Seeing God in Our Ordinary Lives

In Paris in the 1940s, a “Worker Priest” movement was started, in which priests applied for factory jobs so they could enter into the daily lives of the working class and understand better how to serve them. In this way, they affirmed the value of the ordinariness of most people’s lives.

Now that we have completed our celebration of the Easter season and Pentecost, in a liturgical sense, we are all settling back into our ordinary lives in what the Church terms “ordinary time.” It is perhaps more difficult to connect with God outside the dramatic events of Jesus’ birth, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, for now we need to seek God in the ordinariness of our daily lives.

Yet God comes to us within the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. Consider this prayer by Fr. Edward Hays, from his book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim:

“O Divine Giver of Life, you in whom we breathe and live, show yourself to me this day in countless ways. And grant me the grace to bow in wonder and in joy wherever and whenever I discover you.”

When we dare to ask God to appear to us in countless ways, how will God respond? Are we prepared to bow to raindrops as they fall on thirsty ground, to the person who restores our power after an electrical outage, or to the family pet that shows us unconditional love? Can we dare believe that God is present in our very ordinary lives and respond in wonder and joy?

What a pity it would be if, after we die and see God face to face, it turns out that God looks very familiar because we have caught glimpses of that beloved face throughout our life but didn’t realize who we were seeing.