"Ah, Viva el Señor!"
"I talked to my mother and she said to me,
'No one is bigger than God!'
"I talked to my mother and she said to me,
'No one is bigger than God!'
"I trust in God and I think that it was Him, you know.
"I'm so blessed..."
--Gabriel Medina upon August 2014 world championship win against Kelly Slater in Tahiti, the high point in his 2015 ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) World Championship Tour (WCT) victory.
Someone should let this athlete know however that his tattoos are offensive to God! It is a form of self-mutilation (a mortal sin against the fifth commandment), permanently and unnecessarily disfiguring the beautiful organ God gave him--the skin. "Your body" is not yours: you belong to God!
Furthermore, with the tattoos he commits further sin--the sin of scandal--by leading, with that bad example, many other people to commit the same sin by imitation of the celebrity!
What is more, the tattoos are a sign of Gabriel Medina's need for holy counsel, which he might readily have if he seeks out a good Catholic priest--one who is loyal to the law of Christ and the Church--a spiritual director, for confession and regular, on-going, counsel. Otherwise his soul is in the greatest danger--as with all celebrity and worldly advantage.
Only the clean heart and pure hands ascend the mountain of the Lord! Psalm 24
The praise of men is nothing!
I must therefore recommend that Medina repent and go to confession to confess and be absolved of those (and all other) sins! Then, and only then, will God be truly praised!
Then the victory is real because it conquers the heart, more tortuous than all the waves!
(Cf. Jeremiah 17:9)