Howard grew up in a protestant evangelical family and later became Anglican then Catholic. When you read Howard you understand the movement from one to the other. But in my young adulthood, I found myself moving from the very faithful and good Protestant Evangelicalism of my family into the Anglican Church, where at least the notions of hierarchy, sacrament, and liturgy are remembered. Also, of course, I became soaked in the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their friend Charles Williams. In all of these writers, one finds the ordinary stuff of quotidian life treated as though that stuff bespeaks—what shall we say? Glory? Ultimacy? The Truth of things? Splendor? Yes—all of that. The ordinary is not ordinary. It trumpets joy, freedom, and virtue to us mortals if we will pay attention.
We see this in the Eucharist, and we are invited to see it in the ordinary routines (often, to be sure, dull or nettlesome) of common household life. The love of a man and woman in the nuptial mystery; the nurture and training of children; peeling carrots; carrying out the trash: all of these supply us with the chance to see ordinariness as the very sacrament of Love, that is, the chance to say to each other, “My life for yours,” which is what Love says, e.g., “Here—let me hold this door for you.” “Here—let me wash the dishes for a change.” “Here—let me get up at 3 am to give the infant a bottle, and let you rest for a few minutes.” And of course, all of this is “sacramental” in that the sacraments themselves entail, in every case, a physical point at which holiness and eternal truth touch our mortal life.
I think this practice is hard work. We seem to lack the kind of attentiveness required to see the ordinary as holy. Life is just life. We need practices and reminders that it is more than all of that or surround ourselves with people who seem to get this more naturally.
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1805/the_hallowed_house_and_the_secular_world.aspx