Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10 / 1 Cor 12:12-30 / Lk 1:1-4,4:14-21
There’s an old story that makes its way around ecclesiastical circles from time to time. It seems that someone in the Vatican got word that the Second Coming of CHRIST was about to happen. Within minutes, of course, everyone in the Vatican had heard the rumor and the corridors and offices were crackling with tension and panic. Finally, one of the most senior cardinals knocked very quietly and very respectfully on the door of the pope’s private apartment.
“Your Holiness,” he said breathlessly, “we have reason to believe that the Second Coming of Christ is about to happen. What shall we do?”
The Holy Father looked up from his papers and said, “Look busy!”
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Busy is what we are from day to day with the ordinary business of life. We have our regular routines and established patterns for just about everything. We read the same sections of the paper in the same order day after day. We come to Mass at the same time, park in the same place, and sit in the same pew week after week.
We buy the same toothpaste and toast the same kind of bread month after month. We play cards and walk the golf course with the same friends at the same time on the same day of the week year after year. We eat the same menu from the same dishes every Christmas decade after decade.
No doubt about it, almost the whole of life is a series of habitual routines large and small that are rarely interrupted by anything more drastic than the newspaper’s coming late or some “stranger” sitting in “our place” at the 5 o’clock Mass!
Our habits and routines are like old shoes, comfortable and comforting. They get our daily business done — if not the easy or the best way — at least without a lot of thought or stress. And they give us a sense of stability and at-homeness which is quite a comfort when the world feels too big and too much for us.
But there’s another side to our habitual routines that’s not so pretty, and that is their power to blind us, to hold us hostage, to make us very poor on the inside. Our routines have the power to trap us inside tiny ideas and even tinier hopes, the power to persuade us that this is all there is, and that life is very small and very narrow indeed.
Over time, our routines and the endless cycle of everyday tasks that have to be done can persuade us that the best we can hope for is a life of quiet desperation.
That is why we need to hear what Jesus is saying to us in Sunday’s gospel: “I have come to give sight to the blind,” He says, “to set captives free, and to bring good news to all who are poor,” whatever the shape of their poverty may be.
Jesus is reminding us that our lives are meant to be very large inside. He’s telling us that if we are being true to the gifts God has entrusted to us, every one of our moments has purpose, large purpose. Every one of those ordinary tasks that have to be done again and again is a building block for God’s kingdom, a building block for eternity, if our eyes are open, if our hearts are open, and if we’re being true to the gifts God has entrusted us to carry.
So let that be our prayer:
Open our eyes, Lord, that we may see the value of each day. Open our hearts that we may give our best to each person and each task. And, in Your good time, Lord, let us rejoice in the completion of the kingdom that You and we have been building together, one moment at a time. Amen.
