A Runner’s Thoughts: “If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.” (Kathrine Switzer) If you are losing your faith go to the celebration of the Eucharist or watch one on TV or the internet and look at the community of faith that is struggling with you!
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A Runner’s Thoughts: “Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like the muscles of the body.” (Lynn Jennings) So to in the spiritual life…Faith is our spiritual muscle that needs strengthened just like our mental and physical muscles.
A Runner’s Thoughts: “Do everything without grumbling or questioning…” (Phil. 2:14)
A Runner’s Thoughts: “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.” (St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 12:12)
A Runner's Thoughts: First, let me offer congratulations to all who ran the New York Marathon yesterday! – My inspiration for today comes from the Letter of St. James – Friends, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save one has it? If a sister or brother has nothing to wear and no food for the day, and you say to them, “Good-bye and good luck! Keep warm and well fed,” but do not meet their bodily needs, what good is that? So it is with faith that does nothing in practice. It is thoroughly lifeless. (James 2: 13-17)
A Runner’s Thoughts: “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.” (Arthur Ashe)
A Runner’s Thoughts: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 14:11)
A Runner’s Thoughts: Some words of inspiration and faith for today are – “Running isn't a sport for pretty [people]...It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. It’s the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you've finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that's all that you can ask for.” (Paul Maurer, The Gift - A Runner's Story) And if you add the word faith alongside the word running you have a picture of a runner and a person of faith!
A Runner’s Thoughts: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” (Fr. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, SJ)
A Runner’s Thoughts: Some words of inspiration and faith are - “You have to wonder at times what you're doing out there. Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.” (Steve Prefontaine) And sometime in the journey of faith you wonder why you keep moving forward, why you believe and there are thousands of doctrines, dogma, codes of cannon law, commandments, precepts of the Church that gives you reasons to believe but I always come back to where it started. My faith comes down to the Cross the sign of God’s great love for me!
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Fr. Paul R. Fagan, C.P. "Preacher on the Run!"A thought from time to time about Running and Life! Archives
April 2024
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