The Lord in the Ordinariness of life

THE WORD AND THE SAINT 

January 31, 2024 - Remembering St. John Bosco
2 Samuel 24: 2,8-17; Mark 6: 1-6

Today we celebrate St. John Bosco, the father and friend of youth - as the Church calls him. There are special readings chosen for the feast (memoria of the Saint), but not all would be choosing those readings. Hence, we shall continue to reflect on the reading of the 4th Ordinary week... however, the Saint has an inspiration to give even here. 

The Word comes to remind us that, falling into sin and giving into our imperfections are common human experiences. Comparatively more problematic experience is when we have fallen and we do not want to get out of it. Still worse is when we do no even realise we have fallen - in which case, there is no question of getting out of it at all. 

David was a chosen one of God. He was blessed with experiences and graces that no one else had been blessed with... but he too falls, and he falls repeatedly! But let us wait - nothing to judge him "evil" here... it is a ordinary human experience, to fall, even to repeatedly fall. The merit that we can attribute to David is the fact that when things go wrong and miseries come his way, he readily realises his folly. When he falls he knows that he has fallen and he accepts that he has fallen! All the while he also realises, the ever present grace of God which instructs him and guides him.

The Lord's grace is ever present with us - but it is possible that we do not realise it or we refuse to behold it in our obstinacy. The ordinariness of Jesus was an obstacle for the people to accept the great things that he was upto. They were not ready to notice or behold anything divine in Jesus, because they knew him too well! They were so fixated in their ideas that the ordinariness in which God's glory was set to shine, did not appeal to them.

St. John Bosco has handed down a legacy to his sons and daughters, the great big Salesian family that he had initiated as a movement - the Salesian Spirituality, which hinges upon a spirituality of ordinariness. It requires that we find God in the ordinariness of our daily life and experience. It is important that we learn to behold the Lord's graceful presence, in the ordinariness of our lives lest we miss it all, as it happened to those people who missed Jesus the Christ altogether. 

Let us resolve to be ready and eager to behold the presence of the Lord in the ordinariness of our days.