Playing the Offence

This time of year many of us prepare for travel whether it be on vacation or just simply going home for the summer. In College Station I have been blessed with a wonderful Catholic community at St. Mary's. I have grown more devout in my faith than I could have ever imagined. Having St. Mary's feels like I have been on a retreat all year. As we all know, when we come off of a retreat we have the "Jesus High" and it becomes hard to maintain the spiritual growth once the high is gone. Now we've all heard the classic talk about not letting the high be the end and how to stay on top of it. However, no matter how great the talk is, it is never works the way we wanted it to. This begs the question: why is it so hard?

"In my opinion, there is hardly anything else that the enemy of our soul dreads more than confidence, humble confidence in God.  Confidence in God is the very soul of prayer."Servant of God Solanus Casey 

The answer because we come back knowing the "other side" has beat us before and are probably stronger than us. We go into battle with a strong defensive line, we prepare to keep the enemy from advancing and this works for a while because most enemies don't have the defence to fight our weaker offence. What happens though when we face an enemy with a strong offence? If you haven't figured it out yet I'm building up to one of the most memorable games in Texas A&M History.

Defence is a great skill to have and Alabama was known as the best team in the SEC, for many  reasons but a big reason was, because of their strong defensive line. Their defensive line was great at getting the ball back to the offensive line. No other team could beat them because no offence could stand against Alabama's defence.

Now we look at A&M's Fall 2012 season leading up to that game. Everyone saw that A&M was in fact good enough to compete with SEC teams in "big boy football" and that the strong offense played a major part. Still though, many wondered if A&M's offensive line would still look as good next to the defensive line of Alabama. A&M showed Alabama, and all of college football for that matter, that even the number one ranked team in the nation look weak when faced with a team that could withstand their defensive line.

My point to all of this is that in our spiritual battles it is not good enough just to have a good defence. Instead we need to go into the battle knowing we are strong enough to defeat the enemy. We need to go into battle ready to win. We need to have the confidence that our offence.

“The nature of the enemy's warfare in your life is to cause you to become discouraged and to cast away your confidence. Not that you would necessarily discard your salvation, but you could give up your hope of God's deliverance. The enemy wants to numb you into a coping kind of Christianity that has given up hope of seeing God's resurrection power.” Bob Sorge, Glory: When Heaven Invades Earth 

At the first game of the season for A&M everyone laughed thinking the Aggies would get their butts kicked. Even though A&M did loose that first game, though not by much, A&M from the start was never afraid and many wondered why. Maybe it was the loyalty to their team, maybe it was the excitement of the first game of the season, maybe it was the excitement of the first game in the SEC, or MAYBE it was the fact that A&M placed all their confidence in a certain redshirt freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel who would go on to win the Heisman Trophy. Johnny Manziel, or as us Aggies call him Johnny Football.

The reason we play defence instead of offence is because we have forgotten that we have Jesus on our side. Jesus a man who was the son of a carpenter and conceived out of wedlock. Everything and everyone says that he should fail but he didn't. Jesus, the one destined to fail, WON. He didn't win a Heisman Trophy, he didn't beat the number one ranked football team in America, and many people thought he was crazy. Instead, he did the one thing no man has the power to do. Jesus defeated death. Not only that he sent us the Holy Spirit to be with us wherever we go. For that reason, whether are coming home from college, a retreat, or just trying to hold onto a sense of hope, we should always be confident.

I heard a story the other week (I may have parts of the story wrong so bare with me) about a man present during the collapse of the Aggie Bonfire. Many foul words came out of the mouths of many who were there that night but one man who was hanging from a harness above instinctively said "Jesus, Mary, Joseph!". The next thing he remembered was standing safely on the ground and out of harms way. This is a perfect example of the type of confidence we should have in the man we call Jesus.