Daily Thought For October 8, 2014

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Value The Ordinary


 By your example, Lord Jesus, you have taught me to live close to reality and to value ordinary tasks: gathering leftover loaves and fish, fishing, cooking, buying oil, visiting the abandoned and sick, sharing food and clothes, loving, pardoning those who do me wrong ... many completely ordinary responsibilities! 

 Each of us carries out ordinary tasks every day, but the range of their influence is immense. Ordinary tasks can bring life and happiness to a person, provoke a family's collapse, or even prepare a new society for the future. 

 Such tasks bear witness to our love and, if done for the Lord, serve as a key that opens the doors of paradise. Who proclaimed this? Jesus himself when he said: "Whoever is faithful in the small things will also be faithful in the great." 

 Ordinary things await us at every moment of life. If we all accomplished our humble tasks with the heart of Jesus, his revolution of love would be complete and success would be in our hands! 

 My surprise and joy will be great when I hear Jesus say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful in the little things .... Enter into the joy of your Lord." 

 from Prayers of Hope—Words of Courage by Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận p. 33

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