Meditation for January 17, On Being Ordinary

A few hours of cruel passion, two and a half or possibly three years of preaching, but thirty years of an ordinary, uneventful life, doing nothing outstanding, remaining unseen, unknown, just a per­son like anyone else. Joseph was a carpenter and Jesus the Son of the carpenter.

We could understand a God coming to accomplish great things, but a God come from heaven to do only insignificant things for thirty years - what a contradiction of our ordinary standard of values!

How much we need to understand this truth!

There are some sacrifices which cost a great deal. We make them; we have the courage to make them, precisely because they do cost much. That brings us honor, were it only in our own eyes. To be known as heroic or to know oneself to be heroic, compensates for the cost of the heroism. If the word heroic is too strong, let us call it generosity.

But to work at an obscure task, where nothing shows, nothing shines either for oneself or anyone else and to do that for a long time, indefinitely - what a cross! Thirty years, that is an eternity!

Such is our life. No doubt, we shall never have the opportunity for a very brilliant apostolate, or the occasion for particularly sen­sational suffering. We shall be ordinary whatever our employment.

Courage! That is to be like Jesus. What more do I need?

"Grant me, my Savior, hidden for thirty years, to love the hidden life; to rejoice in being lost in the crowd, in seeming insignificant in the eyes of all. Only grant that in the midst of very ordinary appearances, my love for You may be extraordinary."

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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)