TALK ON ORDINARY LIFE

- The topic for this evening’s talk is ordinary life. In other words, this evening’s
talk will be about you and me, ordinary men living ordinary lives like millions
of others, like all our fellow Christians the world over. This is the topic that
Saint Jose Maria, founder of Opus Dei has talked about way back to the time
when the seed of Opus Dei was first planted. This is the topic that started a
revolution of sorts in the Catholic Church culminating in Vatican II. Until then
popular wisdom in the Church stated that holiness can only be achieved outside
of the world. Unless one withdrew from the world, completely rejected the
world, one could not achieve sanctity. “If you want to be a saint, be a monk”.
In Matthew 5:48 “be thou perfect as thy heavenly father is perfect”. The call is
for everybody not just to priests or religious. The call is for you and me.

- Saint Jose Maria on the other hand always said that the world is God’s creation
and therefore intrinsically good not intrinsically evil. We can achieve sanctity
in the world by sanctifying all the ordinary activities that we do, sanctifying the
people we are associated with and sanctifying ourselves in the process.
According to St. Jose Maria, “The fact that Jesus grew up and lived just like us
shows us that human existence and all the ordinary activity of men have a
divine meaning. No matter how much we may have reflected on all this,
whenever we think about it, we should always marvel at the 30 years of
obscurity which made up the greater part of Jesus’ life among men”.

Furrow 485: Of Jesus’ 33 years 30 were spent in silence and obscurity,

submission and work.

The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords subjecting Himself to the most
ordinary human parents and living for 30 years in silence, obscurity, and work.

Many of us too may spend not only 30 years of our life but all of our life in
obscurity, doing the most ordinary things. All of us will be given the
opportunity of imitating the life of Christ in his first 30 years. Most certainly,
very few, if any, among us will ever be called to go through life the way He did
in the last 3 years of His life that culminated in His death and resurrection. But
that is ok. What is important is for us to always remember that the smallest,
most ordinary work we do can be sanctified. And we can do this by doing the
most ordinary work in the best, the most extraordinary way and offering this for
the love of God.

The Way 815: ”Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of
each moment: do what you ought and put yourself into what you are doing”.

817 “‘Great’ holiness consists in carrying out the “little” duties of

each moment”.
Furrow 495: “You asked what you could offer the Lord. I don’t have to think
twice about the answer: offer the same things as before, but do them better,
finishing them off with a loving touch that will lead you to think more about
him and less about yourself.”

500: “When you started your ordinary work again, something like a groan of
complaint escaped you; ‘It’s always the same!’
And I told you: ‘Yes it’s always the same. But that ordinary job – which is the
same one your fellow workers do – has to be a constant prayer for you. It has
the same lovable words, but a different tune each day’. It is very much our
mission to transform the prose of this life into poetry, into heroic verse.”

Forge 616: “Our life – a Christian’s life – has to be as ordinary as this: trying
everyday to do well those very things it is our duty to do; carrying out our
divine mission in the world by fulfilling the little duty of each moment.
Or rather, struggling to fulfill it. Sometimes we don’t manage, and when night
comes, in our examination, we’ll have to tell our Lord, ‘I am not offering you
virtues; today I can only offer you defects. But with your grace I will be able to
count myself a victor’.”

I remember Bernie Villegas, many years ago, telling us I think a quote from St.
Jose Maria: The most inspiring truth relative to our struggle for sanctity is that
while not all of us can become Einsteins everyone of us can be saints.
- And it is faith and love that lights up the ordinary things in our life. It is
through the light of faith and love that we discover the value of the little things.
(without faith, of what worth is our greatest achievement in this world, without
love what does our success in our profession – maybe featured in Time
Magazine – really mean? Like St. Josemaria, I used to wonder how it was
possible that people who were living scandalous lives could be so successful,
materially speaking, i.e., successful businesses, rich and famous, etc. while
people I personally knew to be very good were mired in hand to mouth
existence. St. Josemaria explains this phenomenon in his biography by
Vasquez de Prada: because they have struggled hard, nay for purely material
reasons, they have been given a material reward. God is all-just, remember?
And unless they come to a realization later on or maybe even early on in their
lives that there is something much more valuable than material success and
change their lives accordingly, their rewards will likewise remain in the
material level and who knows what punishment they will receive later on
because they worshipped material gods. God is just, remember? You of course
know that this is not to say that material success is something shameful. No,
they also come to us because of our hard work and with God’s blessing. I’m
saying there is something beyond material success which is infinitely more
important – that we do our work with faith and with love. )

The Way 813: “Do every thing for love. In that way there will be no little
things: everything will be big. Perseverance in the little things for love is
heroism.”

811: “A little act, done for love is worth so much!!”

822: “You tell me: when the chance comes to do something great,
then…” Then? Are you seriously trying to convince me – and to convince
yourself – that you will be able to win in the supernatural Olympics without
daily preparation, without training?”
 This reminds me of a story about Catholics in China. It was at a time when
Chinese Catholics were being persecuted as they are still, though more subtly
today. There is this true story of a number of Chinese youth caught attending an
underground mass by agents of the state. What the government agents did was
to lay the holy cross on the ground. Then they instructed the young men and
women to spit on the cross under pain of being shot. Many young men and
women died that day because instead of spitting on the cross they knelt on the
ground embraced and kissed the cross.

Every time I recall this story I always get to think of what I would have done
had I been there. And I always get to tell myself that I will probably never be
given the opportunity but that I, you and I, will always be given the opportunity
to die to ourselves in every little ordinary events in our ordinary life. Being
faithful in the little things will develop in us the strength to face up to greater
trials if they should ever come our way.

- Perhaps one of the most important if not the most important part of our
ordinary life that we have to sanctify is our family life. And there are so many
occasions in our family life that offer us the opportunity for sanctification.
Avoiding those useless and often hurtful arguments in the family and using our
energies instead in developing and improving our capability for listening and
understanding. Giving more time to the children whether what they want to
talk to you about is important or not. Consider this: many of the things you
may find unimportant may be most important to them. Remember always: your
irritations relative to your wife or children or all the other members of your
household can be your path to heaven.

The Forge 689: “You should be full of wonder at the goodness of our father
God. Are you not filled with joy to know that your home, your family, your
country, which you love so much, are the raw material which you must
sanctify?”
Listen further to St. Jose Maria as he talks about family life in a homily
delivered back in Christmas, 1970:

“Husband and wife are called to sanctify their married life and to sanctify
themselves in it. It would be a serious mistake if they were to exclude family
life from their spiritual development. The marriage union, the care and
education of children, the effort to provide for the needs of the family as well as
for its security and development, the relationships with other persons who make
up the community, all these are among the ordinary human situations that
Christian couples are called upon to sanctify.
They will achieve this aim by exercising the virtues of faith and hope, facing
serenely all the great and small problems which confront any family, and
persevering in the love and enthusiasm with which they fulfill their duties, In
this way they practice the virtue of charity in all things. They learn to smile
and forget about themselves in order to pay attention to others. Husband and
wife will listen to each other and to their children, showing them that that they
are really loved and understood. They will forget about the unimportant little
frictions that selfishness could magnify out of proportion. They will do
lovingly all the small acts of service that make up their daily life together.
The aim is this: to sanctify family life, while creating at the same time a true
family atmosphere. Many Christian virtues are necessary in order to sanctify
each day of one’s life. First, the theological virtues, and then all the others:
prudence, loyalty, sincerity, humility, industriousness, cheerfulness … . But
when we talk about marriage and married life, we must begin by speaking
clearly about the mutual love of husband and wife.

- It’s Christmas now and in the spirit of Christmas and in honor of the Holy
Family let us take that extra effort to foster a true, united family atmosphere.
Meditate on what the Holy Family went through, 1. the difficult trip to
Bethlehem, 2. no room to stay in for the night, 3. and later the dangerous flight
to Egypt. Let us pray to the Holy Family that we too may be as unselfish, as
patient, as obedient, and as persevering as we go through our own life
sanctifying all the ordinary things we do as a family, as a father, a husband or a
son.