The Sacred Hidden in the Ordinary

I thought a Corinthian bank was being robbed during Mass.

As we were celebrating the Eucharist underneath a tree in the former town square of the ancient city of Corinth, a bell suddenly rang from an unseen building on a hill nearby. It sounded, well, alarming to say the least, since it went on for so long. Then a pause of silence.

Then what followed was not the strange sound of Greek police sirens. Instead, what followed was the sound of…recess. 

Kids were playing up there. This actually did surprise me greatly, forcing me to consciously realize that recess isn’t just an American thing but tops the charts universally as the best part of the day for all human children. 

I was also surprised by what felt like the sudden intrusion of something so ordinary entering into our liturgical space and environment. 

And then, as if on cue with the bell, a sudden crowd of other tour groups suddenly marched into the ancient ruins. I noticed some people staring at us, looking confused or curious. Others were respectfully praying along from a distance. Others simply walked by after a quick glance. A village cat wandered dangerously close to the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. Thank God it wasn’t hungry. It just plopped down by a tree and hung out. A random man carrying groceries walked close to the altar during Mass, too.

All these things seemed like intrusions, the ordinary breaking in on the sacred. But I also thought that it was cool. This is what it might’ve been like to celebrate the liturgy at a house-church in the early Christian community of Corinth. 

As we’ve learned, the early Christians celebrated the “breaking of the bread” and read the Apostle’s writings and letters during liturgies celebrated within someone’s home, often times clandestinely for fear of reprisal from the gentile authorities or hostile Jewish leaders. People would gather in their homes to hear Paul or one of the apostles preach and often times that same apostle would take up temporary shelter in that home. 

Christianity was lived out of the home. Things that could be so ordinary as talking and sharing stories in the living room became the very means by which the young Christian church took root and spread.

No wonder St. Paul talks so much about ordinary life in his letters to the Corinthians, like what foods you eat and when, how one should dress, what aspects of town life Christians could and could not participate in, the management of families, etc. The ordinary life of the citizens of Corinth was the fertile ground for the Gospel. He, of course, admits in his first letter to the Corinthians that he had to till the ground with his blood, sweat, and tears (literally), and the fruit of it is profound praise of that same community by his second letter.

As Fr. Kasule said in his homily, the Eucharist was the center of Paul’s ministry and the cause of the transformation of the Corinthian church. No wonder Paul gives such detailed instructions to the Corinthians about the Eucharist. Corinth is a Eucharistic site. Just as the Eucharist is the transformation of ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the Corinth of Paul’s day was an example of the transformation of the ordinary into the sacred, “from one degree of glory to another.” 

As we sat in meditative silence after communion, the words “House church” came to my mind, and I think that’s what we had become. That moment is the closest I’ve been to experiencing what is called the “apostolicity of the church” – that mark of the Church which acts like a mystical chain linking generations of believers one after another to the Apostles and ultimately to our Lord Jesus Himself. In Corinth, we became a house church. In that space, I felt the presence of the Christians of Corinth, saints and sinners alike, united to us over hundreds of years, living their faith as we were doing now. 

The bell rang again. The playing of children evaporated into silence. All the tourists seemed to have vanished into thin air. But the sense of the sacred didn’t go away. It remained, hidden in the ordinary.

Conrad Espino, Archdiocese of Chicago