Saving the mundane and temporal

WE have to understand that our mundane and temporal

affairs are no obstacle in our relationship with God and with others.

They should not be. In fact, for most people, these matters and

affairs are the very occasion, material and motive for developing the

love for God and for others, and thus, they also serve as the means

for their own sanctification.

  

            While we have to take utmost care in carrying out our

sacred duties of praying, offering sacrifices, having recourse to the

sacraments, availing of the spiritual means of formation, etc., we

should not forget that our ordinary secular duties and

responsibilities play an important role in our spiritual life.

  

            It’s in these latter duties that most people have their

usual encounter with Christ. It’s in them that most people have the

opportunity to correspond to God’s continuing work of creation and

redemption on them.

  

            The basis for this assertion could be the fact that in the

life of Christ, our Redeemer, his hidden life that was spent in doing

the ordinary work of a citizen in a community is as important and is

as redemptive as his public life that was spent going around

preaching, performing miracles and ultimately going through his

passion, death and resurrection.

   

            In that episode of the boy Jesus who at 12 years of age

went with his parents in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we can have a good

inkling of how his hidden life was also redemptive in character. (cfr.

Lk 2,41-52)

  

            He was lost for some days and his parents looked for him

earnestly. When finally he was found in the temple, Our Lady said to

him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have

been anxiously searching for you.” To which, the boy Jesus responded:

“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my

Father’s house?”

   

            We can have several interpretations of these words of the

boy Jesus, but my take is that he wanted to tell his parents that even

in his hidden life spent in doing ordinary things, he was doing the

things his Father God sent him for, that is, to redeem us.

  

            The episode ended with the boy going back home with his

parents and was subject and obedient to them, and he grew “in wisdom

and stature, and in favor with God and man.”

   

            I can only draw from this episode the conclusion that the

boy Jesus wants to show us that the ordinary things he had to do while

being subject to Mary and Joseph were an integral part of his mission

of redeeming us.

  

            We really have to look at the usual and ordinary things we

handle everyday, our mundane and temporal affairs, more from the point

of view of faith rather than just from the point of view of our

reason, our common sense, our practical needs.

  

            We need to save our mundane and temporal affairs from the

clutches of simply being treated in a completely technical and

practical way. We have to learn to see God there. We need to learn to

see how his continuing providence over us is working through those

usual ordinary things that we do everyday.

  

            Definitely, we need to pause and study how we can train

our mind and heart, our senses and all other faculties we have to

perceive the spiritual and supernatural dimension of the ordinary

things we do everyday and of all our mundane and temporal affairs.

   

            This, of course, will require nothing less than

cultivating and growing in our faith, hope and charity which are the

main nourishing elements to develop our spiritual life and to acquire

that skill in seeing God and his providence in everything that we do

everyday.