Ordinary in an extraordinary way!

Christmas has officially finished! Until next year that is.  With the second Vespers of the Baptism of the Lord, today we return to Ordinary Time. With the commercial hype of Christmas having passed, albeit somewhat subdued this year, it is easy to get dragged into a sense of a mundane life, void of fairy lights, candy canes and presents under the tree and January can be somewhat of an anti-climatic month. We get back into the ordinary course of events. Through the period of Ordinary Time following Christmas, we become increasingly aware that this marvel of birth and growth will mature into something challenging. The Good News that God’s extraordinary life comes to us in seemingly ordinary ways is the ongoing lesson of Ordinary Time. However we will need time to focus on this and in a few weeks we will be gifted with the time of Lent which culminates in the great event of the Resurrection, the battle of life over death, light over darkness.

Last week, I jokingly said that the shops will already have the Easter eggs in soon. On the 4th of January, a certain foodstore already had Easter bunnies in stock (a friend of mine commented that they probably melted the chocolate Santas to make the Easter bunnies!) What is it with the commercial world continually projecting us into the future?  Have we lost the capacity to live the present moment? Are we afraid to live the present? Are we afraid that the present is too 'ordinary.'

All during this year as we struggled to live with the pandemic, people have yearned to ‘get back to normal’, to what we are accustomed to.  There is a ‘B.C’, that is, ‘before- Covid.’ We keep looking forward to ‘after’ the pandemic but maybe we need to live ‘with’ the pandemic. No-one can be blamed for wanting to move forward, forget, erase all the anxiety, uncertainty and heartbreak that 2020 and 2021 brought yet we are called to live in the present. To live this ordinary and extraordinary time as a time of grace because God is present and walks with us.

There is a quote that goes: “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” What is the little ‘extra’ which makes the difference in your life? For me, beauty continues to speak a language of its own which does not necessarily need words or vocabulary, precisely because it belongs to the sphere of the simple. My quest for ‘extra’ continues, or translated into biblical terms, the journey towards embracing Jesus’ invitation in John 10:10 ‘I have come that you may life in abundance.'

That said, extraordinary things happen in Ordinary time too. People are born and people die. We fight the battle against a virus that has changed so much. Wars begin and wars end, and wars go on and on. Tornados and earthquakes happen and end. Miracles come in silently, softly, transforming the lives of unsuspecting people. People shed the extraordinary because they have been wearied by life and settle for the ordinary. Ironically, it may have seemed that travel and the media can blow all horizons wide open and yet our own inner horizons seem to have become narrower and our vision contracted. How can we find again the seeing eye and the feeling touch? Maybe it was in the rhythm of slowing down as we live through COVID. The reality of “time and eternity” is one that few people these days choose to contemplate, because we are so distracted. This past year our gaze and our heart has been brought back to the ordinary things that matter- a hug, a handshake, a chat, a bus journey, a family visit- we have been rerouted because for a time many of these things are no longer ordinary- they are extraordinary. We gained new- found respect for those who carry out the small tasks in life upon which we are dependent: ordinary people who were always extraordinary, but now we see it. 

This said, no-one wants to be ‘ordinary’, we all want to feel special. We want to live exciting lives which give us interesting photos and bizarre statuses to post on Facebook or Twitter or videos for Snapchat and Tik-Tok. We want people to think our lives are extraordinary.  Easily we forget that every single person on earth is completely unique and not exactly like anyone else. Every single life is special and extraordinary. We don’t have to prove ourselves to God or to anyone for that matter. It can seem that even in church circles, we have to do ‘big’ things. There is so much importance placed on having a big ministry or having that “special calling” to bigger things yet we often fail to recognize that God can do extraordinary things when we’re doing the ordinary.

Holly Gerth writes: “Ordinary is the lie we tell ourselves when we look in the mirror and say the girl looking back is no one special. It’s the false feeling that tries to overwhelm us when we’re standing in the corner at a conference and everyone else seems cooler. It’s the whisper of the enemy of our hearts when we get ready to offer what we’ve tucked away inside for so long. You are not ordinary. You are extraordinary. The God who spoke the stars into being knit together your soul. Chose the colour of your eyes. Numbered the hairs on your head. Placed gifts within you like presents for the world to open with joy.”

Yes, God does call some people to go out and do new and extraordinary things but that doesn’t mean that what we do is insignificant. For the vast majority of us, He’s called us to live an ordinary life but He desires that we live it in an extraordinary way.  He wants us to give unconditionally without expecting return, to love in a way which the world doesn’t acknowledge, loving the poor, the weak, those whom the world deems ‘unlovable’. He wants us to be faithful in the little things, making the little sacrifices which no-one might even see. By giving time to someone in need of a kind word or gesture when you feel just like having your personal space. We don’t need a big “calling” to have an impact in this world.  Maybe that is why I love the lives of the saints so much, they teach us that God does miracles in the lives of ordinary people. He changes sinners into saints. All we need to do is live our ordinary lives in an extraordinary way. So don’t be afraid to be ordinary!