Angel Eyes

Sunday, February 7, 2010
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am writing this after returning home from the Saturday Vigil Mass. It is the eve of Super Bowl Sunday. Tomorrow at this time millions of eyes around the world will be on the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints in Miami, Florida, during the annual football television frenzy. Ordinary Time? Not for the NFL or the networks or the countless fans or the bars and grocery stores for whom this Sunday is a high holy day of the sporting world.

Ordinary Time? This period of the Church liturgical year is not meant to imply average, run-of-the-mill, commonplace worship. Rather, it gets its name from the word ordinal, meaning "numbered", since the Sundays of Ordinary Time are expressed numerically. Still, to us average persons in the pew, ordinary is as ordinary sounds. The series of Sundays of green vestments can tend to run together in a kind of nondescript fashion compared to the heightened sense of worship during Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.

However, during the Responsorial Psalm tonight, as I was dutifully reciting the response for Psalm 38 along with the rest of the congregation, something out of the ordinary occurred. The full and literal impact of the words hit me: "In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord." I was reminded that angels truly are gathered around the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This is not just some fairy tale or figment of the imagination. The First Reading was from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (6:1-2a, 3-8) and described the Seraphim crying out to one another in the temple, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!"

And I suddenly realized that there I was, an ordinary woman in an ordinary pew on an ordinary Saturday evening in early February, praising the Lord right along with the mighty Seraphim! I was in the sight of the angels; their eyes upon me and my fellow parishioners. What a wondrous merging of the celestial and terrestrial worlds. What an out-of-the-ordinary sense of worship!

So as the eyes of the world turn to the Super Bowl tomorrow, let us remember that nothing on this earth is as extraordinary as being in the sight of the angels every time we sing the praises of the Lord. We do not worship alone. Angel eyes are truly upon us. Holy indeed is the Lord. All the earth, football and all, truly is filled with His glory!