Bernanos' story illustrates a deep lesson about the spiritual life: the country priest is holy in the ordinariness of his life, no apparently spectacular events happen, no bells, whistles, or acclaim. This is the way of holiness for most of us: we dwell much more in the flatlands than on the mountaintop; the prevailing color of our inner life is gray.

For me, and perhaps for you, it is important to realize the ordinariness of life -- not as something to escape, but precisely as the place where we meet grace. In the humdrum, boring flow of our everyday lives: work, school, cooking, driving, commuting by train, relating to one another, "doing the daily." "How was your day?" "O.K. Nothing special. Same old same old," seems to sum it up accurately for us, most of the time.

For me (I hope you are more advanced) the ordinary is very difficult to accept. I'd much rather have some excitement, meet something or someone out of the ordinary. Well that pretty much mirrors the popular attitude of our society -- avoid boredom at all costs; seek excitement or, to be more exact, buy it. This "great adventure" attitude, however, is very dangerous for the spiritual life, where it gets transformed into the search for extraordinary spiritual experiences, the miraculous, the spiritual high. It is dangerous because the desire for spiritual "experiences" can be a cloak hiding our desire for self-gratification. Sure it's spiritual gratification, but it is hedonism none the less. The perversity of the human heart is capable of twisting even our religious life into a form of consumerism.

There are three subtle ways in which we attempt to escape the holy ordinariness of our lives. The first is perfectionism, the second, romanticism, and the third archaicism. I will briefly describe each. In perfectionism, we seek to elevate our selves above the ordinary by our prayers, our fasting, our church attendance -- in a word, our religiosity. We are stuck in the role of the Pharisee: "Thank you God that I'm not like other men. I pray seven times a day. I fast twice a week. I tithe of all my possessions." We use religion to make us feel special, to create a spurious separation between ourselves and the rest of humanity. A Jewish rabbi once told me something that I repeat frequently as an antidote to perfectionism: "Remember, you are ordinary. Your sins are no worse than those of other people and your virtues are no better either. You are ordinary, but every now and then you do something extraordinary thanks to God's grace."

The romantic escape from the holy ordinary takes the form of unrealistic expectations of our spiritual life analogous to the honeymoon period in marriage. Well honeymoons end. The intensity of romance yields to the day to day work it takes to build and deepen a relationship of love. This dynamic is as true for our life with God as for our life with one another. Here again the desire for intense experiences can be dangerous. They may happen, but they are not to be sought for themselves or as proof of our spiritual state. A long line of desert fathers and ascetical writers warn us to ignore these experiences, distrust them, fear them, because they may be illusions, projections, and tricks of the devils. "If you see an angel of light, cross yourself and pray, lest you be fooled by a demonic apparition." Exceptional spiritual gifts should not be desired, but only accepted in all humility with fear and trembling. The depth of our prayer and the validity of our liturgy are not measured by how special they make us feel. (No runner's high here.) Remember the example Elijah. When the prophet was on the run from the wrath of Jezebel, ignominiously hiding in a cave, miles from Jerusalem, the Lord appeared to him. The Lord appeared not in the whirlwind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the sound of a whisper, "a still small voice." Paradoxically, the sheer drudgery of our prayer may result from GodÕs closeness as He empties us so we may be filled with His presence not our idea of His presence. So despite the dryness and emptiness we keep on praying, listening for the quiet whisper. There once was a desert father who gave his disciple a stick and told him to plant it in the earth and water it everyday. Now the well was four miles distant, but everyday the monk walked four miles to the well, filled his bucket, and walked back four miles to water the stick. He did this for two whole years until one morning he woke up and was astonished to see the stick blooming with green leaves and fruit. When he rushed to his elder to tell him what had happened, the father replied simply, "That is the fruit of obedience."

Finally, the third method of refusing to live in the ordinary, I call "archaicism," by which I mean the tendency to idealize and idolize the past, the good old days when there were saints and Christians were true Christians. Well, as a religious historian, I'm skeptical of the "good old days." Even in the Acts of the Apostles we read of conflict, bickering, and misunderstanding in the primitive Christian communities. Idealizing the past distracts us from the meaning of the feast of Pentecost we are about to celebrate -- the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Now the Spirit did not leave the Church after the death of the last Apostle. The Spirit remains with the Church and with us in this local church to this very day. The epiklesis reminds us of His presence every Divine Liturgy as the priest prays aloud, "Send down Thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these Gifts here offered." And (three times) "O Lord who didst send down Thy Most Holy Spirit upon Thine apostles at the third hour; Take Him not from us, O Good One, but renew Him in us who pray to Thee." Do we take these words and their efficacy seriously?

The age of saints is not over; there are saints among us now, holy people who are wholly ordinary. Miracles still occur among us, the miraculous ordinary. Christ's presence is still among us in the ordinariness of our days and our lives. The problem is we do not see Him, because we are looking elsewhere, we are expecting someone else, we are seeking in the wrong places, confused as we are by perfectionism, romanticism, and archaicism. If we attend to the ordinary, we can see the holy in a gesture of kindness, a generous deed, a hurt forgiven, an expression of condolence, a meal cooked with love. We will encounter the holy in our willingness to listen to each other, in our prayer for each other, in our ability to see and treat those we meet as we would Christ. These "small" acts of holiness surround us. They are daily sacraments of God's love. Let us open our eyes and our lives to the holy ordinary. Then we, like Bernanos' unnamed priest, will understand that indeed "Grace is everywhere."