Being Ordinary

By Tom Ponchak

I had the opportunity to write a few bulletin reflections for our parish. I decided to reprint them here. I've included the date and readings for the Sundays for which the originally appeared.

May 30, 2010 (Proverbs 8:22-31 – Romans 5:1-5 – John 16:12-15)

Ordinary Time. It’s a deceptively boring label for the liturgical season we now find ourselves in. It’s not “special” like Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter. There are no special, beloved Ordinary Time songs or decorations. No unique Ordinary Time traditions. It’s just ordinary, plain. It’s just like most of my life and yours. We “live and move and have our being” in the ordinary time of our lives, punctuated by special events like birthdays, marriages & anniversaries, job changes, and moving.

The challenge of the ordinary is keeping our passion alive. It’s easy to be excited when we’re standing at the mountain top of great moments in our lives. Love’s flame burns strong with little effort on your wedding day. Keeping that flame alive after five, ten, fifteen or more years takes far more than sentimental excitement; it takes hard work. So it is with the ordinary time of our spiritual journey. We can climb to great heights by attending retreats, parish missions or beautiful liturgies with all kinds of smells & bells; but we must also travel through the spiritual doldrums of everyday life. That’s why it’s so hard to get a seat for Midnight Mass at Christmas or on Easter Sunday morning while surprisingly roomy in the pew on the Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time.

There is wisdom in the Church’s celebration of liturgical seasons, especially Ordinary Time. It teaches us the value of embracing the ordinariness of our lives and elevating it to something more by redeeming it for Christ. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said “Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.” That is the great opportunity that being ordinary presents to us. We must look for opportunities presented to us in ordinary and simple ways to show the love of Christ to those around us. Our challenge is not to grow weary or complacent as we “run the good race” which is more a marathon than a sprint.

The key here, as St. Francis of Assisi would say, is to “do few things, but do them well.” Commit to attending mass every week. Spend five to ten minutes a day in quiet and prayer. Our prayer life doesn’t have to be something special, it just needs to be. By keeping your personal spiritual commitments simple you’re more likely to keep them period. Don’t be seduced by the thinking that only exceptional prayer experiences are the only ones worth pursuing. I know that for me it is a constant struggle to accept that five to ten minutes of prayer are fruitful, that I should be striving for a 30 minute or more prayer time. At the same time I know that my pursuit of the perfect prayer experience is often the enemy of having a consistent prayer life. That is why I take inspiration from Ordinary Time to realize that there is value in the little, but faithful efforts that I make.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being and Doing

By Tom Ponchak
Image
"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." (Luke 10:42, from the Gospel for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time) I was listening to a podcast with Fr. John Riccardo and he said something to the effect of “we often think that the calling to be a disciple is to work for Jesus, but the calling of a disciple is to be with Jesus.” The Gospel account of Martha and Mary this week is so important for us to hear and learn from.  Over the last six years, I have worked in two suburban parishes doing adult formation. Both parishes are located in very affluent areas and have a large number of upper middle class, white collar professionals. We have CEOs, attorneys, physicians, salespeople, pharmaceutical professionals, corporate executives, and even professional athletes. I’ve joked at times that our home could probably fit in the garages of some of the parishioners I kn...
Read more

Cultural Insanity and The Christian

By Tom Ponchak
Image
On multiple occasions over the past year I’ve had a reoccurring dream. I find myself in an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over and have the appearance of zombies. I was going from room to room looking for other trapped people, some asleep and others unaware of what was happening, and leading them to escape. At the same time, I encounter a few of the insane zombies and I am able to cure them so they become “normal” and leave with us. I believe this is a prophetic dream speaking to the nature of our culture and our mission as Christians. In the early telling of the story of Narcissus in Greek mythology the young man become enamored with his own image and committed suicide after despairing that no one could love him as much as he loved himself. It’s from this story that modern psychology takes the name Narcissistic Personality Disorder to describe an individual with an inflated sense of their own purpose and a lack of empathy for others. The Mayo Clinic lists the followin...
Read more

Loaves and Fishes

By Tom Ponchak
Image
  “Give them some food yourselves.” Jesus’ words to his disciples were surprising, challenging, and seemingly impossible. They responded as most of us would have, taking a quick inventory of their resources and realizing their limitations. In making such an outrageous suggestion Jesus was trying to get his students to live by faith not by sight. As St. Paul would often refer to in his letters, Jesus was trying to get the disciple to be transformed by a renewal of their minds (Rom. 12:2), to no longer behave like unspiritual men, but as spiritually minded disciples (1 Cor. 2:14-16). It is important to keep in mind when the feeding of the multitude took place. Sunday’s reading was taken from Luke 9:10-17. Leading up to this event, the disciples had witness Jesus calming the storm (Luke 8:22-25), a woman healed just by touching is garment (Luke 8:43-48) and Jesus raising a girl from the dead (Luke 8:49-56). Furthermore, the disciples had just returned to Jesus after he had sent them...
Read more