Ordinary time!
It can be easy to overlook this season as it is not marked by any “notable” features to associate with it. For example, we associate Advent with the wreath or Lent with fasting; Christmas and Easter are filled with their solemn liturgical celebrations and joyful times spent with family. So it can be easy to see this season as just “filler” between Christmas and Lent, or Easter and Advent.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 1194 reads: The Church, “in the course of the year, … unfolds the whole mystery of Christ from his Incarnation and Nativity through his Ascension, to Pentecost and the expectation of the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord.” In other words, the entire liturgical season is significant because we celebrate and learn more about the life of the Lord Jesus.
The US Bishops describe Ordinary Time as the time “wherein the faithful consider the fullness of Jesus’ teachings and works among his people.” If you are a daily mass goer, you will notice that the daily gospel largely comes from Mark and details Jesus’s ministry throughout Israel. In pondering Jesus’s words and deeds, we are meant to do as his disciples did: closely observe the rabbi, listen to every word of his, and imitate his example.
Then there is the green. have a friend who lives in Florida, which is green year-round, and who once commented to me that perhaps people love living in Florida because of how green it is. Everything is alive and is beaming with life! Green should make us think exactly of these things: life, vitality, and growth.
It is especially fitting, then, that Ordinary time is celebrated after the two great solemn feasts of the year, Christmas, and Easter. For the birth and resurrection of Christ are the great mysteries which pump new life into the Church, reinvigorating her, and spurring her growth. Ordinary Time was also known in the past as “the season of the saints”, especially after Easter. In celebrating the saints, the Church teaches us that “holiness is always in season”, and that it is possible for all people, regardless of their status in life, to follow Christ and achieve great holiness.
Also, ordinary time is not called ordinary because of its “regular-ness” or because it is “business as usual” in the Church. The word “ordinary” refers to the “order” of the time, that is, each Sunday is referred to by its “ordinal” number: First Sunday, Second Sunday, Thirteenth Sunday.
However, it is good to meditate on the word “ordinary” as in “ordinariness.” Can one find God in the mundane and often boring tasks of daily life? Ordinary time challenges us to do so. As we clean up from the holiday season and get back to our regular routine of school or work, let us remember the timeless truth taught by Christ’s hidden life in Nazareth: “The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 533).
May we realize more deeply this Ordinary Time just how close Jesus, the one who “became like us in all things”, is to us in all the ordinariness of our lives.
Conrad Espino
Seminarian (Configuration 1 — Mundelein Seminary)
Archdiocese of Chicago
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