January 15, 2006

After Christmas, the Church enters "Ordinary Time." At first glance it sounds hardly inspiring. Think of the lyrics P. G. Wodehouse wrote for Jerome Kern's 1918 musical, Oh Lady! Lady!, which were revived in Showboat: "He's just my Bill, an ordinary man. He hasn't got a thing that I can brag about." No one brags about the ordinary. That is the whole point: There is a splendor about being regular and unremarkable. A good digestion is taken for granted: It is indigestion that provokes remark. In the seventh century St. Isidore wrote, "Even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony." But meteors get more attention than the planets in their calm cycles, and so do the wrong notes in the symphony.

Ordinary Time is witness that God has ordered all things in quiet perfection. Sin is the disruption of order, and so it makes fascinating gossip. Being perfect, Jesus went unnoticed and His birth in a common stable was heaven's way of ridiculing celebrity. God delights in the ordinary because only He fully knows how more wonderful it is than our gaudy interruptions of it. A miracle is God's restoration of order. It is only because we are unfamiliar with the perfectly ordinary that we tend to think a miracle is extraordinary. The saints are surprised by sin, not by miracles.

Satan tempted Jesus to fly, not to test His divinity, but to mock His humanity. He knew that Jesus would defeat him by suffering as a true man. This is why Jesus embedded Himself in an ordinary town: "What good can come out of Nazareth?" As a carpenter, He did not build basilicas; He fixed furniture. So the Christian is called to serve God in the ordinary circumstances of the day. Here is an ordinary example: Recently Con Ed billed the parish a high amount for steam heat, and we might have paid it ruefully, since the price of fuel has gone up a lot. But our trustees, Gerry Carey and Ignatius Cuttita, and our sexton, Genaro Vasquez, compared earlier bills, and the month's temperature, and called in the utility men. The good Con Ed men were prompt and found that their meter was defective. Were we an impersonal and profligate operation, we might just have paid the bill. Using common sense and volunteering practical skill in an ordinary matter has saved money that can be used for Christ instead of Con Ed. You do not need to be an archangel to please God; in fact He wouldn't be pleased because He wants you to be human. By doing ordinary things well, we can impress even the angels. "You have been faithful in a few things. I will set you over a great many things" (Matt. 25:23).

Fr. George W. Rutler