The Scene along the Seine: the 2024 Summer Olympics

I remember sitting in my room in the Munger Moss Motel 3 years ago to watch the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.  I saw a video for the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics, and I thought it was epic as athletes were moving across rooftops in Paris.

So I had high hopes as I turned on the TV for the Opening Ceremony on July 26, 2024. Yet expectations weren't met like I thought they would.

I heard ahead of time that the ceremony would be staged on the Seine River, which is part of what set my expectations so high.  But the flow felt so different.  And so many parts were pre-recorded video.  I also wasn't expecting the athletes' boats to be interspersed with the artistic elements of the ceremony.  The artistic elements made a good effort to showcase French culture and its diversity, like the singer who performed the French national anthem from a rooftop, which partially gave it a grand feel.  As the commentators kept saying, everyone seemed to be in high spirits despite the rain, and I can acknowledge that to some extent.  The light show at the end on the Eiffel Tower was a spectacle.

Then there were the different segments displaying different aspects of French culture.  I had to scratch my head during the romance part, when three people came together to express their romantic affection and then went into a private room.

I think this 9-minute podcast of a segment on Trending with Timmerie speaks to why I feel the way I do.

The one part that caused the strongest reactions was the mockery of the Last Supper.  Somehow, I missed that part of the ceremony, perhaps because I stepped into my kitchen and my view of the TV was blocked.  Later, when I saw a video clip of that scene, I realized the blasphemous depiction happened for only a few seconds before the scene went to the Fashion show runway, which I remembered.

Many Bishops voiced opposition to the Last Supper mockery.  Bishop Paprocki was thoughtful in this video response in discussing how the original Olympic games came to an end because their quality declined into decadence, and indicated that is the case now with the modern Olympic games.

It's a shame that the opening ceremony put a damper on the event, considering how the thousands of athletes worked so hard to be there.

I am glad, that many stories surfaced about athletes who exhibited a strong sense of faith.  One that I found particularly inspiring was about teenage Brazilian skateboarding athlete Rayssa Leal: After her athletic performance in a competition that netted her a bronze medal, she used sign language to share John 14:6.  This EWTN video shows how God was glorified at the Olympics, including through FOCUS, a ministry geared toward college students, which had staff at the Olympics to help support the athletes.

Bishop Cozzens stated it so powerfully when he released a statement about this blasphemous mockery, referring to St. Paul's words that “where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Romans 5:20).  Overall, despite the anti-Christian acts during the opening ceremony, God's grace was still present and at work through the response of the faithful.