I have a new book "Living Happily Jesus' Hidden Life - The spirituality of Charles de Foucauld in Light of the Beatitudes"

The book is about the extraordinary spiritual journey of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who found Joy and Happiness in the hidden life of Jesus as a way to holiness.

The book is available from Amazon

GOD SPEAKS TO US IN THE ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES OF LIFE

Many people believe that it is in the extraordinary events and the mind blowing happenings that God is present. It is there that they think that they can encounter him.

And yet, God comes to us in gentleness, simplicity and the ordinary circumstances of life. Only those who open up to the interior dimension of life can discover the presence of God at the heart of their ordinary life.

For having failed to open up to the dimension of the interior life, the Israelites did not recognize the Messiah when he came, although he was present in their midst (John 1: 26).

The ordinary circumstances of life speak of God because he is hidden in them. Without the eyes of the heart, which are the eyes of faith, it would be difficult to discover him.  

If our eyes are blind, we can pass beside him while he extends his hands to us, waving to us. If our ears are deaf, we cannot hear him crying out to us, calling after us. If we fulfill our activities to the best of our abilities for the glory of God and the wellbeing of our fellows, they become a space of encounter with God.

What appears as ordinary and banal is a pointer to God. Any activity in which we are involved is a given opportunity to rise up to God, because he has already preceded us in it. He has sanctified it with his pervading presence.

The attention to the ordinariness of life as a space of encounter with God requires the opening of the eyes of the hearts, because as the French writer Antoine de St Exupery says in “The Little Prince”: “What is essential is invisible to the eyes. One sees well only with the heart”.

God comes to us in the ordinary circumstances of life. He comes to us through the daily gestures of work, in the dialogue with our fellows, in the encounter with strangers, in the sharing with the needy, the poor, etc.

Anytime that, animated and inspired by his Spirit, we want to prolong his gestures of love, compassion, forgiveness and generosity, Jesus comes to our encounter.

When we cannot acknowledge the signs of his presence in the midst of our ordinary life, then, it is possible for us to pass beside him while he is extending to us his hand.

Rev. Felicien I. Mbala, PhD., STD