Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) is a French football team that, in recent years, has become known for obtaining the best players in order to win the trophy that all European football clubs aspire to: the Champions League. However, despite their efforts, including for seven years having the player that many considered the best in the world—Kylian Mbappé—they were unable to win the competition until this year, 2025.
After Kylian Mbappé’s transfer to another club was finalized in July 2024, Luis Enrique, the head coach of PSG, said the following in an interview: “Having a player (Kylian Mbappé) who moved on the field wherever he wanted, implied that there are situations in the game that I did not control. Next year (when he is no longer on the team), I will control all of them; all of them, without exception.” Indeed, the following year, PSG won the Champions League.
What changed? The person in charge of the team, who was supposed to control all the situations in the game, could not control them because one of the players under his command did not follow his orders, and therefore, he could not control those situations.
A similar thing happens in our lives. Through our intelligence and will, we should have control over all situations in life. However, we often have passions that do as they please, leading to situations in our lives that we do not control. As a result, we end up doing things we should not do and would not have done if all our passions were under control.
Holiness is the great trophy that all Christians should aspire to. Hence, it is essential in life to achieve control over all our passions if we wish to win that great trophy of holiness. To do this, it is very important to order and strengthen our will.
Ordering our will means making sure that our will always follows the Will of God and not what we want. In other words, it should follow the dictates of right reason and faith, the Gospel, and never our own criteria, which are disordered due to original sin.
Strengthening the will is necessary so that it becomes stronger than our passions. No matter how strong the movements of our passions are, when the will says “no” because something goes against the order it desires to follow, it must be “no,” and the passion must not succeed in overpowering it. Thus, it is very important to make acts of the will that overcome our passions, starting gradually with things that are easier, continuing to perform acts of self-mastery until the will triumphs over the passions in everything. In this way, we can ensure that there are no situations in life that we cannot control.
