A Dip into Ordinary Time
By Jeanne Guillemette

Since Christmastide ends in January and Lent begins in March this year, we have more than a month to take a dip into Ordinary Time.
We don’t usually think of Ordinary time as particularly rich or interesting, but it is a gift of many layers.
The month of February is the time to return to our usual occupations. The festivities of Christmas and New Years are over. The visitors whom we may have received have left. There is work to do at home: letters and cards to respond to, decorations to store away until next year, thank you notes for the gifts that we have received during Christmas. We go back to school or work, and resume the activities that we put on hold during the holiday break.
But there are gifts that we can continue to ‘unwrap’, so to speak. We know that the Son of God became incarnate and came to live among us, as one of us.
He came for us. At Christmas, we reflected with wonder on his coming as a fragile baby, born in Bethlehem. During Lent we will meditate on Jesus’ greatest expression of love: His sacrifice on the Cross, His Passion, Death and Resurrection.
He became ‘like us in all things, except sin’

But here is a gift that we can unwrap anytime: the ordinary life that the Son of God lived in Nazareth. For about 30 years, Jesus lived in relative obscurity in Nazareth as a workman, a neighbour, a relative. He was not recognized for who He really was. Why would He ‘waste’ so much time doing seemingly mundane things, when He was God and could have done anything he wanted to do? We read in the Scriptures that He became ‘like us in all things, except sin’. In this ordinariness, He shows us how to live.
‘Do little things exceedingly well for love of God’
When I first went to Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario as a visitor, at first I didn’t fully understand what the Community was about. The days there were filled with things like cleaning, washing up, weeding in the garden, meeting people… There was a schedule to follow and it was sometimes intensive. Oh yes, we prayed together, too, but there were refrains I kept hearing about ‘praying always’, and even ‘becoming a prayer’, which remained mysterious to me.
We were told to ‘Do little things exceedingly well for love of God’, and that doing ordinary jobs in this way could make you holy. I sensed this holiness in a number of people I met, but didn’t really understand how all this could apply to me. They called it the spirit of Nazareth.

None-the-less, when I returned home, I felt that something in me had changed. I could not put words onto it until the first time I did the washing up at home. As I washed a cup ‘exceedingly well for love’, I had an inner ‘flash’ like an electric bolt. I knew at last that, wherever I was, I could dip into this Nazareth way of life.
Previous Months Letters from Madonna House
January 2025: A Pilgrimage Towards the Absolute By Rev. Kieran Kilcommons
December 2024: A Christmas Gift By Carol Ann Gieske
November 2024: Finding Christ in the Saints By Mathieu Dacquay
October 2024: The Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi By Jeanne Guillemette
September 2024: The Triumph of the Cross By Rev. Kieran Kilcommons
August 2024: Jesus and the Little Girl By Carol Ann Gieske
July 2024: Dont Forget to take Jesus Home By Jeanne Guillemette
June 2024: Living Under Mary’s Mantle By Fr. Michael Weitl
May 2024: Vocation & Journey in Christ’ By Mathieu Dacquay
April 2024: Christ Lives! By Carol Ann Gieske
March 2024: Putting everything ‘on the altar’ By Jeanne Guillemette
February 2024: Finding Peace in Surrender to Christ By Mathieu Dacquay
January 2024: Celebrating Epiphany with the Christian east By Fr. Michael Weitl
December 2023: Journeying through Advent with Joseph By Carol Ann Gieske
November 2023: The Saints Are Alive By Jeanne Guillemette
October 2023: Ordinary Miracles By Mathieu Dacquay