Buy your chips, beer, burgers, and hot dogs; it is Super Bowl Sunday!
In an age where constant distractions are needed, none are more soul enveloping than the spectacle of sport. Many, many people know: all the names of “their team”, their favorite players’ stats, “their team’s” draft pick, and so much more. Athletes have become our new heroes…our new secular saints.
I know a lot of Orthodox Christians like…sorry, LOVE sports. I am not going to say this is inherently wrong (I, too, like some sports). What I am going to urge our readers to do, however, is to really evaluate their lust for sport spectacles, and examine said lust in the light of our Saints’ teachings.
Let us first examine what some of our Patristics say about the spectacle of sport:
“Can this be tolerated? Can this be accepted? After hearing lengthy series of speeches and so much teaching, some people have left us, and deserted us for the spectacle of horse racing. They have become so frenzied that they fill the whole city with their shouting and disorderly racket, creating huge laughter or rather lamentation. Meanwhile I, sitting at home, hearing the outbreak of shouting, have suffered more grievously than seafarers in a storm. For in the same way as those seafarers, when the waves break against the side of their ship, fear that their lives are in danger, so too have I, when those more dreadful cries have broken over me, cowered to the ground and covered myself up. The spectators higher up behave so disgracefully, while the ones further down in the middle of the crowd cheer on the riders and shout worse than the first group” – Saint John Chrysostom (Against those who have abandoned the Church and deserted it for the hippodromes and theaters)
“What shall I say? Or what explanation shall I give, if a visitor arrives from somewhere and challenges us and says: “Is this the city of the Apostles? Is this the city that received so great a teacher? Is this the people who love Christ, who is the genuine, spiritual, spectacle?” You have not even shown respect for the very day on which the sacraments of the salvation of mankind were celebrated. But on Good Friday, when your Lord [273] was being crucified on behalf of the world, and such a sacrifice was being offered, and paradise was being opened, and the robber was led back to his old country; when the curse was being undone and sin was made to vanish, and the ancient war was ended and God was reconciled towards men, and everything was being transformed – on that very day, when it was necessary to fast and give glory, and to raise prayers of thanksgiving for the good things in the world to the one who created them, instead you left the church and the spiritual eucharist, and the assembly of the brothers, and the solemnity of the fast, and as a prisoner of the devil were you dragged off to that spectacle? Can this be tolerated? Can this be accepted? I shall not stop saying these things constantly, and assuaging my pain that way, not by suppressing it with silence, but by bringing it out into public view and putting it in front of your eyes.” – Saint John Chrysostom (Against those who have abandoned the Church and deserted it for the hippodromes and theaters)
“Moreover, there is no one of our adversaries who will not offer this excuse, too: that all things have been created by God and handed over to man–just as we Christians teach–and that they are undoubtedly good, as coming from a good Creator; and among them we must count all the various components that make up the spectacles, the horse, for instance, and the lion, the strength of body and the sweetness of voice. Accordingly, they say that a thing which exists by God’s creation cannot be considered either foreign or opposed to God, nor must a thing which is not opposed to God, because it is not foreign to Him, be considered opposed to God’s worshipers.
Obviously, they continue, the very structures of the places–the squared stones, unhewn stones, marble slabs and columns–also are all the handiwork of God who gave them to furnish the earth; indeed, the performances themselves take place under God’s heaven. How clever in adducing proofs does human ignorance think itself, especially when it is afraid of losing some of these delights and enjoyments of the world!
Accordingly, you will find more people turned away from our religion by the danger to their pleasures than by the danger to their lives. For of death even a fool is not particularly afraid, feeling that it is a debt he owes to nature; but pleasure, inasmuch as it is born with man, even a sage does not despise, since both fool and sage have no other gratification in life but pleasure.” – Tertullian (On Spectacles)
“Those contests for prizes are not of the soul nor yet of good morals, but of strength and the body. If then where there is exercise of bodies, much examination is made about character, how much rather here, where the soul is alone the combatant.” – St John Chrysostom (Homily 17 on Hebrews)
“However certain I may be, then, that you are no less respectable in the conduct of your life than faithful in respect of your sacramental vow; still, since there are not wanting smooth-tongued advocates of vice, and indulgent patrons who afford authority to vices, and, what is worse, convert the rebuke of the heavenly Scriptures into an advocacy of crimes; as if the pleasure derived from the public exhibitions might be sought after as being innocent, by way of a mental relaxation—for thereby the vigour of ecclesiastical discipline is so relaxed, and is so deteriorated by all the languor of vice that it is no longer apology, but authority, that is given for wickedness—it seemed good in a few words not now to instruct you, but to admonish you who are instructed, lest, because the wounds are badly bound up, they should break through the cicatrix of their closed soundness. For no mischief is put an end to with so much difficulty but that its recurrence is easy, so long as it is both maintained by the consent, and caressed by the excuses of the multitude.” – Saint Cyprian (On the Public Shows)
From these quotes we can tell that our Fathers were against the spectacles and games, as they interfered with our Spiritual life (in a number of ways).
I have always found it odd the football games are held on Sunday, when we are suppose to be focused on God, but I guess this has been occurring for centuries:
“You have not even shown respect for the very day on which the sacraments of the salvation of mankind were celebrated.” – St John Chrysostom
For those who don’t remember, Sunday Night football is a relatively new concept, which came about in 1987. What occurred in our society that made us place football spectacles into the day we are suppose to have our mind on Christ? I, myself, find Sunday Night Football and modernity intrinsically linked.
In our modern age, we don’t want to think about Christ, His Saints, and certainly not about going to Church. We want to absorb ourselves in entertainment, for not only ourselves, but our friends (usually trying to impress them with our “spread”). Instead of Congregating in Church, we congregate in our “man caves”. Instead of breaking bread at Trapeza, we break beer bottle tops in front of our TVs (our modern temple). Instead of honoring God, we honor “our team”. Instead of Sunday being God’s day of rest and Worship, it has become a day for man to “rest” and worship, well…man.
We Christians are not suppose to be of this world, but of the Kingdom. This is especially true on Sunday, when we are given the opportunity to meet Christ, and partake of His Eucharist. Unfortunately, due to modernity, we have forgotten what Sunday is about, namely: unity with Christ AND our brothers/sisters in Christ (both alive and reposed).
On this coming Sunday, let us reflect on the words of our Fathers, and seek to unite ourselves with the Kingdom of God, not the kingdom of the world.
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, [from] doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking [thine own] words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken [it].” – Isaiah 58:13-14
Society of Saint John of Gothia 