Nothing Ordinary About Ordinary Time

Easter is over. Lent is long gone. Here we are, back in Ordinary Time. 

I’ve been thinking about ordinariness lately.*

In this age of blockbusters and viral sensations, we don’t hold being ordinary in high esteem. Even in our spiritual lives, it’s easy to think that seasons like Lent and Advent are where we make the most progress. 

Of course, they can be very fruitful, but Ordinary Time is where Saints are made.

Few hold higher esteem than St. Joseph, the Foster Father of Jesus. 

We get some brief mentions of him in the Bible, but not much. Nothing he said was recorded in Scripture. His was an ordinary life, yet he did something right because somehow we know him now as the Terror of Demons and Patron of the Universal Church.

Jesus himself, whose public ministry only spanned three years, spent most of his life in obscurity. We know of His birth, the detour into Egypt, and that time when He schooled the elders in the temple when He was twelve. They were amazed, but he was allowed to return with his Mom and Dad back to Nazareth, an obscure, unheralded town.

If we are measuring by years, only 9% of Jesus’ life was public and deemed worthy of writing about. But that’s high because it’s not like every moment of every day of his public ministry was recorded for posterity. Take out all the meals he had, the private conversations, the long walks he shared with his disciples going from town to town, and we are probably under 1%.

99% of Jesus’ life was ordinary.

Here’s something else to think about. You know how when somebody rises to fame, reporters go back to interview the family friends and neighbors, and you always hear some version of, “Oh yes, we could tell he was special from the beginning. We knew he was destined for great things”? (We’ve already seen accounts from childhood pals of Pope Leo XIV who reportedly predicted that he would someday become pope.)

Well, that wasn’t Jesus.

You’d think that the Son of God would leave undeniable clues in his community, giving people a hint that something special was in their midst. But no great rumors bubbled up in the region about this whiz kid doing signs and wonders. If they had, Nathaniel probably wouldn’t have wondered if anything good could come from Nazareth. Instead, he might have asked, “Wait, is that the place I’ve heard all those stories about that wunderkind?”

No. Instead, when Jesus returned after His public ministry finally started and he began to gain some fame, the faith of his hometown community was so weak, He couldn’t perform any signs. No one was boasting, “I knew it! I knew that kid was gonna turn out to be God.” 

Instead, they tried to throw him off a cliff.

I’m sure Jesus was a good kid. A treasured friend. A helpful neighbor. But He spent his first thirty years of life living an ordinary life with Mary and Joseph. Providing for themselves. Making meals. Going to the synagogue. Doing chores. Washing clothes. Playing games. Cracking jokes. Hosting friends for dinner. Attending funerals. Making meals for those who were grieving. Jesus helped Joseph in the workshop. He helped Mary clean the house. He played with other kids and dealt with colds and flu and cuts and scrapes.

Ordinary stuff.

Just because it wasn’t written about doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. Those thirty years most definitely shaped the final three of Jesus’ earthly life.

In an era of get-rich-quick schemes, overnight successes, and fast-acting miracle pills and diets, this is easy to overlook. Most of the stuff you do day in and day out will not be recorded for posterity. It may not even be noticed or fully appreciated by the other people in your household.

Make no mistake, the ordinary is holy. It’s the everyday habits and routines, the practices we commit to, that make us who we are. While we are waiting for miracles, supernatural visions, and signs and wonders from God, the ordinary days are forming us. Not just the momentous days, but the regular, routine, unremarkable ones, too. Every little choice we make, mindlessly or not, is shaping us, for better or for worse. 

This is your chance to practice.

This is your chance to grow in holiness.

This is where Saints are made.

There is nothing ordinary about Ordinary Time.

*The reason for my recent reflections on ordinariness is thanks to the book Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. It’s part memoir, part spiritual reflection on the holiness and importance of ordinariness on our journey to become saints. Highly recommend.