Many of my readers know or don’t know that baby races exist. Well, I’ll not assume you know, but I will tell you one thing for sure is that our analogy today is based on baby races. Often, baby races are contests in which crawling babies are put together from a starting point to a finishing line. The competition is characterized by crawling babies competing in an arena that is full of big screens that play animations which distract the little ones from their goals. In some cases, the children are half walking, half crawling. Their parents are on either sides, the start or the finishing line. In winning cases, dads have been known to be at the starting point and mums at the finishing line. Psychology alone has answers to the question “why.” Parents are always anxious to see that their children are the winners and the celebration is as immense as you can imagine. Despite all the falls and rise-ups the child never seems to understand what the celebration is about since they did all this naturally… and a viewer like myself is left in utter amazement, is moved and goes to bed.
It makes me wonder, Do you think in some way this applies to our spiritual life? Well, I think it does. Our lives on earth have been termed to as races, but I see them as baby races. Like all the other babies, we are crawling. we walk and fall we continue on a steady path and fall again into sin. We make resolutions drop them then come back to the way. The path is so full of worldly distractions that seem better than the race we are in, easier religions to practice, easier doctrines to believe among others.
One thing remains very sure, God, our heavenly father who begins tis work in us finishes it. He is a Divine spectator but He sends us the Holy spirit to encourage us. He even gives us the Divine company of our holy guardian angels to accompany us and fix our eyes on the goal. The ultimate gift is the gift of our Blessed mother who stands at the finishing line. She fills our hearts with motherly benevolence. Her maternal affection encourages us at the last battle. The Church has called her the comfort of the dying and even encouraged us to ask her, “ Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” It is also necessary to maintain through our lives the naturalness of the baby. To courageously rise up when we fall. To humbly accept our fallen nature and be sure our heavenly father loves it when we heroically get up from the fall.
Hebrews12:1 With so many witnesses in a great cloud, we too, then, should throw everything that weighs us down and the sin that clings so closely, and with perseverance keep running the race which lies ahead of us.