The divine is eternal and infallible. Sports has been turned into another human institution and fallible. Neil Agius’ achievements are not directed spiritually and vertically, but for the material ego and horizontally. This is what shoots at me the minute I see him on the press and social media.
Vertical spirals towards God. Anything that is horizontal, spirals to the other side.
And Agius is promoted by the media…heavily! Anyone who is heavily promoted by the press is not to be trusted. According to Lovin Malta, “The nation erupted in support of Neil’s incredible feat, with people and politicians alike coming together to commend his superhuman physical and mental strength.”
Was there a prearrangement with the national media and politicians to push Agius?
Let us continue to analyse sports nowadays vis-a-vis the greater picture so that the readers can match Agius’ endeavours in light of this.
It is improper to play sports alone. As participating persons are cultivating personal virtues, they should be united in bonds of noble brotherhood to maximize the significance and impact of these qualities. Both solo and team sports can exhibit this healthy tension between interpersonal relationships and personal growth. In competitions involving individual sports:
…it is one’s opponent who draws out the best in an athlete… The word competition alludes to this experience, as the word comes from the two Latin roots “com” – with – and “petere” – to strive or to seek. The competitors are “striving or seeking together” for excellence.” – Holy See, ‘Giving the best of yourself’
There is always room for an individual to rise in group efforts as well:
Another way to put it is to be simultaneously alone and with other people — a connection occurring essentially through action. To lead and show the way is just an example of the tasks that must always be fulfilled through strength… this special sense of active solidarity, which keeps a distance between people and yet presupposes the full harmony of their forces because of the precise assessment of and trust in each member’s potential. This is virility without ostentation and mutual help without hesitation, among people who are on the same plane; it is based on a freely chosen and common goal.” — Julius Evola, ‘Meditations on the Peaks’
Furthermore, these combined energy can be deliberately directed toward the establishment of honorable fraternities: “In relatively recent times, various possibilities were offered by certain student corporations in Central Europe, the so-called Korpsstudenten practising Mensur – cruel but non-fatal duels that followed specific rules (leaving facial scars as traces) – with the goal of developing courage, steadfastness, intrepidity, and endurance to physical pain, while at the same time upholding the values of a higher ethics, of honour and camaraderie…” — Julius Evola, ‘A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth’
As a result, sport is included in the appropriate social and religious framework and combines with ideas such as love and service to form the next “level” in our quest to understand sport in its entirety. However, there are aspects that need to be explored that go beyond the growth of virtue. An essentially spiritual search to totally transcend oneself, as well as to lose oneself in a group, is what true sport is all about. The only people who reject the flesh as evil are Gnostics; a true comprehension of the body and soul is unity. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that ferocious yet disciplined attention to the development of the physical form can provide spiritual fruit.
“The understanding of the unity of the human person is also the foundation for the emphasis in Church teaching that there is a spiritual dimension to sport. Indeed, John Paul II describes sport as “a form of gymnastics of the body and of the spirit.” As he put it: “Athletic activity, in fact, highlights not only man’s valuable physical abilities, but also his intellectual and spiritual capacities. It is not just physical strength and muscular efficiency, but it also has a soul and must show its complete face.” — Holy See, ‘Giving the best of oneself’
In fact, the Christian practice of fasting and mortifying the flesh is a natural parallel to this subordination of the body to achieve fullness of spirit. Sport also encourages self-harm as a purposeful protest against the decadence of this world. When correctly followed, these behaviors demonstrate a dedication to eschewing the weight of disordered desires in favor of the greater.
“From this perspective it is possible to appreciate a discipline which, although it may concern the energies of the body, will not begin and end with them but will become instead the means to awakening a living and organic spirituality. This is the discipline of a superior inner character. In the ascetic, such a discipline is present in a negative way, so to speak; in the hero it is present in a positive, affirmative way, typical of the Western world. The inner victory against the deepest forces that surface in one’s consciousness during times of tension and mortal danger is a triumph in an external sense, but it is also the sign of a victory of the spirit against itself and of an inner transfiguration. Hence, in antiquity an aura of sacredness surrounded both the hero and the initiate to a religious or esoteric movement, and heroic figures were regarded as symbols of immortality.” — Julius Evola, ‘Meditations on the Peaks’
In Sun and Steel, Yukio Mishima chronicles his slow awakening to the fact that this virtuous engagement with his whole body was a prerequisite for him to escape the cage of his anxious, too theoretical nature. His solitary upbringing filled only with books had caused him to develop this illness, which kept him from experiencing both the fullness of life and spiritual development: “To revive the dead language, the discipline of the steel was required; to change the silence of death into the eloquence of life, the aid of steel was essential. The steel faithfully taught me the correspondence between the spirit and the body: thus feeble emotions, it seemed to me, corresponded to flaccid muscles, sentimentality to a sagging stomach, and over-impressionability to an oversensitive, white skin. Bulging muscles, a taut stomach, and a tough skin, I reasoned, would correspond respectively to an intrepid fighting spirit, the power of dispassionate intellectual judgement, and a robust disposition.”
How do you contextualise all this in Neil Agius’ pseudo act of heroism, in a type of competition and triumph that makes just a mockery of him?
Will you wake up from the weaponized apathy in this topsy-turvy world where the majority is under a spell of the dupe and dope show of the mechanical animals, but where it’s always the one who swims first that sets the waves in motion into a loud pseudo-cheer?
