Eventide & Altar

Jesus describes the days of Noah in the plainest terms: people eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, right up until the flood came. Nothing wicked about any of it. What condemned no one was that they were so occupied with the ordinary that they never looked up until it was too late.

Today the Church remembers Frances Xavier Cabrini, who wanted to be a missionary in China and was sent instead to serve Italian immigrants arriving in America with almost nothing. She built sixty-seven hospitals, schools, and orphanages before she died, never treating the ordinary work in front of her as smaller than the call she had first imagined for herself.

A long life gives ample opportunity to notice the difference between people who kept watching while they lived their ordinary days and people who simply disappeared into the ordinary and never looked up again. John's short letter is urgent: whoever does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God. It is not a call to abandon ordinary life. Noah kept building his boat while everyone else kept building their ordinary lives around him. It is a call to keep watching even while doing what is right in front of you.

The Sorrowful Mysteries tonight, since it is Friday. Offer the fourth mystery, the Carrying of the Cross, for everyone in your book who carried an ordinary life faithfully all the way to its end.

• For the grace to keep watching even while doing the ordinary things in front of us, we pray to the Lord.
• Through Frances Cabrini's example, for immigrants and all who build new lives far from home, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who have died, especially those who lived ordinary lives faithfully to the very end, we pray to the Lord.

Name one ordinary part of your day - a routine, a chore, a habit - and do it today with real attentiveness, watching while you work instead of choosing one or the other.