Growing up, I did not think much of professional sports and rarely watched them. During college, I eventually started to follow them since they were a useful conversation starter. The more that I followed sports, the more I began to enjoy rooting for various teams. Now I am (to some degree) happy when my team wins and sad when it loses. It is this association of happiness with the success of our sports teams that can point us a little bit toward heaven.

Why are we happy when our teams win? After all, we don’t exert any effort to gain the victory. We don’t receive any material reward from their success. And yet, I have often seen one person congratulate another because their team won an important game. Are we somehow better because our team is better? In some small way, we are. We are able to share in our team’s good. 

This is remarkably different from the all too common zero-sum perception of success. Oftentimes, someone’s success means someone else’s failure. But when a success contributes to the common good, then everyone who holds that common good wins. A sports team’s victory contributes to the common good held by all of its fans and, as a result, the whole fanbase is made better by that victory. This is still not the universal common good since the victory of a sports team could never be the good of everyone. They do have to beat another team.

God alone is the supreme good. As such, he is the common good of all creation. Of course, God can’t be increased or decreased in the same way that the particular good of a city can. God doesn’t change. But God can be glorified and praised more or less by his creatures whom he in turn glorifies. 

As God’s creatures, we are better off when God is more glorified, even though God remains the same. In heaven, we will glorify God to the extent that God has created us to do so. Some of us will give more glory to God than others. Mary, for example, as queen of heaven, sits in the highest place and glorifies God, and is thus honored by God, more than any other saint. And this is a great joy to everyone in heaven, greatly contributing to their common good. 

In this way, our acclaim of professional athletes and joy in the success of our sports teams points us toward heaven. Heaven is filled with countless saints of every stripe. Each saint will have his place in glory, giving praise and honor to God. Some will be greater and some lesser. Yet the glory of any one saint will be the joy of every saint, and God will be all in all.

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Photo of the 1882 Rutgers College Football Team