‘Non Nobis Domine’: Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza on Giving Glory to God

National Catholic Register, 18 January 2026

In a season of triumph and acclaim, Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza echoes a Psalm sung for centuries by believers who knew that victory, like defeat, ultimately belongs not to man but to God.

“Give all the glory to God!”

Fernando Mendoza, quarterback of the Indiana University football team, begins interviews after victories that way. It’s not that unusual in football, where professions of Christian faith are part of the culture. It’s a bit unusual in Mendoza’s case, as he is Catholic, and it is usually evangelical Protestants who speak about God in their postgame interviews.

Also unusual is that Mendoza has had a lot of victories this year. Indiana is undefeated and playing in the national championship game in Miami on Monday night against the hometown Miami Hurricanes. Their recent victories over powerhouse programs — in the Rose Bowl (38-3) versus Alabama and in the Peach Bowl (56-22) versus Oregon — were blowouts of biblical proportions. Indiana might be having the most dominant college football season ever. There is a lot of glory to be given to God.

Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s most outstanding player last month — and he gave credit to God’s Providence and his own faith as the real source of his success. The son of Cuban immigrants, Mendoza also spoke with great emotion about his mother’s faith and courage, as she had faced the debilitating effects of MS for many years, and the support of his brother, who is the backup quarterback at Indiana.

On Christmas Eve, Mendoza brought the Heisman to the chaplaincy at Indiana University, where he is active in the Hoosier Catholic campus ministry. 

“Give all the glory to God” has roots throughout the Scriptures, most directly in 1 Corinthians 10:31 — “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” That includes football.

It is Psalm 115 that is best invoked, though, when Mendoza and others see worldly success as a means of giving glory to God. The Psalm contrasts the living and true God against lifeless idols, fashioned by men’s own hands. The wise man trusts in God for this strength; the foolish man in the worship of idols he himself has fashioned. Man’s own works are seductive, but cannot rival God’s own glory.

Psalm 115 may not be liturgically familiar to most Catholics, as it does not appear in the three-year cycle of lectionary readings for Sunday Mass. It does appear frequently though in the Liturgy of the Hours (Breviary), often at Vespers on Sundays or feast days. For example, it is part of Vespers this coming Sunday.

Psalm 115, especially when sung, is known as the “Non Nobis” from its first Latin words, meaning “not to us.” 

Not to us, Lord, not to us,
But to your name give the glory
For the sake of your love and your truth.

The Psalm continues:

Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he wills. Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands…
Their makers will come to be like them
and so will all who trust in them.
Sons of Israel, trust in the Lord!

Amid the excesses of college football, which rival the imperial spectacles of ancient Rome and suggest a similar fin-de-régime cultural decadence, the warning against worshipping the work of one’s own hands is necessary. There will be many in Miami on Monday night who have turned sports into an idol.

The “Non Nobis” has a long devotional history, which is referenced in Shakespeare’s Henry V. In Act IV, Scene 8, Henry is surveying the carnage after his improbable victory at Agincourt, France. There are thousands upon thousands dead, including great noblemen of both France and England. King Henry V is humble in victory, humbled by the great losses. 

Come, go we in procession to the village.
And be it death proclaimed through our host
To boast of this or take the praise from God
Which is his only.

And of the dead, and the victory they won, Henry speaks of the worship to be offered and the prayers to be said:

Do we all holy rites;
Let there be sung ‘Non nobis’ and ‘Te Deum;’
The dead with charity enclosed in clay:
And then to Calais; and to England then:
Where ne’er from France arrived more happy men.

In Kenneth Branagh’s film, Henry V, the musical setting of “Non Nobis” is magnificent, both haunting and hallowing at once, as Henry walks amid the dead the morning after battle.

Continue reading at the National Catholic Register.