In the game of football, nothing is as fulfilling as taking a knee.

And so we find ourselves in an elegant wood-paneled room on the first floor of the refurbished Halas Hall. The space used to be the offensive line meeting room. But it doesn’t smell like sweaty gym shoes anymore.

Now there is a peacefulness and a low hum. That sound is from the boilers that heat practice field No. 1 just to the west of the chapel, but it might as well be from the heavens. It filters out noise from the outside world and makes it difficult for anyone here not to be present.

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The December sun streams in through stained glass windows, lending colors to chairs with kneelers. At the front of the room, there’s an altar and a lectern.

This is the Bears’ chapel, believed to be the only one in an NFL facility.

When the Bears began envisioning a new Halas Hall, team chairman George McCaskey asked his mother Virginia McCaskey if she would like for it to include a place of worship. The first lady of the NFL, a devout Catholic, jumped at the opportunity.

“God has been very good to our family,” she said while sitting in the chapel the day after the Bears’ 31-24 victory over the Cowboys. “It seems a way to say thank you. I’m hoping that other people feel the same way — to God, not to me.”

The room mostly is a tribute to a higher power. But it’s also a tribute to the matriarch of the Bears, who has shared her faith in many ways, including giving away thousands of outdoor nativity scenes and rosaries.

“No one knows how generous she’s been to churches and other faiths,” George said. “Whether she provided the choir robes, or the altar, or the baptismal font, or the crucifix for this church or that church, only she knows the extent of it.”

As George saw it, the chapel at Halas Hall was an opportunity for his mother to leave a footprint on the team her father founded. Virginia has been working on designing it since last winter.

“I’ve been visiting churches and chapels for a long time and taking things for granted, never realizing there were so many details and features that somebody else had chosen,” Virginia said. “I never realized how much is involved.”

The first design included stained glass windows with a modern look — straight lines and triangles. Virginia suggested a more traditional design. They reviewed photos from the wedding mass of George’s son Conor, which was held at Old St. Patrick’s in Chicago. She liked the stained glass windows at St. Pat’s, so they replicated them, but with a Bears tint.

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Finding the perfect crucifix for the front of the chapel was particularly time-consuming. Virginia paged through a catalog as thick as a Bears playbook, studying the details and differences of each option before choosing one.

Plans are still in the works for a bronze relief sculpture of the holy family. After the sculpture is installed, it will be feasible to cover it with sliding doors of frosted glass. The crucifix also can be covered with sliding doors.

“One of the things we’re mindful of is we don’t want to be seen by members of the Bears family as foisting our religion on them,” George said. “So it has Catholic elements, but it was designed so those can be obscured if somebody doesn’t want to look at them. This is a worship space. It’s much like a non-denominational chapel you might see in a hospital. It has chairs instead of pews, so they can be rearranged if somebody wanted to have a bible study or group discussion, or two people just want to have a conversation about life.”

In the back of the room are pedestals with shelves. An open siddur, a Jewish prayer book, sits on one. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayer books are in the shelves, along with yarmulkes. Two other stands are available to represent other faiths.

“We realized we needed to do things that were acceptable to everyone and comfortable for everyone,” Virginia said.

Faith and football might be perceived as opposing forces. But they have gone together for Virginia since she was a toddler wearing her Sunday best, holding her father’s hand in a pew.

George Halas is remembered as a win-at-all-costs competitor. There was, however, another side of him.

“We didn’t talk to anybody about it,” Virginia said of her father’s faith. “He just lived it, made sure he got to mass, made sure we got to mass. There was no question about whether or not we were going to go. It was what we did.”

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It is what she still does. Every morning, even on a morning after the Bears played the previous night, she can be found in the front pew of her local church for 6:15 a.m. mass.

She said her faith gives her perspective, especially in a trying season like this one, to understand there are more significant wins and losses than whatever happens on football fields.

“We’re really not here (for football),” she said. “We’re here to live good lives and be good people and try to help others. Do I deal with feelings of envy? At times, yeah. Do I get upset about officials’ calls? Yes. It’s all a part of life.”

That doesn’t mean she can’t say a prayer or two for her Bears.

“I pray that no one gets injured,” she said. “I pray that whatever happens in the game or before or after that, we do the best we can, all of us.”

And she is grateful for the Bears prayers of others.

“Do I appreciate it when I get a call from Sister Claire (from the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Des Plaines), and she says we’re all praying for you tonight?” she said with her gentle laugh. “Yes. I appreciate that.”

Virginia will be 97 on Jan. 5. The chapel will be an enduring testament to everything the daughter of George Halas holds most dear.

At the inaugural mass in the chapel on Nov. 26, she was joined by several family members, team employees and former Bear Tom Thayer.

Since the chapel opened in mid-November, the Bears have won three of four games.

With a chance to salvage their season in the final three weeks, the Bears can say something they couldn’t have said after a 3-5 start. They have a prayer.

Editor’s note: In an earlier version, it was stated that a Torah was in the chapel, but it is an open prayer book.

(Top photo: Dan Pompei / The Athletic)