Ordinary Time

As we were dismantling the Easter décor in the church, a friend walked by and expressed her disappointment in removing the festive adornments of the Easter environment. “I hate Ordinary Time,” she said. She was referring to the weeks in the liturgical year that fall in between more solemn seasons such as Lent and Easter. There are two periods of Ordinary Time during our liturgical year. Summer and fall Ordinary Time take place after the Easter season and before Advent. Winter Ordinary Time falls after the Christmas season and before Lent.

The word ordinary in this context doesn’t mean common, mundane, or humdrum. Ordinary comes from the Latin word ordinal as in ordinal numbers. Ordinary Time is simply the way the Church counts the weeks in between the other liturgical seasons.

If we keep our eyes and ears open, we might notice that there is nothing ordinary about what we do at Mass—even during Ordinary Time! Consider the way ordinary objects are used in the liturgy: books are lifted high, furniture is kissed, bread and wine are blessed. Ordinary activities take on new meaning, walking becomes processing, reading becomes proclaiming, singing becomes praising. We who live ordinary lives are treated with extraordinary reverence. We are blessed, incensed, sprinkled with holy water, lathered with sacred oil, and fed with the body and blood of Christ. We too take on a new meaning as a human assembly becomes a divine body.    

Our very gathering at the beginning of Mass teaches us that God first loved us enough to call us God’s own people. Our Penitential Act tells us that God waits with open arms to embrace us with mercy. In the liturgy of the Word we hear how God’s faithfulness accompanied humankind throughout salvation history. In the liturgy of the Eucharist we celebrate God’s love in gifting us with his Son, Jesus. Our sending forth declares that God trusts us ordinary human beings with the extraordinary work of being God’s hands and feet in the world.

The simplicity of the season of Ordinary Time bids us pause to see, to hear, and to experience the extraordinary goodness of God.

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The Canticle of Zechariah

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St. Vincent de Paul