February 8, 2024

Three months ago today, during the 2023 Sport at the Service of Humanity Conference hosted by Marquette University, Fr. Jose Miguel Cardoso of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education shared his thoughts on the Spirituality of Sport.

Play the video above for Fr. Miguel’s full speech.   Below are some highlights/excerpts from his speech:

On Why the Holy See is interested in Sport? 

The Holy See is interested in sport because of 2 fundamental reasons.

Firstly, if the gospel requires a relationship with culture and sport; and sport is one of the greatest cultural events in our lives; then the gospel, the theology cannot ignore this phenomenon.  Pope Francis reminds us that sport bears witness to the important qualities of a person and therefore, we cannot ignore the human that is linked to the sporting activity.

Secondly, because if sport has the capacity to transform the human person, then changing sport changes the human person; and changing the human person changes the society to which the human person belongs.  In other words, recognizing that sport has the great power to transform the culture.

On the Post-Modern Stage of Sport

The Church wants to add a 9^th stage to the history of sport – the Postmodern Age of Sport.  What does this mean?

A sport that aims to be a prophecy of a society that is integral and not elitist (political sense); that is not reduced to the digital world but takes responsibility for the real work (ecological sense); that has the ethical valuation of the person at its center (ethical sense).  And that points to a sense behind sport, which is the transcendental sense of sport – the spiritual sense.

On Sport to Spirituality and Spirituality to Sport

Sport can take on a spiritual meaning as it is an experience that shares many common elements of the spiritual life.  What are these elements?  The generic human qualities that sport fosters such as discipline, commitment, enthusiasm, resilience, perseverance and confidence.  In fact, no Christian can live their faith to the full if they don’t take these same qualities for themselves.

On the other hand, we look at the opposite.  How spirituality can be exercised through sport.  Spirituality does not mean religious belief.  Sport does not produce a doctrinal thought about God, but it does provide an awareness of His presence.

Sporting experience offers a spiritual experience when the sportsman is confronted with his challenge, his limits, his defeats – generating in him an openness to the transcendental realm by virtue of an awareness of his historical finitude.  A realm that in a nutshell can be described in two ways.  An awareness of the existence of an absolute being – God.

Firstly, the experience of trust.  Of a God who is beyond human; who sustains and strengthens us with His Grace for the sporting event.  As we can see in many contests, religious signs and gestures are made at various sporting events.

Secondly, the experience of consolation.  Of a God who comforts us in times of sporting difficulty.  Or as St. Paul would say … “I am able to do all things through Him who gives me strength.”

On Why we need more Saints than Idols today

Today, we need more saints than idols.   Like saints, no one is born a champion, but becomes one through permanent intensive training like a saint.  No one is born a saint but it is the journey of their life that makes them a saint.

Pope Francis tells us that God has given all of us a field, a piece of land on which to play out our lives.  But without training, even the most talented person becomes an aberration.  To train is to ask God everyday,  what do you want me to do?  What do you want from my life? We must confront him as if He were a coach, a coach who is always ready to lift us up.

On Feeling the Divine through Sport

Perhaps this is the horizon for all of us here.  To push Sport towards a postmodern stage.  Transforming sport into an art.  In other words, into something that is more than a physical exercise, but something that promotes human life and expands it to infinity.

For this reason, we could add to the Sermon at the Mount.  “Blessed are those who practice sport, for theirs is also the Kingdom of God.”