08-01-26 Groundhog Day (WJ)

"My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask you for pardon of my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my Guardian Angel, intercede for me." When I was in seminary training for the priesthood, we were often visited by guest preachers of one kind or another from outside. And I remember in particular a diocesan bishop visiting and preaching a homily at mass. I can't remember much of the homily at all, but I do remember him telling us what he felt was one of the most Catholic movies he'd ever seen. And that movie he said was Groundhog Day. You might have seen this film, it's a comedy starring Bill Murray, where a cynical TV weatherman gets trapped in a time loop, forcing him to live the same day over and over again. He finds himself in a small Pennsylvania town at a local festival which he despises with the music of sunny and share blaring from the clock radio. And every single morning after this he wakes up to the same song, the same announcements, the same people saying the same things over and over and over again. He's basically condemned to live the same day forever with no escape. It's a clever and funny film and certainly entertaining, but the most Catholic film ever, actually, I remember that we weren't entirely convinced by this at the time. However, when I eventually got around to watching this film, I did begin to see what the bishop meant, because there is a very definite sense that our liturgical life in the church is the same thing over and over again. It has its own rhythm of repetition, the feasts and the fasts, advent and Christmas, advent and Easter, ordinary time, returning year after year in a pattern that never really changes. And we get shaped by this repetition, just as the character in the movie is eventually shaped in a positive way by his experience. At first he resents it, and then he exploits it for his own ends, and then he despairs. But finally he does begin to change, and he changes for the better. And we can apply this to our everyday life, because in a similar way in terms of our work and our prayer, we live the same day over and over again. Just think of what we do as Catholics, we wake up, often earlier than we'd like, and we offer the day to God. We try to speak to Jesus as we're doing right now. We pray the rosary, or at least part of it, on the bus or wherever. We read Scripture, we go to Mass. None of it feels dramatic, it's the quiet rhythm of faith. The woven into that rhythm is the rest of life, the part that fills most of our hours. The rhythm of work or study, deadlines, projects, the same commute, the same timetable. Not to mention all the other ordinary duties, cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, the small tasks that keep life moving. And perhaps what we need to realise is that God is not trying to trap us in a loop. He's not giving us the same day again and again as a kind of endurance test. The repetition isn't a punishment or a mortification, it's the place where he meets us, the place where grace can take root. His God works slowly and patiently, imperceptibly, and he works in time. And so he gives us this one day, the same day, returned to us again and again, not so that we can perfect it, but so that he can perfect us through it. Well in the gospel today Jesus, you are faced with a crowd of hungry people. The disciples want to send these people away into the surrounding villages to buy something to eat, but you reply with these words, you give them something to eat. And what they have to offer is ridiculously small and ridiculously mundane, five loaves and two small fish. And yet Jesus, you create a banquet out of it. They all ate and were completely satisfied. And isn't this what you do with us every single morning? You give us the raw material of one day, and it seems pitiful in its meaghanous. We look at these things and think, 'Surely this isn't enough to make me a saint, surely this can't feed anyone, at least of all myself, surely I need to escape this loop of the day and go into the surrounding villages of another day to find something more satisfying. But Lord you take what is small, what is ordinary, what is embarrassingly insufficient and you bless it. You break it open and you multiply it in ways we can never imagine. Lord you slip grace into the cracks of our day, into the conversations, into the duties, into the moments we thought were wasted. And somehow mysteriously and quietly you make a banquet out of it, out of a day that feels like crumbs often. And you satisfy others through us, even when we feel empty. In the novel the power and the glory Graham Greene's whiskey-priest reflects on his life with this thought. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted to be a saint. How do we do this? How do we become a saint? Well, we concentrate on those ordinary daily duties that we've been thinking about. Because sanctity in the end is not a matter of grand gestures or heroic moments. It's the slow, steady offering of the day we've been given. It's that faithfulness in the small things, the duties that return every morning. The people placed in front of us. The interruptions we didn't choose, the work that no one applaud. In the film Groundhog Day the transformation happens not when the world changes, but when the man changes. When he begins to live the same day with greater attention, greater generosity, greater love. The circumstances stay the same, but his heart becomes different. There's a quote attributed to Cardinal Newman from a spiritual conference he gave at the Birmingham Archery, which summarises this reality quite beautifully. If you ask me what you want to do in order to be perfect, I say, "First do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising. If your first thoughts to God make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament, say the angulous devoutly, eat and drink to God's glory, say the rosary well, be recollected, keep out bad thoughts, make your evening meditation well, examine yourself daily, go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect." Newman's vision of holiness is so simple in a way, fulfill your duties, and you will become a saint. And St. Hosamaria tells us a similar thing, either we find our Lord in ordinary everyday life, or else we shall never find Him. Our plan of life is the path to heaven for us. And, of course, we do this, with our Lady, she lived her whole life in the hidden rhythm of ordinary days, Nazareth days, quiet days, unnoticed. And in those days she becomes the mother of God. May she teach us to receive each day as she did, with trust and with fidelity and with love. I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections and inspirations that you have communicated to me in this time of prayer. I ask you for help to put them into effect. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.