There they sat on a little bench at the back of the church: an elderly couple holding hands, her back bent and the other hand on a cane that she couldn’t walk without.
Every Sunday that we rushed in late and tried to shush our three young children into a seat at the back, they would smile, and laugh, and play little games with our kids. Every Sunday, their warm, loving gazes (we didn’t exchange many words besides “peace be with you”) made going to Mass feel like coming home. Due to the wife’s trouble walking, they would leave right as Mass was ending, and we never got the chance to chat. Their warmth and love were all we knew.
One Sunday, we hustled into the church and found their usual bench empty. She had passed away.
I felt the loss. This couple’s testimony to marriage, to love, of sweetness toward children, and dignity in the midst of illness, all touched my heart.
Our culture orders our lives like this: you play, you learn, you “become something when you grow up,” you work hard, you retire, and you relax. But our lives are not linear. We take turns playing, growing, learning, becoming, working, and resting in cycles throughout our lives. There is always more to learn. There are always ways to grow. Every week, we need a day to rest.
Our normal everyday actions—patience during toilet training mistakes or holding hands with a spouse at the back of the church—can become a witness to love, commitment, and joy in the midst of trials.
My Mass journal shares this insight: “It’s the silent daily dose of sunlight that turns the small sprout into the towering tree. It’s the constant flowing of the river that carves the deepest canyons. It’s the vast expanse of the great plains that allow winds to accumulate their strength. In the same way, it’s the consistent contact with our Lord that allows our faith to grow deeper and wider.”
If Easter is like the Church’s honeymoon, my journal suggests, Ordinary Time is like day-to-day married life. Sure, the honeymoon is exciting and wonderful, but it is in the daily actions of married life where most of the relationship’s strength is cultivated.
The work I do as a stay-at-home mom, most of it totally unnoticed by anyone including my three young children, offers me the same trickles of water that can grow into a mighty river with consistent pursuits of patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. The ordinary actions in a marriage contribute to its building up or tearing down, and my ordinary daily tasks give me the opportunity to grow holier, and make my family stronger and more loving.
The world touts retirement as a chance to relax, travel to warm climates, and maybe spoil grandkids. But it seems to me that each life stage is more like levelling up in a video game, with each level presenting new difficulties, and the skills learned in previous levels help the hero become stronger.
How else can you walk up to receive Communion, one painful step after another, with your head high and a smile on your face, unless you’d been practicing it long before illness and age wore you down?
How else can you hold your spouse tightly as both of you lose your hair, strength, and energy, unless you’ve practiced holding each other during many trials over the years?
Retirement means the end of our daily jobs, and Ordinary Time means the end of the honeymoon, but we never get a break from the daily striving to be more like Christ. Giving ourselves to him daily, even when our bodies are exhausted, our eyesight or hearing are giving way, or our memories are not what they used to be, can be a great testimony to truth, goodness, and beauty.
As Pope John Paul II aged, becoming weaker in front of the whole world, he did not give up on growing in holiness and drawing others to Jesus. His actions and speech slowed, and travel ceased, but he inspired millions with a few words from a single balcony in Rome.
I pray that all of us, in our various life stages, find Ordinary Time a powerful reminder of how each action done in love, joy, and trust allows the Holy Spirit to carve canyons and blow powerful winds.
