For the injured and the traumatized,

And for all who bear invisible wounds.

Grant us the grace to be Your hands and feet,

To serve those who are in their hour of need,

To share what we have with those who have lost all,

And to build anew what has been broken.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows,

Who stood beneath the Cross,

Stand now with those who suffer,

And gather them beneath your mantle of protection.

We make this prayer through Christ our Lord,

Who makes all things new,

And Whose mercy endures forever.

Amen.

by Eileen Quinn Knight, Ph.D. Profiles in Catholicism

A Prayer to Prevent Antisemitism

Lord God, through the covenant you established with the Jewish People, we Christians have been grafted into this covenantal tradition according to St. Paul. But very often throughout history, we have shown ourselves ungrateful for this gift given us through Jesus who imbued in his teachings this Jewish covenantal tradition through acts of antisemitism. We join with Popes St. John Paul II and Francis in confessing our sins of antisemitism past and present. Through this prayer, we commit ourselves to the elimination of any remaining anti-Semitic teachings in the Catholic community and pledge to add our public voice in denouncing any manifestations of antisemitism in contemporary society. We ask your blessing so that we may have the strength to fulfill this pledge we make in your presence.

by John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Profiles in Catholicism

Prayer for Those Affected by California Wildfires

Heavenly Father,

In this time of great suffering and loss,

We lift up to You those affected by this disaster.

Hold close those who have lost loved ones,

And comfort those who weep in the darkness of grief.

Lord Jesus, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus,