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Going in for the Big Drop
You know how it is when you’re young (if you can remember that far back), danger was a thing of which you were perfectly oblivious? Even though I had one of the most hazardous jobs in the British Army, when a vacancy came up for 16 Ordnance Para, I volunteered. Notwithstanding the fact that this entailed jumping out of aeroplanes from a great height, I thought that it would be quite fun. Parachutes were supplied.
To prepare myself for the ordeal of training, I took to running round the five miles of perimeter fence every night, doing press-ups, and climbing up the water tower to make sure that I had a head for heights. As it turned out, the medical officer put paid to my ambitions. Having found absolutely nothing wrong with me, after all that solitary bashing the tarmac, he took to crawling on the floor with a ruler in his hand and declared that I had a flat foot. I was deemed unsuitable, but it took another forty years before the arches finally dropped.
This did not stop me from continuing the road running. I had come to quite enjoy it, even though it was painful. Throughout my subsequent years in teacher training college I kept up the long hauls up hill and own dale and only abandoned it when the middle classes adopted jogging as a sport of choice, fashionably dressed in chic trainers and designer track suits.
The exercise probably prolonged my life. Bruising the body is good not only for the soul; it keeps the aging limbs in working order for longer. This is particularly appropriate as we enter into the penitential season of Lent.
It is so easy to succumb to the sins of the flesh, and not just the one that you are thinking of; eating the wrong food, and too much of it, drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking the noxious weed, and avoiding exercise. Abstinence and fasting are a bit of a drag and not in keeping with today’s hedonistic society but they are very efficacious. If you fill the vacuum, brought about by giving things up, with prayer and thanksgiving then the benefits are palpable. Try it; it is only for six weeks, and you never have to abstain on a Sunday.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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