Review: Splendor in the Ordinary, by Thomas Howard
Splendor in the Ordinary: Your Home as a Holy Place by Thomas Howard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Own.
I don’t remember where I heard of this book, but it must have been a persuasive recommendation, because it made it onto an Amazon order without being in queue for a year or more, as is usual for me. I picked it up to read while nursing and holding my newborn and gobbled it up in two days.
Howard enjoins us to see our ordinary daily routine as material for sacrifice or oblation to God, and to see our home as a holy place set apart for God’s glory. Life, he says, is always about My Life for Yours, sacrifice, and if we see it as such a holy service and as a small picture of God’s ultimate sacrifice, we will love and rejoice in our tedious, repetitious, and busy daily lives.
“Sacramental living” might be primarily a Catholic concept, but I think it is one we Protestants have given up to our own bereavement. Howard is a Catholic convert (from Evangelicalism), but has written the book to Christians broadly, not specifically to Catholics only.
