Well, the party is over and it’s back to everyday life – welcome to Ordinary Time in our Church calendar. The Easter Alleluia’s will take on a more sedate feeling; the lilies have come down, the baptisms seem more routine and the Easter candle has moved from its prominent place near the Altar to the baptismal area of the Church. Life feels more settled and customary.
Those parishes like my own, who are blessed with wonderful choirs and consistently beautiful music, may now have to settle for an organist, pianist, and a cantor to lead the congregation in song. With the exception of the next two Sunday’s for the Feast of the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, out comes what feels like the endless procession of green vestments. (God’s favorite color – just look at creation.) And so we settle in for the next few months of the same-old, same-old. Well, not exactly. Not exactly by any means since this Ordinary season may be our most challenging.
The Easter energy, the powerful stories of the risen Lord, the wind, fire, and tongues of Pentecost were never meant to be the constant. How could we sustain the deep emotion of Holy Week all year! Those events were necessary for God to accomplish all that he intended for salvation. But, they happened once in history. When Jesus left this earth and breathed his Holy Spirit upon us, the infant Church could not ask, “Now what?” in the same way. Everything had changed.
Christians were now called to see the familiar with new eyes; to hear the world around them with fresh ears; to reach out to others with new hands – the eyes, ears, and hands of Christ would continue to see, hear, and touch through all who believed in him. Ordinary life was meant to become extraordinary by the lives of those who could now profess one faith, one baptism, in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now it was time to get on with what it means to be a Christian in the world and to fulfill the mission and ministry that Jesus entrusted to his leaders and through them to the Church. And that is precisely the purpose of this time we call Ordinary which celebrates the mystery of Christ “not in one specific aspect but in all its aspects. The readings during the liturgies of Ordinary Time help to instruct us on how to live out our Christian faith in our daily lives.” (www.cyberfaith.com).
That season we call Ordinary Time, therefore, strikes me as the meat and potatoes of our Christian life. This is where the rubber hits the road folks and it makes all the difference. Welcome to the classroom of Christian living. Hopefully, most of us have passed to a bit higher grade than Christianity 101. No matter what “class” you’re enrolled in or what level you may have achieved, the day by day application of our Christian faith must continue.
There is cohesiveness, however, to this season. The Church doesn’t just randomly throw dice and say, “ok, let’s try this Gospel.” For us living today in a far more complex world than the early Christians, who sort of had to figure it out as they went along, we have the benefit of thousands of years of history, tradition, and lived experience. We can look back and see the work of the Spirit from age to age which has brought us to this moment in time. It certainly helps with our linear thinking which generally demands to know how and where things came from, what is the meaning of today, and where is it all going?
In this rich and meaningful Ordinary season we reflect not on one event in the earthly life of Jesus such as his birth, death, or resurrection. Now we hear the life and preaching of Jesus unfold in the Gospel stories. It is a time to absorb the challenges of daily Christian living and to apply those principles of morality and our subsequent thought process and behavior as a result of those teachings of Jesus.
Whether it be a miracle story, a question of Jesus concerning the meaning of authority by one of the Apostles, the feeding of the 5,000 on a hillside up from the Sea of Galilee, the conditions for discipleship, the sending of the Apostles by Jesus “two by two” to preach and heal, the parable to the Good Samaritan, a teaching on prayer, or whatever other thought provoking scenes will pass before us these next months, its never same-old, same-old because the Gospel never tires of itself.
The Word of God is living and active – it’s you and I that often need a good kick in the pants, a jump start to reignite the fire of the Spirit in us. Though daylight is longer here north of the equator, school is nearly out, the weather is warm (we can hope), and vacation season is not far ahead, we don’t dare let this season pass by without an attentive ear, a willing spirit, a soft and changeable heart for the Lord.
May the Green color of this season that is anything but ordinary, remind us of the never ending Hope to which we are called in Jesus Christ.
Almighty God,
our hope and strength,
without you we falter.
Help us to follow Christ
and to live according to your will.
We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
(11th Sunday in not so Ordinary Time)
Much more so stay tuned . . . .
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