The Extraordinary of the Ordinary

// This text was translated from "O Coélet" originally posted in 2006 in Portuguese.

"You don't throw away an entire life just because it is a little mistreated"*

I've always heard that one of the fundamental premises of a Christian life is to have a holy life. A life separated from the world. A world that "lies in the power of the evil one". An evil that walks around me trying to devour me. Today, I noticed that such ideas unaccompanied by a well understood conception of GRACE in Christ Jesus deform the gospel, and consequently, the Christian life.

We easily mistake cause with effects. We base our Christian pilgrimage on the results and not on its essence. My purpose here isn't to deny the need of a holy life, but affirm that a holy life as "an end in itself" is a lie. It denies the unconditional and redeeming love given to us by God, manifested on the cross through his Son, Jesus.

When we pervert this love and also start to forget that there is nothing we can do to deserve it, then we start a useless pursue after merit. And step by step we move away from the GRACE of GOD, and seek a super-spirituality that will legitimate our salvation.

However we are constantly confronted with our fallen humanity, that brings with itself failure, guilt, doubt, fear and consequently spiritual instability. This may be fatal if our spirituality is funded on ourselves. For our credential of holiness is invalidated and we feel fallen, alone and unworthy of being called Christians.

Being a Christian is, before anything, to live sustained on the gracious LOVE of the FATHER. And from this we are able to face our spiritual hardships full heartedly, without fear and dissimulation. The dissimulator cannot comprehend the cross and still live a fantasy as semi-gods and princes, as in Fernando Pessoa's poem:

"All the people that I know and that talks with me has never done a ridiculous act, never suffered filthiness, they have never been nothing but princes - all of them princes -  in life... I wish I would hear a human voice that would confess not a sin, but an infamy; that would tell, not a violence, but a cowardice! Nope, they are all Ideal, if I hear them saying. Who is there in this vast world that would confess me at least once that he was vile?
Bahhhh, I am full of semi-gods! Where are the peoples of the world?"

Jesus came to this world to relate, teach and die for this "people" that Pessoa searches for. Like Jesus himself said, He didn't come to call the Just, but the sinners to repentance. Therefore to ignore or disguise our imperfection is to not accept His calling completely.

The first contact with this irresistible calling of the love of Christ tends to be extraordinary! Our lives bubble with enthusiasm and dedication to our Master. However routine has an enormous power over the extraordinary, and little by little (but effectively!),  it dissipates the enthusiasm in us. And at this moment it is indispensable to our Christian life to be consolidated on Grace and not on our results, so that we may proceed our path and be perfected in the love of God.

Although the extraordinary is important in some specific moments of this trail, it is through the ordinary that our lives are solidly transformed. It is in the ordinary that our masks act with the intention to hide our imperfections, thus, it is where they can fall definitely. According to Brennan Manning, mature Christians that he met "by the path, are those that failed and learned to live graciously with their failure. Faith requires courage to risk all in Jesus, the disposition to continue growing and the readiness to risk the failure throughout all our lives".

The so called "holiness in life" is a constant improvement. The word APERFEIÇOAR (improve in Portuguese) is originated from the word PERFECTION, and that we only "obtain" through the sacrifice of Christ, the perfect one. To relate to the perfect does not make us perfect, on the contrary, it makes our imperfection the more evident and it is only through this occasion that we learn who we really are and what the GRACE of GOD means.

Thais S. Moya
12 of June, 2006.