In the Ordinary

Jesus avoids attention after his work of healing the deaf man. He’s not a quarter hour celebrity.  He didn’t want admiration, he wanted love to flow into and out of ourselves – doing good quietly.  The best of things are ordinary.  In the ordinary, Jesus worked the miracle and in the ordinary we will hear new things.

The theologian Karl Rahner SJ was once asked whether he believed in miracles. His answer: “I don’t ‘believe in them’, I rely on them to get through each day!” Indeed, miracles are always present within our lives. Miracles of birth, of love, and hope.

The first reading today sees more in the desert than a wilderness and flowers: we see and hear beyond created things to the healing work and word of the creator.  Maybe we might listen to new voices about God and life in our conversations – I heard recently a young person talking about the suicide of a friend and how this brought him to realise how much we really need God.  His chat strengthened my faith.

Can we recover the simplicity of life with the small miracles that get us through every day? Like a sudden burst of sunrays in the midst of trees.  All of us have something new to say of God and of life.  And we get more than we know out of the simplicity of life.

Think today of something small that can remind you

of something deeper and of God.

Praise to you O lord for simple surprises in my life!

Donal Neary SJ