Running in the “Footprints of God”

As a longtime fan of the Catholic Answers Live radio show, I’ve been hearing interviews with Steve Ray for years. But I only recently made it to his website, where I discovered that he is also a runner!

On his blog, which deals with a wide range of subjects, Steve occasionally talks about health, running, and their intersection with the Faith. For example, he recently had this interesting post, Did Jesus Ever Run?

St. Paul mentions running quite a bit. He uses it as a metaphor for living the Christian life. We must run the race, he says. He refers to Olympic runners who run for a leafy laurel which will wither and fall off in a few days. How much more should we run the race to win the crown of eternal life (1 Cor. 9:24; Heb. 12:1). Olympic runners ran stark naked so as not to be tripped up or slowed down by his robes. Paul tells us to cast aside any encumbrance — like sin — that will keep us from winning the race. He is right!

Amen to that! (Although for the benefit of my neighbors, I think I will stick to running clothed.) Steve even has this great vision of what his entrance into Heaven will be like:

When I get to heaven I am going to RUN up to Jesus and after I worship him and thank him for my salvation — I am going to ask him if he ever ran. And since I will want to explore heaven, I might as him if he like to go out for a run. Well, maybe.

But what’s coolest about Steve’s running — and indeed, greatly tempts me to envy! — is that because he regularly leads pilgrimages to the Holy Land and elsewhere, Steve gets to take runs around some of the greatest sites of Christendom, such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Vatican!



Very cool! Some day I would love to do that … but it might need to wait until one of my runs with Jesus in the afterlife!