Holiness in Ordinary Tasks

“Let my last heartbeat be an act of perfect love.”

Thus run the last line of the Offertory hymn. “What a perfect line to describe the life of Sr. Carmen”, I thought to myself. Then, I whispered the same thought to Fr. Lord Saniel, who was sitting beside me. He was sobbing, but he nodded in agreement.

Archbishop Romulo G. Valles has just delivered a beautiful homily that left me meditative and teary-eyed. He was preparing the bread and wine on the altar. It was the funeral mass of Sr. Carmen of the Presentation of Mary.

Sr. Carmen Saniel, PM, an elder sister of Fr. Lord, perished tragically together with nine others, in the morning of June 11, 2019, after a 10-wheeler truck wing van loaded with sacks of rice lost its brake and rammed into various vehicles and houses in the intersection of Matina Pangi and Diversion Road in Davao City.

The nun, with the two working students from Rivier Retreat House and the driver of the L300 van died on the spot. They were on their way to do some errands. Sr. Carmen was accompanying the working students in their enrolment and would later buy some provisions for the retreat house.

In his homily during the funeral mass last Monday, June 17, Archbishop Valles recounted these details and noted how ordinary these tasks were. “In the tapes-try of the Church’s mission in the world,” the archbishop explained, “you will find these tasks so simple, so ordinary. Yet, Sr. Carmen was accomplishing them diligently. But the tragedy cut her short!”

Precisely, here lies the lesson from Sr. Carmen’s life… and from her tragic death! In the ordinariness of her tasks, she was diligently and faithfully accomplishing them. Doing groceries and accompanying working students in their enrolment may be too ordinary. But what makes them extraordinary is the charity with which they are accomplished.

St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, (whose feast day we celebrate on June 26), calls it “sanctification of the ordinary tasks”. “Sanctity, for the vast majority of people, implies sanctifying their work, sanctifying themselves in it, and sanctifying others through it,” he used to say. Saint Pope John Paul II, in his homily during the canonization of St. Josemaría in October 2002, called him “the patron saint of the ordinary life”.

Indeed, Sr. Carmen’s witnessing tells us that holiness does not depend on our state of life. Ordained ministers, consecrated life and lay faithful alike, we are called to be holy by fulfilling diligently and faithfully the tasks on our shoulder. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta would say “Do ordinary things with extraordinary love”.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus calls it the “Little Way”. She understood it in terms of her commitment to the ordinary tasks entrusted to her in the convent. Fr. John F. Russell, O. Carm., wrote: “She took her assignments in the Convent of Lisieux as ways of manifesting her love for God and for others… Her ‘little way’ seems to put holiness of life within the reach of ordinary people.” (Society of the Little Flower).

Sr. Carmen may have been cut short by such tragedy. But tragedies never take place in God’s providence. “Omnia in bonum,” says St. Paul, meaning “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rm. 8:28). Sr. Carmen may have pleased God sufficiently already that He allows (without willing it) what is so painful for us to happen. But God, who knows how to write straight with crooked lines, never let this pain pass without imparting to us a very essential lesson of life: holiness in doing our ordinary tasks!

Post Scriptum
A day before the tragic road mishap took place, Fr. Lord posted on Facebook just to entertain what was seemingly a meaningless piece of poetry in the vernacular: “Gerbera (a flower’s name), bisan dili molungtad ang imong kaanyag kay ugma o sa sunod buntag ikaw malarag. Apan salamat sa imong katahom kay ako nakapahiyom bisan sa mubo nga panahon” (Gerbera, your attractiveness may not endure for tomorrow or the next morning you shall wither; nevertheless, thanks to your beauty I was able to smile even for a short while). (Translation is mine).

After the accident, this innocent verse took what we may call a prophetic meaning, a premonition, one could say. Sr. Carmen was the “Gerbera” whose “attractiveness” may not have caught our attention because of its “ordinariness”. But precisely it is in the ordinariness of the Gerbera—holiness in the ordinary tasks—that its beauty makes us smile even for a short while. And not only us! The “Gerbera” has made its Creator smile.

St. Josemaría once said in a homily: “God is calling you to serve him in and from the ordinary… There is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.” (Passionately Loving the World, no. 52). Sr. Carmen may have discovered that “something divine” herself already. For even in her last heartbeat, she was accomplishing her tasks in an act of perfect love.