Our family welcomed our third baby this May. While we feel very blessed to be adjusting to life as a family of five, my husband and I have found ourselves all the more overwhelmed by the little details of life. The immortal piles of laundry, the ubiquitous trails of crumbs, the proverbially unending dirty diapers (I just had to take a break from writing this to order a new box). While the big things—baby’s first smile, big brothers’ elation as they discover their new roles, our first date after baby’s birth—evoke a kind of joyful overwhelm, it is these little things that take up so much of the day and, therefore, become a kind of measure of our happiness. There have been many days when the sheer number of mundane chores has seemed insurmountable. Sometimes, the hardest part about parenthood, about homemaking, is how never-ending and tedious its tasks can be. 

I won’t claim for a second that I’ve thrived in the call to offer up these trials. Rarely, do I pick up these crosses cheerfully. But I have found one reflection that helps me to see these little chores as part of my larger calling to holiness, and it’s not mere advice to “offer it up.” 

During this last pregnancy, I experienced nausea well into the second trimester. Usually, the symptoms got worse when I needed to eat. My family attends Mass at 11 a.m., which meant I usually started to get hungry—and therefore nauseous—at the end of Mass. I had difficulty focusing on anything but my own hunger after Communion, but one day, in an attempt to distract myself, I watched our deacon as he cleaned the chalice and ciborium and reset the altar. I witnessed the way he swirled water through the vessels and dried them thoroughly, the way he folded the towels, and the way he placed the paten upon the chalice and draped them with the chalice veil, aligning them upon the altar in a way that was both ordered and beautiful. In watching him work, it occurred to me how strange it was that these actions took place within the context of the Mass. Surely, the cleaning up could be reserved for after Mass, after hungry pregnant moms left and the rest of the congregation had emptied the sanctuary. 

But, of course, I knew that no element of the Mass was accidental. I had just never contemplated this particular moment. After we have received the Body and Blood of Christ, while we kneel in prayer, the deacon or the priest ritually cleans the vessels and the altar. He is not just resetting the altar for the next Mass. Rather, he is treating with reverence the vessels that contain Our Lord, making sure not a crumb or drop remains. In Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon Where Heaven & Earth Meet, he reflects on how the earliest Church writers spoke of gathering up the fragments left over from the sacred meal. “Why would you bother with the elements unless you believed that they had really been transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ? Why would you bother gathering them up unless they had really been transubstantiated?” (12:50)

In other words, this moment of the Mass reinforces the reality of the True Presence. These small details of cleaning and putting away, even organizing the altar, remind us of the primacy of the sacrifice of the Mass. The entire Mass centers on the liturgy of the Eucharist. If the Eucharist is “the source and summit of Christian life” (CCC second edition 1324), these small details are themselves holy and sacred, because they take place within this liturgy and draw our attention to the glory of our God. To put it simply, Our Lord has sanctified this very act of cleaning by His Sacrifice. 

Since our baby was born, as I’ve struggled with a nursing cover to feed a starving newborn during the Homily, I’ve found myself thinking of how the Mass is, primarily, a meal. When you’re a parent, you know how much of your life centers around meals (or snacks). You know how meals are moments of togetherness—however chaotic—how the sharing or delivering of a meal is a true act of charity. If you’ve ever nursed an infant, you know how food is not just physical sustenance but comfort, safety, home itself. Isn’t it beautiful that Our Lord would make a meal the very center of our faith? How beautiful that He shows us that even the mundane details, the necessary tidying-up, the seemingly frivolous rituals of beautification, are intrinsic to our faith, not mere chores but sacred acts that can inspire holiness. 

Sometimes, while I fold socks or scrub toilets, while I bake bread, or organize throw pillows, I try to think of the priest or deacon in the moments after Communion. While we rest and pray, he cleans. He organizes, making beautiful the table of Our Lord. 

Every evening, after the kids are in bed, my husband and I tidy up. He does the dishes. I wipe crumbs from the table and put away the toys in the living room. We’re not just resetting the house for the next day. We’re creating the nurturing space in which our family lives and grows. In doing so, we are recognizing the presence of Christ in our home. And when done for Christ, these human acts can become holy. 

As Catholics, we are often told to offer up our struggles, but I think this saying has become so commonplace we’ve forgotten what it really means. We’re not called to overlook our hardships but rather to look more closely, to see in them how Christ’s sacrifice has sanctified every element of human existence, from the overwhelming joy of holding your newborn child to the overwhelming tedium of changing yet another diaper.