Ordinary Time

After the fire of Pentecost, the liturgical year settles into a long stretch of green. The vestments change. The readings shift. And the Church enters what she calls Ordinary Time.

The name can be misleading. We hear "ordinary" and think: unremarkable. The filler between the feasts. The boring part.

But that's not what the word means.

Ordinal, Not Mundane

The term comes from the Latin ordinalis, meaning numbered, or ordered. Ordinary Time is simply the counted time: the First Sunday, the Second Sunday, the Third, and so on. We're not celebrating a particular mystery like the Incarnation or the Resurrection. We're walking through the Sundays in sequence.

But there's something deeper here. If Ordinary Time is ordered time, then it invites a question: What is my life ordered around?

Fr. Kennell often reminds us that the liturgical year "follows the life of Christ." In Advent, we wait for him. At Christmas, he is born. In Lent, we journey with him to Jerusalem. At Easter, he rises. At Pentecost, he sends the Spirit. And in Ordinary Time? We sit at his feet. We watch him teach, heal, challenge, and love. We learn what it means to follow him in daily life.

This is the season for discipleship.

The Longest Season

Ordinary Time is the longest stretch of the liturgical year, spanning from the end of the Christmas season until Lent, and then again from Pentecost until Advent. Most of the year is green.

That's fitting. Most of life is ordinary. We have peak moments (births, deaths, weddings, conversions), but the majority of our days are routine. Work. Meals. Errands. Sleep. Repeat.

Ordinary Time says: God is present here too. The sacred isn't confined to the mountaintop. Christ walked dusty roads, ate with sinners, taught in synagogues, attended weddings. His public ministry was made up of ordinary days filled with extraordinary grace. Ours can be the same.

The Public Ministry of Jesus

During Ordinary Time, the Sunday Gospels walk us through the life and teaching of Christ. We hear the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). We watch him call the disciples, cast out demons, heal the sick. We encounter parable after parable, the sower, the mustard seed, the prodigal son.

This is the Church's curriculum. Week by week, we're being formed by his words and actions. We're learning how he lived so that we might learn how to live.

St. Luke tells us that after his time in the desert, "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all" (Luke 4:14-15). Ordinary Time places us in that Galilee, walking alongside him, listening, watching, being changed.

Ordering Our Lives

We speak of our parish as a "School of Prayer." Ordinary Time is when much of that schooling happens.

It's the season to ask: Is my life ordered around Christ, or around something else? Do I have a rhythm of prayer, or do I pray only when I remember? Am I letting the liturgical year shape my weeks, or am I just drifting through the calendar?

A spiritual plan of life can help. Not something elaborate, just a simple structure. When will I pray? How often will I receive the sacraments? What am I reading? These decisions order our days around the Lord rather than leaving our spiritual lives to chance.

The monks have a word for this: horarium, a daily schedule built around the hours of prayer. We're not monks, but the principle applies. If we don't order our time, something else will order it for us.

The Ordinary Is Holy

There's a temptation to think that the spiritual life happens somewhere else, on retreat, at a conference, during Lent. Ordinary Time resists that temptation. It insists that Christ is present in the ordinary. That the kitchen and the commute and the cubicle are all places where grace is available.

The goal is not to escape ordinary life but to let Christ fill it. To recognize him in the breaking of the bread, yes, but also in the crying child, the difficult coworker, the long afternoon.

This is the invitation of Ordinary Time. Not to wait for something more exciting, but to find God in what's already here.