I’m trying to be a better girlfriend.

So when J. asked me to read one of the office readings from the Liturgy of the Hours I did not roll my eyes and I actually read it. Like a champion.

Keeping score in a relationship is highly discouraged so I didn’t rack up what should have been at least 25 points.

In the reading, Justin Martyr informed me that Christians gathered on Sundays. He explains that they read the Gospels and a leader encourages them to virtue and then prayers and thanksgiving is given and the people say Amen and receive the Eucharist and offerings are made for the poor.

Boring.

This is all extremely normal. There is no novelty in this reading.

This is what I do on Sundays. It is about as interesting as reading about the sequence by which I wake up, get dressed, brush my teeth and then make eggs.

Except for the fact that it was written in the second century.

Christians were praying and worshiping in the same way that I am. That before the internet, the printing press and the English language itself, this rite was practiced by the people who knew the sound of Jesus’ voice, how tall He was and the texture of His hair.

It is all at once profound and exciting and completely ordinary.

It’s like falling in love.

Your life will never be the same. You will never be the same. You will cease to be amazed when your beloved punctuates his conversations with the most profound and simple words in the English language: I love you and your life will always be measured by before you fell in love and after.

We measure time with before and after Christ but our knees are not always inclined to bend at the profundity of His name.

As I read and contemplated the ancient Saint’s words I was struck by how the best things in life are the regular routine occurances and the rites of passage which knit humanity together.

I am overwhelmed by what a blessing it is that the the news reports only the bad stuff because new life, falling in love and Jesus becoming flesh in our Churches is routine.

It would make for terrible ratings to report on the most profound, the beautiful, because the greatest, most life changing blessings are given routinely and abundantly.

Because love is routine.

And that is the best thing about it.

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