During Advent, the church prepares for the coming of Christ and during Advent we are to become quieter, more reflective, meditative like a mother anticipating the birth of her child, like Blessed Mary anticipating the birth of her son. During Christmas of course we celebrate Christ’s birth with hymns of praise. We give gifts, we gather with family and friends in a spirit of cheer and generosity, always with an eye to the needs of the poor whose condition Christ shared—born into the straw poverty of the Bethlehem stable.
Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday, February 22nd this year, is a season of intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and concrete acts of penance; we unite ourselves to Jesus in the desert, his Passion and suffering on the cross, and we meditate on his great love for us throughout all that he suffered.
Then during Easter, of course we celebrate the Resurrection; we focus on courageously proclaiming that Christ is risen, alleluia, and breaking the bonds of all that keeps us from proclaiming and living Christ’s victory over sin and death.
But now we find ourselves once again in Ordinary Time. And during ordinary time we focus on the ordinary life of the Christian. But that’s not boring or unnoteworthy. There is holiness to be found and practiced in the ordinary dimensions of life. There is holiness to be found in cooking and cleaning and conversations and working and resting and family life and visits to the grocery and hardware stores and the doctor’s office and civic life, in aches and pains, and successes and failures. There is holiness to be found and practiced in everyday life, in ordinary day-to-day life.
Our Christian faith makes the life of the ordinary Christian extraordinary in a number of ways.
Firstly, unlike those without faith, Christians live conscious of God of with us throughout all of life. We celebrated at Christmas—that Christ is Emmanuel—God-with-us. And He is. He is with us in our trials, in our sufferings, in our poverty, in our fears, in failures, and in the ordinary. That gives us extraordinary and supernatural consolation, comfort, strength, and guidance.
And we live not just conscious of God. But the Christian lives with God truly present in his soul. The Christian becomes a walking tabernacle, a divine temple. This is extraordinary. For the Christian is not simply flesh and blood, but the baptized Christian, with God dwelling in his soul brings God into everything he does. Our lives become extensions of the dominion of God, prisms for the light of God to shine from within, antenna to receive and transmit the Word of God in the world. God is made known, his divine life and power become detectable through us.
Secondly, unlike the rest of the world, the Christian lives grounded in the Truth of God’s moral law. The Christian seeks to rid themselves of what humans shouldn’t be doing and to do what humans should be doing. Christians restrain ourselves from what is forbidden and do what is commanded by God himself. Christians observes all the “thou shalt nots”—observing the moral law—and also seek the perfection of virtue and the cultivation of the fruits and gifts of the holy spirit.
And this is extraordinary. For the ordinary state is just to follow our feelings. Just do what everybody else is doing, accept the mainstream values, tolerate the breaking-down of society. That’s normal, that’s expected, that’s how to fit in. But the Christian is called to do the opposite of the ordinary. Not to imitate the world, but to imitate Christ. Not to fall into the depravity and corruption of the mainstream, but to resist it; not to tolerate evil, but to be a force of Good, to draw souls away from evil and toward God.
The Christian vocation is anything but ordinary. Nothing is more unexpected than the Christian authentically living the faith. When you observe a Christian making use of a spiritual gift you recognize that something extraordinary is happening. When a Christian speaks in a prophetic way, or engages in selfless works of charity, or organizes people to accomplish something for God that they could not accomplish on their own, that is extraordinary. And we’re called to do these things every day, to live extraordinarily every day. I can’t think of anything more a pastor would rather see than parishioners bringing forth their gifts in service to the mission of the parish in extraordinary ways.
A final way Christians are extraordinary is the way by which we suffer. All people suffer. All people get sick, age, and experience the effects of mortality. Suffering is ordinary. But Christians can suffer in an extraordinary way when we unite our sufferings with Christ, in what is called redemptive suffering or reparative suffering, by what is called “offering up” our sufferings.
When Christians consciously, intentionally unite our ordinary sufferings to Christ, accepting the share in the cross of Christ, we are able do something that is eminently extraordinary. We are able to be a conduit of healing and grace for the world. We can say, “Lord, let my suffering be for some good” and that prayer is heard by God. Through redemptive suffering we can make amends for sins against God, remitting the time we would spend in purgatory, doing penance for others, and winning grace for the conversion of hardened hearts.
Ordinary Time: it might seem boring to some, but if you are conscious of your mission, your identity, and the opportunities for holiness, it won’t be anything less than extraordinary. For the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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