The Winter Olympics - Striving for Perfection and Awaiting Judgement

There is something about the Winter Olympics that holds us still. 

We watch blades carve the ice, skis cut through snow, sleds race along frozen tracks at breathtaking speed. 

We see beauty, risk, discipline, and daring - and then we see the waiting. 

 

The skater stands motionless after the final spin, breath visible in the cold air, eyes fixed on a scoreboard. 

 

The skier glances upward after crossing the finish line. 

 

The snowboarder removes a helmet and waits. 

 

All of them have trained for years for this moment. 

 

All of them must await judgement, and as we watch, we cannot help but recognise something of our own lives in theirs.

Plank? What Plank?

Sometimes the Gospel reaches me not through what is spoken aloud, but through what rises quietly within me when I am interrupted and exposed.

It happened recently at Mass, in a moment so ordinary that it might easily have been forgotten, and yet so revealing that it has stayed with me.

At the very beginning of Mass, before I had properly settled, before my heart had slowed to the pace of prayer, several telephones went off. 

One sound followed another, brief intrusions into the silence that is meant to help me cross the threshold from ordinary life into something sacred.

Almost immediately, irritation stirred within me. It rose quickly and confidently, as though it needed very little encouragement. My attention drifted away from prayer and toward judgment. I told myself I was simply reacting to the disruption, but beneath that explanation lay something more uncomfortable.

I was judging.

Spiritual Warfare - The Hidden Battle

It’s not a subject many people like to talk about. In fact, even in the Church, spiritual warfare isn’t mentioned very much at all. 

We talk about love, mercy, hope and peace — all of which are essential — but not often about the struggle that lies behind all of it. 

Yet from the very first moment of creation, a battle has been going on, unseen but very real. It isn’t fought with weapons of steel or fire, but in the quiet places of the soul.