The Ultimate Goal
I wrote this article at the beginning of 2011 around the time of Super Bowl XLV for iibloom.com. Now, as the NFL regular season, NCAA FB regular season and MLB postseason, comes near, it is a good reminder of our ultimate goal. Hope you enjoy.
For professional athletes, the goal of their career is to become a champion. For players in the National Football League, the Super Bowl is the goal. To hold the Vince Lombardi Trophy and forever go down in history as a champion. To wear an incredibly large, diamond-encrusted ring. To have “Super Bowl Champion” added to your name. But how does one become a Super Bowl champion?
For most, the road to the Super Bowl is a long one. Most have played football since their adolescence and made their way through the ranks playing pee wee football, middle school, high school and college football. Some even had stints in arena football, foreign leagues and on semi-professional teams. They have devoted themselves to countless practices, to weight lifting, running, learning, watching game tape, team work and being coached. They have put in endless hours getting better at what they do. They never give up, striving for perfection.
Now, as the players from the two teams heading to Super Bowl XLV prepare for the biggest game of their careers, their “football past” comes to a head. All of the hard work, the determination, the commitment, the struggle…will it pay off? Will they be rewarded for their work? Only one team, the players, coaches and personnel, will be crowned champions.
Let us now correlate this to our own lives and more specifically, our spiritual lives. If we want to attain the goal, which should always be Heaven, we must put in even more work than professional athletes. Unlike the teams in the Super Bowl, we all have the chance to be crowned! We must, each and every day, place our priority on our spiritual well-being. We can look to the example of these athletes, much like St. Paul wrote in the Scriptures, “compete so as to win.” The example that athletes give us, as to how commitment and endurance can pay off, is a great example to follow. However, instead of being committed to physical practices, weight lifting, running and watching game tape, we should be committed to the Sacraments, to prayer, to spiritual reading, to personal growth in virtue and so on. For us, our hard work is not for the temporal world. Our hard work is not for a perishable crown, a trophy, a diamond-encrusted ring, or history books. Our hard work will be the reward of eternal salvation with God the Father in Heaven.
It seems to me that the hardest thing in life (my “game” situation) is that I allow all the little stuff to prevent me from giving it my all, and I get side tracked from the priority of competing with excellence and I fail to train like I used to when I was an athlete. I sort of “let life happen to me” instead of living life. I think about this a lot and constantly have to remind myself to be diligent in my spiritual training. If only I gave my spiritual training the same effort I used to give my athletic training, maybe then I’d reach my ultimate goal.
“Winner at Home”
I saw this on the Father’s For Good website and thought it would be good to post here as well. Great job, Trever Miller!
“Cardinals’ lefthander, a Knight of Columbus, has challenges on and off the field”
By Brian Caulfield
“As he begins his 12th season as a major league pitcher, Trever Miller is familiar with baseball’s performance measurements: earned run average, strikeout-walk ratio, winning percentage, saves and a dozen other metrics. A lanky lefty reliever with the St. Louis Cardinals, who specializes in retiring left-handed batters in late innings, he even holds a major league record for consecutive mound appearances without a win or loss decision. Having pitched for five teams, the 37-year-old hurler’s lifetime record is a respectable 18-16.
Star pitcher Trever Miller with his daughter Grace.
But as a father of a child who was born with two holes in her heart and a genetic disorder so rare that it doesn’t have a name, Miller measures success in life in more basic ways these days – the next breath, a winning smile, a new movement from his daughter Grace. She was not supposed to leave the hospital after birth yet turns a miraculous 7 years old in June.
“Faith goes with the territory,” Miller said last month during the Cardinals’ spring training in Florida. “Grace is my hero and my inspiration. She has overcome more physical tests than I ever have in a lifetime of baseball.”
Miller is a member of the Knights of Columbus’ Our Lady of the Rosary Council 8104 in Land o’ Lakes, Florida. He was brought into the fraternal Order by his father, Terry Miller, who serves as financial secretary for the same council. Father and son are both Fourth Degree Knights in Fr. Malachy Hugh Maguire Assembly 2741.
“I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school” in Louisville, Kentucky, said the younger Miller. He attends Mass each Sunday and when Mass is offered in the Cardinals’ clubhouse through an arrangement with the group Catholic Athletes for Christ.
One of Kentucky’s all-time great baseball stars at Trinity High School, Miller was drafted by the Detroit Tigers after graduating. He spent a few years in the minors before breaking into the big leagues in 1996.
Trever and Pari Miller (left) with their three children and extended family.
A year earlier, he married Pari, his wife of 16 years, and they have three children: Tyler, 14, who is a member of the Columbian Squires; McKenzie, 13, and Grace. After his youngest child was born, he and his wife had a choice to make about her treatment. The couple opted for life and hope by approving surgery to close the holes in her tiny heart.
Today, she cannot walk or talk, and a simple cold can mean a trip to the emergency room to prevent fluid from filling her lungs. Still, Grace attends school as often as she can and receives regular therapy.
“She’s a battler, she’s tough,” said Terry Miller, her grandfather. “She’s the only child with her condition who has lived beyond one year, so nothing would surprise me, even if she started talking one day. I’m sure she’d have a lot to tell us.”
Trever Miller tells of dark days a few years ago when he was angry with everyone, including God, over his daughter’s condition.
“We were stunned, we didn’t understand,” he recalled. “We had to stress acceptance, and as a father I wanted to fix her situation and I couldn’t. It was a helpless feeling.”
As a man who makes his living by his physical abilities, acceptance has been difficult. “Dads are looked to as Mr. Fix It, but no matter what I couldn’t fix this. It was tough that I couldn’t control this.”
He now pours his frustration into running, completing two 26.2-mile marathons and wearing a t-shirt that reads: “26 for Grace, .2 for me.”
“I think our faith in God and his running was his saving,” his wife said.
Miller agrees. “One thing all this has done is to keep our family praying,” he said. “Because of this, Grace has so many other people praying for her too.”
Trever Miller is hoping for a stellar year with the Cardinals, but he knows that his biggest wins will be at home with his family.”
Opening Day 2010
Today marks the start of the 2010 Major League Baseball season. Best of luck to all the teams out there, especially to my Pirates, who need lots of help! There’s something about heading out to the ballpark on a summer day, at least for those of us who like baseball. If you aren’t a baseball fan, that’s fine… this post isn’t about baseball, per se. Here at TrueManhood, we wanted to do a “compare and contrast” between baseball and manliness.
- Baseball is a game. Manliness isn’t.
- Baseball is played during the summer. Manliness is always.
- Baseball players can “mess up” 7 out of 10 times at bat over their entire career and be considered a Hall of Famer. Manliness can’t sustain those numbers.
- Baseball is about trying to win most of the time. Manliness strives to “win” all the time. (“Win” here means to be a TrueMan.)
- Baseball allows men to throw tantrums, kick dirt, scream, cuss, chew and throw drink coolers. Manliness never stands for that sort of behavior.
We could continue on for hours with this sort of thing. I’ve got nothing against baseball, I enjoy baseball, especially when I get to play the game. I grew up playing from an early age into my adult life, I take my family to the ballpark regularly and I really enjoy the playoff season. What we need to be careful about, and this goes for everything in life (other sports, the Hollywood mentality, the online community, etc.) is to take baseball in using moderation. Manliness, however, we should take in with excess! (Remember, manliness means living a virtuous life!)
Man up!
Worshipping the ESPN God
Here is my latest article on iibloom.com. The title is “Worshipping the ESPN God”.
CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE, or start reading below…
“We are in the time of year when it is quite easy to become enamored by the lure of sports. The post-season is in full-swing in Major League Baseball, football season is flying at us from all sides (both the National Football League and College Football) and the National Hockey League recently kicked off their season. The National Basketball Association will be tipping off in a matter of weeks and NASCAR and the Professional Golf Association are both going strong. There is no other time on the calendar when all of these sports are played at one time. If you are a sports-junkie, you love this time of year. For many of us, sports have always been an important aspect of our lives.”
Continue reading HERE.
Man up!
Opening Day (Holy Week)…Opening Day (MLB)
April 6th, 2009… opening day for two important institutions. One, as you will read quite obviously, is much more important than the other. [The other simply lasts much longer than the first.]
The first “opening day” is Monday of Holy Week– the week leading up to the Triduum and Easter Sunday. Technically, Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday. Holy week signifies a time in our lives where we remember (commemorate) Christ’s passion, death and resurrection from the dead. It’s incredibly important. Easter begs us to ask the ever-philosophical “chicken or the egg” question – is Christmas or Easter more important? I won’t get into that here. Easter, whether more/less important than Christmas, is incredibly important for us because it signifies the culmination of salvation history in Christ’s conquering of death on the cross. Christ – the ultimate servant leader. I encourage everyone to make special time this week to take part in the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday – actually one continuous liturgy). Open your heart and your mind to what God is calling you to. The end of Lent can still be a fruitful time for you. Give it a great deal and you’ll receive a great deal in return.
The other institution (although, a bit difficult to talk about following that Holy Week piece) is Major League Baseball. MLB has been a part of my life since birth. Now, I’m not trying to convince the baseball-haters of the world that baseball is a great sport – heaven knows that soccer fans won’t convince me that soccer is a great sport – I simply want to call to mind that opening day for the 2009 season is today. This marks a special day for baseball fans everywhere when we know that basketball is ending soon 🙂 and we have sunny summer days at the ballpark to look forward to. Double-plays, stolen bases and home-runs.
A thought… if the Pirates win today, I suggest that they end the season early and end their pitiful 16-year streak of playing sub-.500 baseball. It would be a great thing for us Pirates fans to have a “winning season”. Just kidding – I guess.
Either way – Man up!
