In today’s gospel reading, the people of Jesus’ native place or hometown cannot believe that the son of an ordinary carpenter could exude such wisdom and perform mighty deeds. They probably had seen Jesus grow up, were familiar with his family etc. They were stuck, as we can be often, in preconceived notions of the ordinary. Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Saint Ignatius’ great gift to the church and to the world is the Spiritual Exercises. The basic thrust of these exercises is to make us more aware of God’s activity in the world and to be more responsive to what God is calling us to do and who to become. At the core of Ignatian Spirituality is the idea of finding God in all things. What this implies is that even the most mundane and ordinary of things can be infused with the presence and activity of God. As we celebrate the feast of Saint Ignatius, let us seek to find God in the ordinary moments of our lives, in the routine chores that we do, the relationships we have etc.

Supposedly, there is a story told about a young aspirant to the Jesuits who saw Saint Ignatius sweeping the corridor in the Jesuit house in Rome. The aspirant asked Saint Ignatius, “Father Ignatius, if you knew the world would come to an end in fifteen minutes, what would you do?” Saint Ignatius leans on his broom, looks at the aspirant, and says, “Young man, I would go on sweeping the corridor.”