Every four years we experience the summer Olympics. We see athletes who have trained for years, who have disciplined their bodies ruthlessly,  given up comfort and other legitimate human pleasures, pushed themselves to the breaking point. Why? Each one hopes for the gold, even though they may have to settle for  at best  the silver or bronze. Each one hopes to make a name for himself/herself. Each one seeks the acclaim of the world.  But who remembers any of the winners from Helsinki, or Tokyo, or Mexico or Berlin?  Acclaim is short-lived, fame is fleeting, and material possessions fade.

If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, if we neither stray to the right or the left, if we fall in love and grow in love with Jesus, then we too can exclaim with Paul: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trial or distress, or persecutions, or hunger, or nakedness or danger, or the sword?...For I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present not the future, nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Rom 8:35, 38-39).                 

In the words of Pope John Paul II: "Open the gates wide to Christ. Have confidence in him. Take the risk of following him. Obviously this demands that you should come out of yourselves, or your own way of reasoning, or your prudence. It demands that you leave behind your indifference, your self-sufficiency, those un-Christian habits that you have perhaps acquired. Yes; that demands renunciation, a conversion, which first of all you must want to want; want to pray for in your prayer, and want to put into practice. Let Christ be for you the way, the truth and the life. Let him be your salvation and your happiness. Let him make over the whole of your life so that with Him you can live it in all its dimensions. Let all your relationships, activities, feelings, thoughts, be integrated in Him, or, so to speak, "Christified". I wish that with Christ you may come to recognize God as the beginning and end of your existence." (John Paul II, (Parc des Princes, 1 June 1980)