Quiet Hero Day

Today a few bil­lion peo­ple will strug­gle through pain and poverty in order to sim­ply exist. A few bil­lion oth­ers will do the same, with a lit­tle less pain and with a lit­tle bet­ter eco­nomic advan­tage, but all will have one thing in com­mon: they will be affected by the actions of a few quiet heroes — directly or indi­rectly. Some are mil­i­tary. Some are domes­tic, or reli­gious, or med­ical, or just there. It is unlikely any of them will be rec­og­nized as a national or world fig­ure. In fact, they prob­a­bly will not even make the local paper. They live sac­ri­fi­cially for oth­ers. With­out them, the rest of us would lose a lot of hope and inspi­ra­tion.
Quiet heroes are hum­ble. They do not do what they do for recog­ni­tion. They do the good for the sake of the good alone. (By the way, our word “God” is a deriv­a­tive from the Ger­man word for “good”.) Some­times they raise fam­i­lies and hold down two jobs, while they fight a grave dis­ease or two. No one knows how they are able to find enough energy to do what they do. You will often see them sit­ting in their favorite church pew, as if it was their only chance to sit still for just a lit­tle while.
Do not look for Quiet Hero Day on your cal­en­dar. It is not there. We are too busy nod­ding to other causes and hon­or­ing an occa­sional polit­i­cal fig­ure of the dis­tant past. Dis­tracted by the rou­tine hol­i­days, we miss the oppor­tu­nity to acknowl­edge the saint sit­ting across from us at the cof­fee shop. This is their day, but there will be no parades in their honor. Jesus him­self arose among their ranks. He was nur­tured by Joseph and Mary — two peo­ple of com­mon lot. We will hear their names each win­ter, but not really pon­der their poverty or the obsta­cles they had to over­come. We will be too busy unwrap­ping gifts.
Each day is Quiet Hero Day. God alone acknowl­edges the actions of those that go the sec­ond mile for the sake of oth­ers. He is not one to for­get. For what­ever oppor­tu­nity you have today to go “above and beyond the call of duty” this could be your day too.