Message from the
Editor-in-Chief

I used to hate physical education classes. I’d sit (or stand there), awkwardly, in my gym outfit and wish I just had more time for my books and for my dreaming.

The coach would whistle hard to call our attention and we would shuffle for whatever torture was laid out for the day - calisthenics, races, badminton, basketballs (oh the horrors for someone my height!), running, and even once wall climbing (which I did not survive!).

I would be in the 8th or perhaps the 10th minute of the physical activity that I would begin to feel the change in my body - which would begin with my breath. What seemed like an out of breath-ness, was actually more an exhilaration. I could feel my muscles working, yes, but I could feel my spirit rising to the challenge. 

It’s easy to take the body for granted - raised perhaps by the belief that our spirit and our mind were more important. And yet everything is embodied - our very lives - and this embodiment is shared with us by Christ himself.

This was perhaps some part of what I would later know as mens sana in corpore sano or a sound mind in a sound body. Ignatius, a soldier, a man who knew his body and used it in battle, was perhaps even more aware of its instrumentation, its ability to apprehend the great mysteries of the universe first felt through the body before it could be articulated in the mind. This great gift of being embodied, although a hindrance, is also a great gift to engage with the divine. 

In school, of course, this is most seen in our sports, in our history and love for sports in the school. Our university structures are built around our spiritual selves and our mind selves but also our body selves. Even before professional sports or academic classes, our campus is deliberately built for walking. We can feel ourselves rooted to the earth and we cannot reach the heights of the earth without being planted firmly to the ground.

In this season’s Fabilioh, we ask our readers to reflect on what it might mean to have a sound mind in a sound body. The stories of our athletes and our athletes’ teams allow us to see an exaggeration of this value - an excellence in instrumentation, as it were, but always, always, always, rooted in the Ignatian value of the First Principles of Ignatius. To wit:

God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by doing this, to save their souls.   God created all other things on the face of the earth to help fulfill this purpose. From this it follows that we are to use the things of this world only to the extent that they help us to this end…

In these stories, you see our athletes first discover their special gifts and then these gifts lead them beyond races, or prizes or championships. Ultimately they are called to the magis - to use the gifts of soundness to mentor others, to share the spoils of wins with others, to see beyond what it might mean to win and perhaps like Ignatius, to ultimately have the grace to truly acknowledge that we owe nothing on our own and all is gift and must rightly be returned to the Giver.

These days, as I walk around campus, which I do when  my mind is much too full of ideas, I let go of all I know and let something else teach me. Mens sana in corpore sano. My body is my first teacher.