Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.
You’re coming into your last flip turn. Your heart is beating out of your chest. If your lungs could speak, they would be saying faintly, “Air, please air, now.” But you’re neck-and-neck with the swimmer in the lane next to you. Your arms and legs are moving rapidly. You attempt to accelerate but all you can do is maintain your current pace. Then you glance to your right to see who’s in front: “Me or him?” For a moment, your freestyle stroke slows, and then it happens . . . your opponent takes the lead. Moments later, he touches the wall. He won, you lost. Ouch.
Have you ever heard the saying “Run your own race”? I think we could also say, “Swim your own race.” In competitive swimming you’re coached to keep your eyes in your own lane and not look around. Why? Because looking around can throw your body out of streamline and slow you down. You have to focus on your own execution of the job at hand, that is, swimming well.
For our sake I want to home in on what this saying reveals to us when applied to the Christian life. Within a Christian context we can translate “swim your own race” as “focus on Christ.” What follows is the question “How do I focus on Christ?” We can take the answer from the Gospel of Matthew: “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’” (Matt 16:24–25). Christ wants us to follow him, and to do so we must do our job and pick up our cross after him.
Today is the memorial of St. Paul of the Cross. As a Passionist, St. Paul was dedicated to preaching the Passion of Christ. The Gospel for today’s memorial tells us that we must take up our cross to follow Christ. Carrying the “crosses” in our life is a common principle expressed by the Church and deeply ingrained in pious Catholic culture, but this does not make it any easier. One of the challenges is the temptation to compare how we handle our own specific cross to how others handle a similar cross. We transpose our specific cross onto someone else and then think of how much better they would carry it. In other words, a temptation in the Christian life is to compare ourselves to others. Just as when a competitive swimmer looks toward another lane, he loses his focus and slows down, so when we take our eyes off Christ, we begin to lag behind. Our cross becomes heavier, even unbearable.
My recommendation: Run (or swim) your own race.
Keep your focus on Christ. Don’t add unnecessary weight to your cross by comparing yourself to others. Instead, put on the easy and light yoke of Christ. A yoke that was made specifically for you, to make you holy. It is a yoke that requires us to put our hand to the plow and press on with great focus. But our focus is not one of white knuckling alone. It’s a focus that derives from a love that aims and presses us on toward Christ. It is a love that knows that our cross is ultimately carried with and by Christ. Think of St. Peter, who walked on water. He had a focus motivated by faith and love that kept him afloat. It was only when he took his eyes off Christ that he began to sink.
If we don’t swim with a focus on Christ, we will focus on something else, like others. If we focus on others, we will compare ourselves to others. If we compare ourselves to others, we slow down and sink. So in order to run (or swim) our race and win, we need to keep our focus on our unsinkable savior, Jesus Christ.
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Image: John Keyse Sherwin, Christ Carrying the Cross (detail)
