Competition is a good, thing, so they say. It certainly is a good thing in sports. Competition between teams, and sometimes between teammates themselves, has created unforgettable memories for any sports fan in this area and most all areas of our country. Competition, and not giving up, led to a certain Super Bowl victory a few years back when a certain local football team was far behind in score with seemingly not much time left in the game. Their comeback has created an unforgettable memory for many fans. Or, the one in 2004 when a certain local baseball team with certain color socks was down 3-0 in a series where the winning team needed to win four games. Their competitive comeback, not giving up the ship to the “pirates” trying to invade it, resulted in an unforgettable baseball memory that caused cemeteries throughout New England to take on the look of this team’s flags, banners, and other memorabilia. Why? Because they reached four victories before the other team. Sweet. I fondly remember growing up and the competition present between siblings when it came mostly to sports. I look back now and notice that we never competed against each other for grades in school. Not that we weren’t as smart as other students (except for the ridiculously brilliant ones who stood head over heels above everyone else). There were two or three of them in each grade throughout elementary and secondary school. They’re the ones who continue to search for a cure for cancer, which we pray will be found soon, and fly to the moon and elsewhere in rockets and other transportation made to fly up there somewhere. We could not compete with them in the classroom, for the most part. Our sibling competition over the years revolved around sports from one season to another. Such competition created a certain toughness and expectation to succeed in other areas of life, I’m glad to say, while respecting the gifts and talents of others who excel in other walks of life. God’s gifts, we know, are wide and varied. No one person or family has a lock on all of them. Except for Jesus and his mother. Which begs the questions, “If Jesus had played soccer, would he ever lose a game? Would he make sure his team always won?” We do know what matters most - he never would have cheated. We give thanks to God that there is only one God, and not many gods in competition with each other seeking human worship and the eternal souls of human beings. Having one true God makes it easy for us to choose whom to worship, for there is no other choice to make. God being one removes competition in the world of to whom and to what we give our adoration. God has made it easy for us to choose in this area. If there was more than one creator of the stars, and more than one who said, “Let there be light,” and more than one who showers us with mercy and justice, and more than one who could send his Son into the world for our eternal salvation, then we would be making some hard choices between which God/god is better. Thank God we don’t have to make this choice. Yet, it appears that there is competition in this area, for some strange reason. Maybe we are so competitive that, although we know there is only one true God who created us in his image and likeness, created to live forever like him, that we feel the need to make other gods to compete with the one true God. We are definitely a funny sort of creation like this, are we not? We create imaginary gods where they don’t exist, in like manner of a child creating imaginary friends. At least the imaginary friends of children are created in innocence, and not created to compete against some other imaginary friend. If anything, a child who creates more than one imaginary friend will do so in the spirit that lacks competition. They want their imaginary friends to get along with each other. “Sally, this is Missy. I want you two imaginary friends to love one another always.” Too bad it doesn’t work this way with the false gods we create against the one true God. We seem to be quite good and adept at allowing our false gods, i.e. money, to become competitors against the ways and means of our one true God. “How can he command me to sell everything and give it away to the poor and follow him? He must be crazy!” This sort of competition, which exists all over the world, is not healthy competition, as we know in our hearts, I pray. It’s really the difference between passing things and what is eternal. If we like passing things more than the eternal, then we will likely pass into the bad side of eternal life where misery leads the way. Why? Because there’s no money there. What made us happy – falsely – in the present is no longer around after we die. In the afterlife, there’s no false happiness. But there is everlasting horror. And to think this all can be avoided if we make and live the simple choice that only one true God exists in the now. And that the competition he calls us to in the now is to compete against one another in the ways of holiness. Which is the predominant message of the Second Vatican Council. If there is in fact a spirit to this Council, it is the spirit of pure holiness, imitating God, and not the spirit of competing ways and ideologies, which imitates a passing world. So, when St. Paul in this week’s second reading advises Timothy to “Compete well for the faith,” he is not telling Timothy to create a competition in the faith by way of creating some other faith. Two faiths competing against one another is pretty much a losing proposition for at least one competitor, sometimes both. Timothy was taught well by Jesus who taught Paul all he knew about the Christian faith, as we are taught well by the Lord Jesus and the Apostles too. “Compete well for the faith” means to be true to the faith. If we are not true to the faith, or don’t know the faith well while pretending to, then it’s impossible to be true to the faith unless we make a lucky guess about the faith. I t’s much easier to be true to the faith when we possess truthful knowledge of the faith of Jesus Christ. It is then that our light will shine before others. Two competing faiths for one person’s soul is better known as confusion. As with mammon and God, we must choose one to worship. If we worship both, then a second false god has been set up against the one true God. This leads to confusion, which explains why our present culture is quite confused. A culture that has elevated our bodies to a false god, our gender to a false god, and all the other false gods that were already here before we were born. Competition in holiness is what Paul teaches Timothy. Competition in the faith is the path that leads through the narrow gate,as opposed to competition between faiths, or even competition within the faith where one of the ideas is in opposition to the faith. Competition in the faith will build up each other in the truth of the one true God. It wisely dismisses all cultural thinking, and grounds us in the deepness of the Holy Scriptures and Tradition. There’s enough to consider in these two holy entities (Scripture and Tradition) to last one faithful person a dozen lifetimes. There exists no legitimate excuse to go looking for another god outside the wideness of our Catholic faith, where all revealed truth is found. Yet, in our competitive (sinful) nature, even in the realm of who and what to worship, we just cannot hold ourselves back and allow the one true God to be the only source of worship we offer. What the heck is wrong with us? A question my mother would ask me more than once. Anyway, competition in holiness, competition in the virtues, competition in building up the other, is where Paul is taking Timothy. Paul could care less about sports and other forms of healthy competition, although he does use the sports analogy of running his race while being faithful to Jesus to the end. But in the end, after numerous revelations of Jesus in his life, revelations that took him to the third heaven which we hope to make one day, the Apostle to the Gentiles could care little about competition in sports, and much about competition for the truth and goodness of Jesus. Paul was so centered in Christ Jesus after being knocked down on the road to Damascus, that what he passed on in his epistles is without question the way to heaven. As some sectors of religion today fool with his words, including within our own Church, Paul’s centrality in Jesus is a most sure way to living the good truth of our faith in this world, with a solid path being walked to the next. St. Paul called everything in this passing world “garbage” when compared to knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. The competition this world places before us, and its passing ways and things, was no competition at all when placed aside what God has prepared for those who love him. Compete well for the faith, Timothy is instructed. Not compete well against the faith. For us to compete for the faith is to compete for the virtues. “Pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness,” he writes. Represent God well and accurately. Direct our lives toward the one true God, and not worship the many blessings the same one God offers to us. Or the curses offered by the adversary. In this is found healthy competition that makes our world a better place to live, while staying centered in the one true God who has no competition. For who or what in this world can hold a candle to the living God?
HOLINESS No discussion of holiness would be complete without a consideration of the Spirit of God, which is, in itself, called “holy” and which, in addition, is the source and energizer of holiness. Indeed, the Scriptures so frequently invoke God's Spirit in such different ways that it is difficult to write a systematic biblical pneumatology. The one thing that is very clear is that the Spirit of God is connected, in both the OT and the NT, with the principle of life itself. In that sense, spirit is akin to breath, so that when God breathed life into the first human, it was, as it were, the imparting of God’s Spirit. It is not far-fetched, then, to see the Spirit of God as a vivifying force that links the arena of the world and its inhabitants with the source of life that is God. That link also explains why that Spirit can be called “holy.” Examples describing this vivification abound. John the Baptist promises a new baptism in the Holy Spirit, which will replace his baptism of water. Jesus applies to himself the passage from Isaiah in which the Spirit of God is poured out on the messiah in order that the Good News may be preached to the poor. Resistance to the Holy Spirit is, for Jesus, more than blasphemy; it is the unforgivable sin. The Spirit that vivifies is at the core of the nascent Christian assembly. Jesus promises them power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, a power that will permit them to witness to Jesus even to the ends of the earth. That promise is fulfilled in the Pentecostal experience, when the Holy Spirit, like “a strong, driving wind” and like “tongues of fire,” descends on the disciples, empowering them to “speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” From The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality