The Common Life

Peasant Times-Dispatch Issue 29

My greatest penance is the common life.

- St. John Berchmans

St. John Berchmans

This quote by St. John Berchmans has been rattling around my memory for longer than I have been on substack, so I am glad to finally do a proper write-up for it. St John Berchmans was born in 1599 and died in 1621. He was by all accounts a pious, diligent, devoted servant of God and His Church.¹

Common Life Is Sanctifying

I don’t remember ever knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. Most people have an interesting answer to that question—I don’t remember ever having a decisive answer.

This is interesting to me because “none of the above” never occurred to me as an option. Everyone, at some point in life, has some kind of drive. And I have that drive now but I didn’t then—my life has repeatedly shown me that there are more options than the stereotypes.

As I grew into adulthood and started doing more things, this kind of living from one moment to the next felt vaguely disappointing. What am I doing with my life? Am I going to do some great thing? Am I going to be a hero, an all-star? Am I going to be great at anything? Should I want to be great at anything?

I remember telling a friend, when I was in college, that I had “aspirations of mediocrity”. Looking back, I see in this sentiment the roots of my peasantly philosophy. My friend was not impressed by my low aspirations, but reflecting on the trajectory of my life I realize I have kind of doubled down. Living a comfortable life, surrounded by good people—I mean, isn’t that the minimum anyone could ask for? I certainly saw something valuable in that, and I wasn’t even Catholic yet. I didn’t realize that living a normal, common life surrounded by good people was not just good, but could be sanctifying.

Common Life Is Penitential

St. John Berchmans, when he was nine years old, had to care for his mother who had a chronic, long, wasting illness. He wasn’t called to fame or glory—even though he lived during the wars of religion that shook Europe. He was called to live his common, ordinary life and sanctify himself in this way.

If you were doing the math in my opening paragraph, he died at the age of 22 years old. The wikipedia page for him is frustratingly scarce—he died, and yet somehow a great crowd of people showed up to venerate him. His virtue was the invisible kind, where he had a great impact on a great many people without drawing attention to himself. It feels like no one knew the extent to which he was working for the Kingdom until he slipped his mortal coil.

In this way he used his ordinary quotidian life to sanctify himself, to make an offering of it to God. And he undertook this with diligence and perseverance, as the life of faith ever requires.

We can do this too. Mother Teresa said it this way: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do little things with great love.” Sweeping the floor, brushing your teeth, cleaning your home, conversing with a stranger, waiting in traffic—if we do all these things as acts of love for God then we will be saints. St. John Berchmans calls this penance, because it is a given that the human condition is one of sin. We can never, by our own bootstraps, lift ourselves to Heaven. But by penance, we can make atonement and reparation for our sins and the sins of others. Imagine how much reparation can be offered if every soul waiting in a traffic jam waited patiently as an offering to God?

Our quotidian lives are full to the brim with normal, unglamorous, ordinary opportunities for holiness. If we seek them out, we will be saints.

Common Life Is For Peasants

The glitz and glamor of a luxurious life—these aren’t the way for peasants. Peasants don’t seek fame or fortune. To be unknown is the lot of the peasant, but even those unknown to the world are known to God. God knows the sacrifices we make in the silence of our hearts, from the great and life altering sufferings we experience to the simple sufferings of patiently bearing that conversation that we found boring and unwelcome.

In our quotidian labors, in our interactions with others, in our diligent work to provide for and instruct those closest to us—in these things lies the path to sainthood.

In the words of Blessed Gregory Lopez: “Do what you do now, but for love of God, and that will be sufficient.”

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Thank you for reading! God bless!

AJPM

1. I know very little about St John Berchmans myself—everything in this paragraph I have summarized from this post found on wordpress.