“The soul is the form of the body” is the Catholic way of speaking about the unity of body and soul in the human person. The spirit and the body are not two natures cohabitating, they are one entity in the human life. This is a profound spiritual insight, if our bodies are the normal means for us to experience the sacred, then they are the most natural and immediate objects for our own spiritual reflection. A Catholic spirituality is not one that tried to escape the body, but is one that uses the body and all its senses to encounter God. That music and art are physical expressions of spiritual experience no one questions. I am suggesting that sport can also be just such an expression of a spiritual reality.

This is not a completely new idea, the ancient Greeks who believed the gods had human form saw the human body as both sacred and secular in nature. Physical realities expressed spiritual realities, as seen in this description by the 2cd century writer Lucian:

“The young men have a tanned complexion from the sun, manly faces; they reveal spirit, fire, manliness. They glow with fabulous conditioning: neither lean or skinny, nor excessive in weight, but etched with symmetry. They have sweated off all useless flesh, and what’s left is made for strength and stamina, and is untainted by any poor quality. They maintain their bodies vigorously.”

Even in death, the Greeks revered the spiritual representation of the body as Kouroi, statues or drawing of idealized young men were placed over the graves of even the most elderly Greeks citizens. The idealized physical form of the Kouroi reflected the soul or essence of the departed citizen whose actual body looked nothing like the Kouroi atop the grave.

The possession of a Greek idealized body was not sufficient however; it had to be used for something, specifically, employed in competition against another.

At the core of Greek athletics was an individual's physical endeavor to overtake an opponent. For this reason, sports in ancient Greece generally excluded team competitions and performances aimed at setting records. Contests included footraces, the long jump, diskos and javelin throwing, wrestling, the pentathlon (a combination of these five events), boxing, the pankration (a combination of wrestling and boxing), horse races, and chariot races. During competition and training, athletes were usually naked and covered with olive oil to keep off the dust. They trained in the gymnasium or xystos (covered colonnade), often coached by past victors. The Greeks believed that their love for athletics, among other things, distinguished them from non-Greeks, and only Greek citizens were allowed to compete in the games.

The values of one’ own personal excellence matched against the personal excellence of another was a key part of games. The games themselves becoming a sacred experience for both the participants and the onlookers. This spiritual struggle was reproduced in their art:

The wrestlers

More Wrestlers

Runners

Discus

Discus

Winners

Although women did not participate in the games, they would be represented as warriors who competed in battle

Wounded Amazon

Acknowledging our debt to the Greeks, I am approaching spirituality and sport from my perspective, a catholic perspective. It is not that there is an official catholic position on individual and team sports, and I am not trying to make one, but I strongly suggest that sports are part of the spiritual experience. They have spiritual significance for gifted few who are high performance “Olympic quality” athletes. They have significance for those who are dedicated athletes; they have significance for all those of us who once were and who aren’t any more among that number; and they have significance for those of us who never were competitive athletes but simply appreciate it. On some level, athleticism has spiritual significance for any of us who have a body seamlessly united with a soul.

Council of Vienne, 1312

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/athl/hd_athl.htm