Here’s to Ordinary

Is anything really ordinary? It’s January and it’s raining and 50 degrees.  If you’re a sports fan, it’s an extraordinary season of playoffs and tournaments; if you’re a movie buff, it’s award season.  But what about “Ordinary Time” in our liturgical life?  In our daily life?  Is there really such a thing?  In the late ‘70’s the novel Ordinary People became a best seller – about a family who tried to appear ordinary but underneath seethed with suffering, fear, and loss.  How often do we say or think our day was “just ordinary” when, if we look closely, we could find all kinds of small ways that grace broke in.  In his homily on New Year’s, Pope Francis used a phrase that I think applies to all of us ordinary people who do ordinary things, but try to do them in faith, with the gospel as our guide.  Pope Francis said that it’s these everyday people, the ordinary people, who are “the artisans of the common good.”   Now there’s a job description each of us can embrace!  Let us try!

Priscilla Wood, OP

Dubuque, IA