Teologija sporta
Theology of Sport

Summary/Abstract: Sport is nothing else but the love and longing of children and adults towards play. If sport were not love, if it were only a play, it would remain simply leisure, entertainment and performance. Even if he is playing, an athlete only becomes man through love. For a Christian athlete, it is not enough to be man; rather he strives to become God-man through the asceticism of sport. Success in sport cannot be attributed only to physical practice; it is always a matter of spiritual balance and a spiritual gift from God. Sport is not an obligation and task; it is love and sacrifice, service to God and people, so its roots are in the metaphysical, in faith. Through sport = practice = asceticism, the athlete gets closer to the Logos of God. Spirituality and physical achievements should ideally merge or at least be intertwined with each other. Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit ( 1 Cor 6,19). According to Saint Apostole Paul, as in the entire Bible, the soul and the body are one. The body is in no way opposed to the soul, nor is the soul opposed to the body. The body signifies the entire man. It is not a rag, a leftover. It contains compatibility, unification, cross-penetration of body-spirit-soul. Movement, or sports and exercise, must be a repose and relief, even fun, for the spirit it is a longing for the lost paradise, whose true nature is forgotten, therefore it represents a longing for peace and eternal repose. Movement should first be made by the spirit, in order to be of use. Everything that tends to perfection is an ascetic struggle; movement is firstly towards enlightenment and deification. Without a doubt, exercise of the body – sports, various physical activities – puts the spirit in motion and awaken it. Through exercise of the body the spirit is exercised, and in this way it is put in motion for prayer towards a godly movement, which unifies it with the body by God’s Grace. Only spiritual-physical exercise is an art (ars).

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