Christmas is over. The dramatic swing from eager anticipation of the most wonderful time of the year back to mundane reality can feel like whiplash. The lonely graveyard of discarded wrapping paper is simultaneously the fruit of a festive morning and a sharp contrast to the happy memories now in the past. This bleak reality of the present—after the festivities are over—can be deeply underwhelming.

One reasonable reaction to the discomfort felt after a feast is to shift focus to the next feast. Our stores are remarkably good at this—while the Twelve Days of Christmas are being sung, Cupid has already displaced Santa. Are we not the same? We tend to live in constant anticipation of future feasts, with hardly a chance to reflect on past ones. This diversion can dim our sight on what really matters—consider the words of St. James:

Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit’—you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead you should say, ‘If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that’ (Jas 4:13–15).

A “puff of smoke”–ouch! James starkly reminds us to keep our mortality in mind and our priorities in check. We should be wary of merely living from one big moment to the next, always scheming for the future. This applies not only to business decisions: marriage is more than the wedding day; priesthood is more than the ordination day; religious life is more than the profession day.

Instead of diverting ourselves from the underwhelming reality of the present, we should learn to embrace it. It is in this crucible of daily, uneventful, and “ordinary” living that the Christian is made.

The Church’s liturgical calendar provides us with such an opportunity. Today the Church sheds her festive white and dons the plain, ordinary green. Welcome to the first week of Ordinary Time! The weeks of hopeful and expectant Advent are ancient history; the splendidly singular grandeur of Christmas was over in an instant; the glorious Octave and cheery Christmas weekdays are now gone. What remains is a paltry five weeks of Ordinary Time until Lent.

What will we do with these weeks? We might be tempted to politely ignore them as we get ready for Lent (“what should I give up?”) and Easter (“should we have lamb or ham this year?”). Yet we should bear in mind that the Church’s wisdom sanctifies all aspects of our humanity, even—and perhaps especially—the mundane. “Ordinary Time” offers us a chance to sanctify ourselves in our ordinary lives of holiness by living out our duties faithfully.

Still, this attitude does not take away the disappointment of the time after the feast. We can face the disappointment head on only when we focus on the eternal feast that awaits us. This is exactly what our forefathers in faith did. They “acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth . . . [desiring] a better homeland, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:13,16). They did not distract themselves from the unsatisfying reality of the present by shifting focus to other events. Instead, they fixed their eyes on heaven, their true home.

Let us live our ordinary lives as pilgrims! Steady in our hope of reaching our true home, we can then embrace the ordinary, even when disappointments come our way. Undisturbed by the unsatisfying nature of our earthly feasts, we peacefully wait for the everlasting one, where we “shall reign forever and ever” with our God (Rev 22:5).

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Photo by Michael Bubel (used with permission)