“Giving the best of yourself”

“Sports is a meeting place where people of all levels and social conditions come together to reach a common aim. It is also a formative vehicle. Perhaps today more than ever, we must fix our gaze on the young, because the earlier the process of formation begins, the easier the person’s integral development through sports will be. Finally, I would like to emphasize the role of sports as a means for the mission and sanctification. Giving the best of yourself in sports is also a call to aspire to holiness.”

Pope Francis writes in the letter that introduces the document “Giving the best of yourself” about the Christian perspective on sport and the human person, which the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life presented today at a conference in the Press Office of the Holy See.

“Giving the best of yourself”— the Prefect Kevin Farrell said in his speech, referring to the title of the document—is an expression that attracts the two worlds that are evoked in these pages. On the one hand, the effort, the sacrifice in the sports world, which is consists in constant striving to win or simply reach the goal. Yet, in the context of faith too, we are called to give our best, to reach the holiness that, as the Pope highlighted in his last apostolic exhortation, is a universal call addressed to everyone and, therefore, also to athletes.”

The document, composed of five chapters and currently available in Italian, English, and Spanish,—the promoters explain—does not “ambition to cover every aspect of the variegated activity of sports, but it wants to offer a Christian perspective of sport to those who practice it, assist as spectators, and participate in it as technicians, arbiters, coaches, as well as to families, priests, and parishes.”