Sanctity in the Ordinary

I went to a remarkably ordinary Mass today.

Lest I be unclear, disedifying or downright scandalous: the miracle of the Mass is that God makes himself physically present in the Eucharist, an event so incomprehensibly big that it entirely defies almost every use of the word 'ordinary' with which I am familiar and could not under any circumstances descend to the level of the commonplace or the banal.

Accordingly, when I say that Mass today was 'ordinary,' I'm talking about the externals of the Mass. I had been told about this. The novice who attended Mass with me had given me the description, telling me in advance that it may be the most 'ordinary' Mass he'd seen in a while. The term here wasn't meant to be pejorative, but rather descriptive, and turned out to be right on. The music was unspectacular-well done, but not exceptional, a pleasant rendition of the standard songs from the Gather hymnal that I grew up with. The deacon's homily was nice but unmemorable. The priest's presiding style wasn't really noteworthy -no major gaffes, no quirks, nothing that would draw attention to him for good or ill. So too with the congregation. It was just ordinary.

And, sometime during reflection after Communion, I found myself struck by the beauty of that.

Before leaving for Denver, I had the opportunity to have a cup of coffee with a dear high school friend. As it turns out, he and I have both been diving into American Catholic writers, and he shared with me a fascinating reflection on Flannery O'Connor's "A Temple of the Holy Ghost."

In the short story, a young girl is taught that we are all temples of the Holy Spirit, but seems to wrestle with the concept more than most. The sheer incongruity of the notion of the divine taking up residence in flawed humanity troubles the girl deeply. 'How?' she wonders. And, typical of O'Connor's writing, the issue is explored in the extreme-the girl goes to a circus, and there attends an old-style "freak" show, where she confronts a transvestite. It's clear that the girl lacks the concepts to process what she's seeing, but in the midst of the chaos, she can't stop meditating on the catechetical lesson: we are all temples of the Holy Ghost.

The little girl, my friend reflected, gets it. In the story, the townsfolk clearly do not get it, as they drive out the whole circus because its freak show is unfit for Christians. The little girl gets it though. In thinking about how the Holy Spirit dwells in someone her town considers to be a "freak," the girl also begins to apprehend in some small part the mystery of God dwelling in humanity. It's the scandal of the Incarnation, my friend reflected. Reflecting that the Holy Spirit dwelt in someone her own society considered "broken," made the little girl realize how truly mind-blowing it is that God would become incarnate into the silly little thing that is humanity.

And that, the "scandal of the Incarnation," is what struck me so hard today as I prayed during this "ordinary" Mass. I can find it easy to be moved by the presence of God in exceptional liturgy. A stirring homily can awaken my sensitivity to God's presence in the Mass and the world. The strong community and infectious energy of a Gospel-influenced liturgy I happen to like in Detroit somehow makes it easy to attune my senses to the movement of the Holy Spirit in the community. And the deliberate motions of formal liturgy at any number of placesI've been to, the incense, bells, and deliberate solemnity frequently succeed in reminding me that Jesus himself is on the altar. Wow.

It's easy for me to remember these sweeping, even mystical truths in the drama of liturgy. The "scandal of the Incarnation" that hit me so hard today is that, even in this most "ordinary" of parishes, God still makes himself present, no less so than anywhere else, no matter how majestic. And what a miracle that is.