COR Message from Supreme Chaplain
- Thu, Aug 1, 2024 12:23 PM
Core Exercises
The Order provides resources for members to grow in spiritual health and encounter Christ
In a column this time last year, I mentioned my daily exercise routine. Consider this a follow-up report.
Like others my age who exercise, it is easy to overdo it. I did just that recently. As the result of my imprudence, I woke up one morning “down in the back,” as they say. I couldn’t sit in anything but a straight chair. Getting in and out of a recliner was excruciating. Getting dressed wasn’t exactly a picnic.
I took a pain reliever, but it didn’t do much good. After a while, I began to think that I had seriously injured my spine. Reluctantly, I went to my doctor. He poked around and then he shared some good news: My bones weren’t the problem. But I had strained my back muscles in the course of my workouts. “What you need,” he said, “are core exercises,” and with that he packed me off to physical therapy.
There I learned a new set of exercises designed to strengthen the muscles of my body’s core, or center — muscles that help to maintain balance and flexibility amid daily activities. I started the recommended exercise routine and soon discovered muscles I didn’t know I had. By stretching the same muscles that I had strained, the pain soon went away, and I felt much better.
You can probably see where this is going. It’s not a big stretch to see the connection between core and Cor, between exercising the core of the human body and the spiritual exercises of the Knights of Columbus initiative called Cor — the Latin word for “heart” and a biblical word for “soul” or the center of one’s existence. I hope many of you are already doing your Cor exercises or will soon begin them.
Why do we need Cor exercises? To start with, we often experience inward, spiritual pain. It may not be excruciating — more of an annoyance, a pain we try to ignore, deny or minimize. Or perhaps we’ve just become spiritually flabby. We tell ourselves that our spiritual life and relationship with God are in good shape and that we are pleasing in his eyes. But then something happens that causes us to think twice about our life, and the pain of guilt is harder to ignore.
Cor aims to help Knights encounter Christ and support one another in growing in faith and virtue, in becoming better followers of Christ, better husbands and fathers.
What to do? When my back hurt, my first move was to medicate, but it didn’t work. Pain relievers weren’t the answer. No, I went to the doctor to find out the underlying problem and to seek a remedy. So too, when we falter spiritually or experience guilt, we shouldn’t try to medicate ourselves with food or alcohol or distractions. No, we should go to the doctor. Encountering the divine physician in the sacrament of reconciliation, we receive God’s mercy and discover that we are not broken beyond his ability to repair.
We also discover that going back to the same old sins and failings will only result in more spiritual discomfort and pain. So, a good next step is to engage in spiritual exercises. That is why the Knights of Columbus offers us Cor. Through prayer, formation and fraternity, it is designed to help us strengthen not our physical core but our spiritual “cor.”
Like the core exercises I was assigned, the spiritual exercises of Cor might be new to some. They take different forms: praying the rosary, reading Scripture, participating in spiritual discussions, to name a few. Cor aims to help Knights encounter Christ and support one another in growing in faith and virtue, in becoming better followers of Christ, better husbands and fathers. Cor is exercise for the heart!
At first, I was hesitant to start my core exercises, just as some may be reluctant to participate in Cor. But I’m glad I did, and you will be too.