When extraordinary is ordinary

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Thursday, Week XIII, Year I in Ordinary Time, 01 July 2021
Genesis 22:1-19   <*(((><  +  ><)))*>   Matthew 9:1-8

When I look at your beautiful creation
O God our loving Father
I cannot but stop and wonder
be at awe with all the beauty 
and mystery so extraordinary
yet ordinary in your majesty.

Today we have two stories 
so extraordinary but with you
simply ordinary:  when you asked
Abraham to offer to you Isaac, 
off he went faithfully
even blindly:

As the two walked on together,
Isaac spoke to his father Abraham, 
"Father!" he said.
"Yes, son," he replied.
Isaac continued, "Here are the fire
and the wood, but where is the sheep
for the burnt offering?"
"Son," Abraham answered,
"God himself will provide the sheep 
for the burnt offering?"
Then the two continued going forward.
(Genesis 22:7-8)

The faith of Abraham in you, O God,
is so great, so extraordinary;
and so was the faith of Isaac
to his father that it never occurred 
to him he would be the one to be
sacrificed either.
Both Abraham and Isaac showed
extraordinary faith you ordinarily ask from us.

Give us the grace, O God,
to imbibe this ordinariness
of having extraordinary faith in you,
like the harmony and beauty
found ordinarily in nature;
may we realize that any sickness
is a "dis-ease", our lack of harmony
with you and with others due to sin.

Let us not "harbor evil thoughts"
like those scribes present at
Christ's healing of a paralytic
to whom he declared
"your sins are forgiven" (Mt.9:2)
to show that wherever there is
dis-ease, there is a lack of harmony
wanting your mercy and unity.
Amen.