Even the mundane can be opportunities for us to redeem the time.

Even the mundane can be opportunities for us to redeem the time. What is our first thought of the day when our alarm clock rudely rushes us back into the day? Rescue the first minute, the first moment, the first thought of your day with a prayer: ‘Glory to thee O Lord, Glory to thee!” Do we encounter a traffic jam or an unexpected long red light? Be patient in humility, and quietly recite the Jesus prayer. We are deeply focused on a task and we are interrupted. Are we quick to irritation or anger? I am guilty of this and not doing what I am about to say here, but stop, take a breath, look them in the eye and see this person as your narrow path in that moment. When you pass a Church or a cemetery, do we do so without thinking? Take a moment to pause, say a quick prayer for the departed. It takes five seconds maybe, but you have made a conscious choice to redeem the moment.

For he who keeps death before his eyes will never sin,” as Saint Ephraim the Syrian has said. These are just a few fleeting examples of the innumerable opportunities within our lives for us to redeem the time.

Within the mundanity of our lives, only our internal awareness of our external circumstances really changes. Chronos happens to us whether we want it to or not, but Kairos requires from us a violent and holy effort, or podvig, to pull our mind back into the present moment where God is waiting. Yet, thankfully our Christian lives are more than just the mundane, for it is also liturgical. It is lived in the mundane, but anchored by the liturgical life.

The mundane is where we fight our hidden passions, but the liturgical life is where we receive grace, the tools, and the healing to fight them: prayer, fasting and almsgiving, to name a few. The Mundane is where we find the scattered pieces of our weekly lives, but the liturgical life is where those pieces are put back together. Our mundane lives remind us of our earthly humility and limitations, but the liturgical life keeps us oriented to our heavenly destiny via theosis. As Father Alexander Schmemann once wrote, “the Christian is called to be a priest of creation, turning the world into a liturgy. We step into the church to remember who we are, so that when we return to the mundane world, we can begin to transfigure it.”

Prayer, psalms, and thanksgiving are the words and the very language of the Holy, while “what if,” regrets, and other some such language focusing on the passage of time behind and ahead of us remains the language of the Evil One. If we are not watchful, the enemy will trap us in a time that does not exist: the Ghost of yesterday or the anxieties of tomorrow. He seeks to rob us of the only space where God can be found: present moment.

When we leave these doors today and step back into the current of Chronos, we are not meant to leave the liturgy behind. We are to become it so that we may begin our work to redeem the world. Every second that passes is a holy crossroad. Every distraction we encounter is a hidden icon of Christ waiting to be revealed to us. Do not fall asleep on the deck of this sinking world, nor allow the shiny billboards of sin to blind you to the shore. By the grace of God let us transfigure the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the mystical, and our fleeting seconds into eternity. The ship is moving. What are you going to do about it?

By the prayers of Thy Most Pure Mother, the Holy and God bearing Fathers, all the Saints, and the martyrs, and the angels have mercy on us and save us.

Amen

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