AT TIMES, we become blind to the enormous graces that are around us. It’s because we tend to measure grace according to the vain values of the world, particularly popularity, money, power, and prestige. We feel blessed if we have attained a high level of success in our profession; we feel blessed if we belong to a prestigious group of people; we feel blessed if we received a high recognition or an important role from the society, a community or a church. Indeed, many times we think of blessings or graces only in terms of big deals, big money, and big positions.
What about the ordinary and small things that happen in our daily lives? These could be ordinary tasks and events such as helping someone find a job, visiting a sick person in the hospital, cooking a nice meal for family and friends or giving a young person an advice. Could they not be big deals for God? Could they not speak of God’s enormous grace?
The other day, I had a chance to visit a sick person in the parish who has a stage-four cancer. I listened to her anxieties and fears, administered to her the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, assured her of God’s forgiveness and peace, and expressed to her my prayers and support. This happened on an ordinary day in the privacy of the sick person’s home and in the anonymity of the occasion. In the depth of this experience, I felt that something so big had happened. An ordinary person reconciled with God and received His total forgiveness.
What’s not so big deal about this event?
Last weekend my family and I attended my nephew’s college graduation. Behind this big occasion in our family were the small details of the weekend’s celebration such as the food preparation, the hugs and kisses, the updating of everyone’s life, the jokes and the laughter. The graduation was not just a grand and joyous family event, but also an occasion replete with depth, gratitude, intimacy, and strong bonds.
The Gospel this Sunday talks about the two parables about the Kingdom of God. First, it is “as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Second, it is like “a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, is springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
Big graces in the Kingdom of God are not just the huge surprises, our outstanding accomplishments and projects, or the key events of our lives. They are also those that happen daily, at times without our awareness–ordinary events that have the capacity to inspire us to do magnanimous deeds for others and the world. Big graces are those little tasks we do that when put in the larger scale of life are things that are indispensable or things that bring spice to life.
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Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. John Seminary in Camarillo, California and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. For twenty years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities. Since 2002, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].
