The fascination of the game, the attention that we fasten onto the play as it unfolds, helps us understand ritual, which is play before the Lord, as Plato said. Games do not merely educate us in fairness and competition. They provide us with experience on a natural plane of what it is like to be eternally fascinated. The game, like God, takes us outside of ourselves to what is not ourselves. The spirit of the game prepares us for the Spirit itself, for what is, for what we behold for its own sake.
Games are ritual s best preparation.
Rev. James V. Schall, S.J., teaches political science at Georgetown University.