The Paris Olympics are underway, with Friday’s Opening Ceremony airing, beginning at 1:30 Eastern. Tune in to watch swimmer Katie Ledecky and other Catholic athletes.

On the one hand, the Olympics are a manifestation of physical prowess, a coronation for those who possess and cultivate speed, strength and savvy.

But sports also are an ultimate expression of spirit, even the Spirit.

Athleticism has not been a meaningless afterthought to the Church. Instead, sports have been held in high regard — from the very first days of the Church down to contemporary times and even within the Vatican itself, all the way to the papal chair. Or papal swimming pool, as the case may be.

St. Paul, the Athlete

The greatest saint-athlete of all time? Paul wins. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize. So run, that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Paul was fond of sports metaphors. His most famous sports analogy: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).

Paul’s references to sports strongly indicate an athletic background. Indeed, he was an equestrian: His conversion on the road to Damascus supposedly occurred while he was on a horse. Other parts of his identity suggest sports. He was a Hellenized Jew, and the Greeks, the inventors of the Olympic Games, cherished athletic competition. His tireless journeys around the Mediterranean promoting the new faith stamp him as an athlete, too.

In modern times, the most famous Catholic athlete surely was none other than Pope John Paul II. He was such a good goalie at school that his classmates called him “Martyna,” after a famous soccer star. As pontiff, he hiked, skied and swam.

Shortly after becoming pope, he had a 25-meter swimming pool built at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence. When someone questioned him about the cost, he impishly replied that a pope needs to exercise. Besides, he cracked, the pool was less expensive than holding another conclave.

The Pope’s passion for sports outlived him. Shortly before the Olympic Games in Greece in 2004, the Pope created a new office at the Vatican dedicated to church and sport. In a statement heralding the sports department, the Vatican acknowledged the importance of sports in contemporary life and said its new office would serve both as a tool of evangelization and a means to promote the positive aspects of sports.

The current Pope is not the athlete John Paul II was, but he is a staunch sports fan. One of Pope Francis’ precious memories as a young priest studying far from home in Germany was learning of the outcome of the 1986 World Cup. Someone told him, “Viva la Argentina.” He said sports taught him — the hard way — the value of community and friends. “Personally, I remember it as victory of loneliness, because I had no one with whom to share the joy,” he once recalled.

The San Lorenzo soccer team in his homeland was the favorite team of his boyhood. Part of a seat from the old stadium was still in his office in Buenos Aires when he left for Rome in 2013 to vote in the conclave that elected him.

Sports can be an occasion for true brotherhood, the Pope said. He recently called for a truce in wars during the Games, in keeping with an ancient tradition. “The Olympic Games are, by their very nature, about peace, not war,” he said in a letter to Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris. The Pope added that sports are “a universal language that transcends borders, languages, races, nationalities, and religions; it has the ability to unite people, to foster dialogue and mutual acceptance; it encourages people to surpass themselves, instills a spirit of sacrifice, promotes loyalty in interpersonal relations; it invites people to acknowledge their own limits and the value of others.”

Faith and Sports

Sport connects us to God. “Heaven is a playground,” wrote G.K. Chesterton. That notion goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, they were forced to toil. Work replaced their play.

Our religious heritage emphasizes the dual nature of humanity. We’re body and soul. We believe in the Incarnation, that the Word became flesh. God is part of every human activity, especially one that is so tied up in our physicality.

St. Irenaeus, a bishop who laid the foundations of Catholic theology, preached and wrote on the dual nature of humanity around the year 200. As with other early Fathers of the Church, Irenaeus adhered to the philosophical tradition of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who promoted physical fitness to bring body and soul into harmony.

Influential theologian St. Thomas Aquinas also wrote of the importance of the body in attaining spiritual gifts. He held that we learn through the senses. The body needs to be disciplined so the mind can be disciplined in its search for truth. His words echo what the ancient Greeks taught about exercise laying the foundation for spiritual vitality.

The basic meaning of spirituality helps explain how sports and spirituality are inseparable. The Latin root of the word is spiritus, meaning “aliveness.” Being spiritual means being super-alive, or very much aware of life. Through a spiritual attitude, a heightened sense of the sacredness of every activity, especially one as enlivening as sports, becomes a form of prayer.

Eric Liddel, a divinity student when he competed in the 1924 Olympics, recognized where his running ability came from. “When I run, I can feel His pleasure,” he says in the movie Chariots of Fire, which is on the Vatican film list.

Saints who loved sport can attest to that, including John Paul II and his holy friends like Pier Giorgio Frassati (mountain climbing), St. Gianna Molla (skiing) and Blesseds Michael McGivney (baseball) and Chiara Badano (tennis).

Catholics who went to Catholic school probably can recall the young priest on the playground or the ball field. His presence was an instinctive understanding of the highly charged spirituality wrapped up in the shouting, scampering legs and frenzied play.

In life, the race is not to the swift, as written in Ecclesiastes. But at the Olympics, it is. And win or lose, Catholic or non-Catholic, all the athletes at the Games have the opportunity to “feel His pleasure.”