10 - 6 - 17 Perfectly Normal, Perfectly Remarkable (4 minutes)

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.”

We are, I believe, both jaded and too easily impressed. In different arenas obviously.

We are jaded to the material comforts which grace our lives, the possession of which was rare a generation ago, and impossible the generation before that. Elon Musk recently said that someone with a smartphone today has more power to access information than the President had thirty years ago, which seems like a reasonable assertion.

But we don’t see it, because while it may be remarkable, it is not unusual. Here’s where the issue lies for us in our faith, we must stop ignoring the remarkable simply because it is the usual. Indeed, we should all the more be glad of remarkable things when they do happen with regularity, as it is a sign something is going definitely right in what can be a confusing and discouraging world.

Take the Lord’s Prayer for example. Now whether or not you hold hands in your parish this is still quite a remarkable sight, but I want to talk about hand-holding in particular for a moment before I explore some other aspects of this phenomenon. I often close my eyes when I pray but I find looking around the church during the Pater Noster to be quite a bit more interesting, fulfilling to me. I see people who do not know each other’s first names, who would avoid eye contact if they passed each other on the sidewalk, not just shaking hands but holding hands.

This is not such an intimate gesture in some cultures but where I am from holding hands is, while less physically intensive, more intimate than hugging. The only time I see people holding hands is on deathbeds, on dates, and in prayer. It is a gesture usually reserved for lovers and the dying, but when we come into this special place for this special time, we extend this level of intimacy to strangers. I think that’s pretty remarkable, and I see it every week.

A quick digression. If you do start to recognize the remarkable in the usual you will see your life as possessing the meaning and beauty that it does. Recognizing the incredible things we experience every day can help make us more grateful for and present in the momentary existence of our lives.

Another thing I still find nearly disconcerting, and I can see making many visitors out and out uncomfortable, is the kind of unity one witnesses during the Lord’s Prayer. People may or may not be paying attention during the homily, some people have to look down and consult a hymnal to read the Creed, and (to the great chagrin of every sincere music minister) there’s very rarely a time when everyone in a church sings. But the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father”, the Pater Noster, this is something everyone knows.

So everyone in the church faces the same direction and says the same words at the same pace in a display of hiveminded-ness that would be terrifying were it not so beautiful and comforting. They speak of living in accord with God and each other, in unison.

We need to recognize how fully unusual of a thing this is! Please try to remember! Please, try to remember the last time you saw a bunch of strangers (strangers to each other I mean) act with anything like this kind of unity and coordination. The only thing I can think of that even looks similar from the outside is a flash mob, but there are some differences.

How much does this flash mob matter to those people? Because what you are seeing in a group recitation of the Our Father is a group of people affirming their faith in what they consider to be the single most important thing in their lives.

Do you practice saying the Our Father? No, every time you do it it’s the real thing. It’s not like a show you rehearse for or a flash mob you practice for.

I don’t mean to elevate the saying of the Our Father to be some sort of perfect expression of the Christian faith. What I meant to show, through example, was how remarkable some things in our lives are that we take for granted. Let’s not be jaded like Bethsaida, let’s not say “yes and?” like Chorazin. If we can learn to recognize and appreciate the remarkable things that happen in our lives every week we will find the faithful life easier, more meaningful, and far more joyous.