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.