UNDERESTIMATING THE ORDINARY

MAURICIO ROMERO ’25, DIOCESE OF SAN ANGELO

When Karol Wojtyla was elected pope, taking the name John Paul II, a French journalist reported: “This is not a pope from Poland; this is a pope from Galilee.”

When Jesus called Philip he went straight to Nathanael to tell him the news, but Nathanael questioned this by asking, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46). The same question could have been asked when Karol Wojtyła was elected to the papacy. Could anything good come from a country that is being oppressed by communism? It would seem as if a pope from Poland would have been utterly crushed by the circumstances of his country and could not have given much to the Church.

We do not expect much from what is “ordinary” and we are tempted to believe that the extraordinary cannot come from the ordinary. However, even the word “extraordinary” itself needs “ordinary” to be the word that it is. Being in Galilee for six days allowed me to see this in a new light. Jesus lived an ordinary life in a place that, at first glance, had nothing special to it. He grew up as a carpenter with his father and it seemed as if he could not have given more than what was expected of simple carpenter's son. He clearly proved this wrong with the extraordinary healings and miracles from his ministry in Galilee. In the end, Jesus gave more than what was expected of him, giving even his own life. Perhaps this is why the journalist said that Pope Saint John Paul II was from Galilee and not from Poland: he was an ordinary man called to something extraordinary who was able to give so much more than what was expected of him from the beginning.

In answering Nathanael’s question, we can say, “Yes. Something good can come from Nazareth. And it has: Goodness Itself. An extraordinary gift to us who are poor ordinary sinners.” n