Strength In Purpose

The CatholicFIT school curriculum includes Physical Education taught with Catholic values.

Being a fit person begins with purpose. Fitness goals represent a purpose, a reason and therefore motivation to exercise. Weight loss, reducing aches and/or playing a sport are all common goals that serve a purpose. The difference with being CatholicFIT is that while we can certainly continue working towards these common goals for daily motivation (for example I exercise to feel good playing basketball), there are two more important, longevity-minded goals that stand out above the rest.

The first is joy, as Pope Francis reminds us time again Christians should naturally emit joy. The other is service. Service is our Civic Virtue. We want to be fit (enough) to serve others.

Civic Virtue: It is tough enough wrapping our own heads and hearts around this idea of living a life of purpose. It becomes more difficult then to explain this to our children and students. Therefore, in the CatholicFIT Program, we simply state that our purpose is service. We call it our Civic Virtue. A part of being CatholicFIT means understanding this: service is love made visible. Love is God made visible. Therefore staying fit in order to serve others is to find a connection between our daily behaviors and God’s purpose and love for us.

Take any one of your regular fitness goals and expand it into a bigger role in your life. This is one way to live a life of purpose. A life of purpose can be synonymous with a life of faith. Exercise without purpose is practically time wasted.

Too much fitness without service is vanity. As we read in James 2:24,26: Having faith in God is important, but treating others with kindness and helping others is how you put that faith to work. Faith without works is dead. Are you putting your fitness to work for others?

If we combine our life of purpose with our exercise, or dedicate our exercise to someone else, I believe our fitness potential and results may just reach the heavens. Do we not spend years building our faith, going through the sacraments and exploring our spirituality as we learn all the ways to turn our faith into good works? Shouldn’t we treat our personal fitness the same?

Fitness without a foundation of health and a purpose for existing will not last. The inspiration behind the CatholicFIT program and an interesting faith and fitness question is:

“will combining foundational and universal principles of faith and fitness formation, along with the purpose and daily practice of each, lead to a life of inspiration, service and fulfillment? And can we do so through the prism of the Catholic church to strengthen both our Catholic identity, Church community and personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”

This is one of many questions I hope to discover and always enjoying discussing in the CatholicFIT program and workshops.