January 30, 2014
What is ordinary? Last week we began Ordinary Time in our annual liturgical calendar. As you came to church, you noticed that the Christmas trees and poinsettia plants were gone. We presiders were praying prayers from the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Everything seemed, well, ordinary – including the weather, the winter and the winds.
As a community, we began praying the Apostle’s Creed. It’s simpler. Easier. But, you know, there’s something about ordinary that’s very reassuring.
Think about all the rushing you did getting ready for Christmas. How many times did you travel to the mall for gifts? I know I was caught one evening shopping for groceries just in the checkout line for 45 minutes. Ordinary time at the market checkout lane was looking pretty good.
Did you try to get an airline ticket during Christmas? I know I did. The difference between a Christmas flight to Seattle and one in February was $600. And you know the cheaper flight was not at Christmas. Ordinary is looking pretty good again. The other evening a few priests went together to see “August – Osage County.” The movie is about a family that gets together because of a family funeral, but they are anything but together. They get into bitter fights about their relationships so that at the end of the movie everyone has shattered whatever of relationships they had with one another. An ordinary, loving, even slightly dysfunctional family was looking awfully good at the end of that movie.
So, what’s the point here? Sometimes we need a lot of normal to help us realize that overdrive is not always best. When we are doing so many things in our lives that we cannot keep straight what we’re doing day to day, we tend to get stressed out. When we’re stressed out, we seldom have time for God. When God isn’t a part of the day to day-ness of our lives we may easily get more stressed. It isn’t an easy time. That’s why I’m saying ordinary is a good thing. When the kids come home from school, do their homework, eat with the family and head for bed at a reasonable time, there’s an ordinariness there that produces calm. If you’ve been having a run of small illnesses or even a single illness that’s overwhelming that requires visit after visit to “the doctor’s,” when it stops and you realize that you haven’t been to a doctor in months – it’s ordinary and it’s good.
The Church helps us to recognize the importance of ordinary because the ordinary Sundays come between the great feasts. We will now have a number of weeks of ordinary liturgies and then begin the Lenten season leading to Easter and a festival of anything but ordinary liturgies. So, for a while it is wonderful to be able to relax in the Lord and recognize that God is often found in the ordinary things of everyday life – the smile of a child, enormous lake effect snowflakes, a week without disturbing medical news, and the caring moments that tell us our family is ok.