Olympics, Eucharist and mission
Guest Columnist
By Msgr. Francis X. Meehan
The Olympics in China are nearing their end. Perhaps it is my age. I noticed a greater disinterest in details as to who was winning what. One morning after celebrating Eucharist, a prayer-reflection came to me. It had to do with our mission as a Catholic people, as a Eucharistic people. It had to do with East and West and a Catholic social vision.
The beauty of the Olympics is the gift of gathering. The nations are gathered. There is a legitimate patriotism. We cheer a compatriot’s victory, yes. But in the end, the Olympics call for wider eyes, a seeing beyond nationalism.
Catholic people come from Eucharist with words ringing in the ears: “Father you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly give you praise…. From age to age you gather a people to yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.”
Eucharist brings to us a wider peripheral vision of our world. Even the canon-prayer for the Holy Father in Rome recognizes our need to be pulled away from the historic arbitrariness of land-boundaries into a holy center where letters, emails, documents and cultures meet.
So how many gold medals did the United States win? With loving affection and esteem for young athletes, in the end, the very question is rendered less meaningful. A greater indifference to the question does not stem from any elitist superiority, but from an instinct for the interdependence of all peoples, from a sense of our larger mission as Catholics. “This is the Cup of my Blood…. It will be shed for you and for all.”
Interesting this year that the games were held in the East. There are gifts from the East. Journalist-philosopher David Brooks reflected on the eastern gift of harmony, of the eastern collective sense versus the western Enlightenment (European and American) emphasis on the individual. (New York Times, August 11, 2008).
The Catholic social vision carries an instinct for both: for both the individual and the common good. Pope John Paul II gave us the image of “solidarity.” He meant that humankind, and especially we as a Catholic people, must sense a “solidarity” with other peoples, peoples different from ourselves — a solidarity with “the other.”
John Paul sees “solidarity” as a moral virtue expressed in a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.” (Encyclical: On Social Concern, paragraph 38: Cited by theologian David Hollenbach, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Summer 2008, p. 38).
The temptation could be to see all of this as too removed from our daily lives, our daily sorrows and struggles. And yet, there is a rich grace for us at home and in our parishes. Look at the faces across the aisles of our churches. They are becoming more diverse. A government study reports that within the next 40 years, those we now call “minorities” will be larger than what we call the majority.
It is a great blessing to share physical space and heart-space with so many peoples — Latinos, Vietnamese, Korean, African-American and so many others. So much good is happening as our priests, religious and lay leaders find new parish strategies and structures to meet this new reality.
Each of us — especially those of us from older immigrant groups such as German, Polish, Italian, Irish — each of us is made joyful and larger-of-heart by that wider peripheral vision, the vision of Catholic Eucharist, the grace of East and West, a grace that goes beyond even the gathering of Olympic athletes.
Msgr. Meehan is a former teacher and pastor who now does spiritual direction for students at St. Charles Seminary.