Liturgy as Play

While I was a student at Seattle University, I took a course on Ignatian Spirituality with Fr. Pat Kelly, SJ, who has a deep passion for sports and the church.

Next Friday at the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle, Fr. Kelly will be discussing and signing his new book Catholic Perspectives on Sports.

Fr. Kelly, and his knowledge and love for the relationship between sports and spirituality reminds me of Cardinal Ratzinger's book titled "The Spirit of the Liturgy" where he compares the Liturgy to play...but not just any kind of play, rather a special kind of play that has a deep purpose and meaning. Here's a good excerpt:

"Children’s play seems in many ways a kind of anticipation of life, a rehearsal for later life, without its burdens and gravity. On this analogy, the liturgy would be a reminder that we are all children, or should be children, in relation to that true life toward which we yearn to go. Liturgy would be a kind of anticipation, a rehearsal, a prelude for the life to come, for eternal life, which St. Augustine describes, by contrast with life in this world, as a fabric woven, no longer of exigency and need, but of the freedom of generosity and gift. Seen thus, liturgy would be the rediscovery within us of true childhood, of openness to a greatness still to come, which is still unfulfilled in adult life. (14)" 

And to sum it all up, wasn't it Fr. Anthony de Mello, SJ who is known to have said that work becomes spiritual only when it is transformed into play?