“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Philippians 4: 8

Here we are: January 2, 2026. Mini epochs animate our lives. These inflection moments are graced saturated sacred playgrounds. Do you embrace these invitations? Is reflection moving your heart and fueling your prayers? Now is a good time to be piqued by reverential bouts with insatiable gratitude.

We’re sailing past eight days of joyful feasting commemorating the incarnation of God. Ahead of us, the waters’ currents are tremulous, exacting uncertainty, cresting with emphatic hope, and crashing with unrealized potentialities.  Christmas leaves an invisible but indelible mark on our souls. We’re changed. No one, regardless of their belief or disbelief in Jesus, escapes the infectious gracious luminosity of God’s great gift of Love. The swelling sacred choruses of Christmas peace usurp dissonating contrapuntal vernacular verses penned with worldly violence. Our Prince of Peace begins and ends His earthly tenure galvanizing the holy reality of endless Peace.

As I left mass on the first day of the year, there was a perfectly timed rainbow. God was greeting us with His bow of Hope. 

An extraordinary rainbow claiming its ephemeral ordinary appearance in the sky without fanfare. This feels like an important theme of the Christmas season and our transition to a new year. How much of our lives is characterized by extraordinary things disguised in the ordinary?

Our propensity for assuming ungrateful blasé postures is exonerated by God’s insistent extraordinarily ordinary blessings. We’ve all been caught off-guard with eureka spikes of wonder. They are often encased in the simple things we take for granted. It could be anything. Maybe a cup of coffee, an unexpected smile, the majesty of a flower, the mist of the sea, the kindness of a friend, or the beauty of a piece of music. God speaks to us in extraordinary ways through ordinary things. He achieves His Divine Will’s extraordinary Loving purposes through us — His ordinary children.

Prayerful hindsight casts light on easy to miss divine workings. God’s humble divine appearances originate from an unfathomable Truth. God delights in the ordinary. We often forget that we’re heirs of God’s Kingdom:

Brothers and sisters:
When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, 
born of a woman, born under the law, 
to ransom those under the law, 
so that we might receive adoption as sons.
As proof that you are sons, 
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, 
crying out, “Abba, Father!”
So you are no longer a slave but a son, 
and if a son then also an heir, through God.
Galatians 4: 4-7

He who made the moon and stars; all that is seen and unseen draws us into His Heart. God works in our dwellings and not apart from them. Our lives are not happenstance, fits of frivolous capricious luck, or acts of random coincidences. Divine order precedes the ordinariness of our lives.

In case this evasive truth eludes us let’s ponder Jesus’ life. From growing nine months in a woman’s womb to dying a horrific death on the cross, Jesus Christ’s ordinary human reality is an extraordinary mystery. Consider how Jesus’ Extraordinary Divinity is rooted in the human experience.

Imagine Jesus as a toddler—learning to walk, learning to talk. He was dependent upon Mary and Joseph for his survival. Jesus in his humanity was bound by time and space. He acquired knowledge and experience through ordinary means; the same means that enable us to sit, read, and think about this reflection. Jesus thrives in the ordinary. He relished his 30 quiet years before stepping into His mission.

God’s supreme act of Love in Jesus Christ begs us to embrace our eternal inheritance realized through our limited, humble, and extraordinarily ordinary lives. Even the greatest among us is the least in heaven…

God has showed us that even the mightiest human kingdoms and man’s most amazing achievements are trivial; especially if they’re not imbued with love. We’re being primed for something we cannot imagine. There’s nothing from our current ordinary reality that will measure up to the Extraordinary majesty of all things Christened by the Light of God’s Love.

So why are we here entrapped in such ordinary circumstances? Here’s some mind-blowing theology:

What if in addition to…

…the Son of God’s Unconditional Love and salvific sacrifice… the sacrifice we need to be free from sin and death and that happens at the Eucharist of every mass … the sacrifice we need to reorder the weak proclivities of our human free will under the authority of His Divine Will…

What if…

…God in the ECSTATIC UNITY of His Essence wants to commune with us in the most intimate way possible… sanctifying our ordinary reality into something Extraordinary… making us co-participants and co-creators in the emerging reality of His Love’s endless expressions.

Our ordinariness and our nothingness compared to His Awesome Allness should be an impossible relationship. Yet Father, Son and Holy Spirit Extraordinarily consecrate us through their bond of Love and do so through our ordinary existence. God works with the mundane details of our lives. He fills the blank canvases of our simple existence with opportunities to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.

God anoints the human experience with sacred authority. We’re forever blessed to multiply His endowments to us into fruits that give Glory to His Holy Name. Co-participation in His Kingdom necessitates that our ordinary lives belong to His unfolding infinite Extraordinary expressions of Love.  

January 2^nd was also the birthday of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. I was thrilled to recently greet the relics of St. Thérèse as they were being brought into the Carmelite Monastery here in Monterey. The veil between heaven and earth was thin. The heavenly joy and blessings were palpable. St. Thérèse espoused a theology that illuminates the truth of God’s Extraordinarily Ordinary way of using our lives to magnify His Love…

Let’s strive without striving; resting assuredly in the embrace of our God who Loves us, will work through us and in us, and who will make His home in us if we give Him our unconditional YES.

Here’s to our ordinarily extraordinary Life in Christ. Thanks be to God!