There comes a point in every journey when you realize that what seemed like a collection of unrelated steps has actually been taking you somewhere.
This is occasionally alarming.
It happens when you are driving through an unfamiliar town and suddenly discover that the road you have been following with great confidence has become a private driveway. It happens when assembling furniture and you discover, somewhere around Step 17, that the small wooden piece you confidently discarded at Step 3 was apparently structural. And it happens in the spiritual life when we suddenly realize that God has been quietly leading us somewhere while we were busy assuming that nothing particularly important was happening.
For these past days of Ordinary Time, that has been our theme.
The holiness of ordinary things.
The kitchen table.
The Wednesday morning.
The unfinished task.
The unexpected interruption.
The conversation we nearly avoided.
The kindness nobody noticed.
The prayer we whispered without much confidence that it went farther than the ceiling.
Again and again, we have returned to this simple truth: there really are no ordinary days. There are only days we have noticed and days we have not.
And now we are approaching All Saints.
Tomorrow we will begin thinking about saints, and there is a danger here.
The danger is that we imagine saints belong to an entirely different category of Christian existence.
We picture stained glass.
Halos.
Martyrdom.
Monasteries.
People standing serenely in paintings while holding objects that would cause most of us to telephone the police.
The saints can begin to look like Christianity’s professional division while the rest of us are playing recreationally on Thursday evenings.
But that is not how sainthood begins.
Sainthood begins in ordinary time.
It begins when somebody gets out of bed and decides, once again, to trust God.
It begins when someone forgives.
When someone shares.
When someone notices the lonely person.
When someone tells the truth even though a lie would be considerably more convenient.
When someone chooses mercy over resentment.
When someone says a prayer before beginning a difficult day.
When someone discovers that following Jesus is less about achieving spiritual greatness and more about allowing love to shape the next small decision.
The saints were not born standing on pedestals.
They had kitchens.
They had laundry.
They had difficult relatives.
They misplaced things.
They became tired.
They worried.
They probably had meetings that could have been emails.
They lived ordinary lives in ordinary places, and somewhere in the middle of all that ordinary living, they kept making room for God.
That is holiness.
Not perfection.
Availability.
Perhaps that is the lesson Ordinary Time has been trying to teach us all along.
God does not wait for the extraordinary moment.
God works with Tuesday.
God works with the grocery store and the parish meeting and the traffic light and the hospital waiting room.
God works with casseroles and conversations.
God works with the five minutes before the next appointment.
God works with the person standing directly in front of us.
And, rather astonishingly, God works with us.
Christian faith has sometimes made holiness sound like a mountain climbed by particularly athletic souls.
Jesus makes it sound much more like a road.
Follow me.
One step.
Then another.
Love God.
Love your neighbour.
Forgive.
Feed.
Welcome.
Pray.
Begin again.
And somewhere along that road, ordinary disciples begin looking remarkably like saints.
Most of them probably never notice.
Perhaps that is part of the point.
Holiness rarely announces itself.
It does not enter the room accompanied by trumpets.
Usually it is wearing an apron.
Or work boots.
Or pyjamas at two o’clock in the morning while sitting beside someone who cannot sleep.
Holiness is often simply love that stayed.
And perhaps this is where our journey through these ordinary days was always leading.
Tomorrow we will begin telling stories about saints. Some will have names recognized throughout the Church. Some will have feast days and churches named after them. Some lived centuries ago.
But before we meet them, perhaps we should remember something important.
The distance between an ordinary Christian and a saint is not nearly as great as we imagine.
It is simply the distance between this moment and the next faithful thing.
That is all any saint was ever given.
One day.
One neighbour.
One decision.
One opportunity to love.
Exactly the same things God has placed into our hands today.
So perhaps we should stop waiting for the extraordinary life.
This one will do.
This kitchen.
This parish.
This family.
This neighbourhood.
This Tuesday.
This slightly untidy, frequently interrupted, occasionally ridiculous life.
God has never required better material.
And if we offer it to God—ordinary moment after ordinary moment—grace may accomplish considerably more with it than we ever imagined.
After all, that is how saints are made.
Not somewhere else.
Not someday.
Here.
Now.
In Ordinary Time.
And perhaps the great secret of Ordinary Time is that it was never ordinary at all.
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Companion Prayer
God of ordinary days,
Thank you for meeting us in kitchens and workplaces, conversations and interruptions, quiet prayers and unnoticed acts of love.
Teach us not to wait for extraordinary lives before offering ourselves to you. Give us grace to recognize the holy possibilities already placed before us: one neighbour to love, one kindness to offer, one wrong to forgive, one faithful step to take.
As we turn our attention toward the saints, remind us that they too learned holiness one ordinary day at a time.
Take this ordinary life of ours, Lord, and make it beautiful with your grace.
Amen.