For most of my life, seeing ‘Ordinary Time’ Sundays between Christmas Season (ending with The Baptism of the Lord) and Ash Wednesday, and then from Trinity Sunday all the way through to Advent, made me feel really dismal. It meant that there was nothing to celebrate or prepare for! I love having a focus to my time and I interpreted ‘Ordinary Time’ as unfocused, lost time. The word ‘ordinary’ sounded dull, lifeless, and boring to me. ‘High days and Holidays’ were the times I felt alive in Church and I enjoyed having a purpose to the days, even if I was ‘giving up’ chocolate for Lent.
So why does the Catholic Church designate so many weeks of the year as ‘Ordinary’? The Episcopal Church celebrates the Advent, Christmas, Lenten and Easter Seasons but also has the Epiphany Season which continues from January 6th through to Ash Wednesday, and the Season after Pentecost which runs from Trinity Sunday to Advent. To my mind that sounded more ‘up-beat’, more celebrating, less ordinary.
Then, the Holy Spirit must have inspired me! I realized that some humility was in order, so I explored what the Catholic Church actually meant by using the word ‘Ordinary’. What I discovered was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Let me explain. To begin, I realized that each occasion upon which Ordinary Time begins it follows a particular revelation of God. The first follows the Season of Epiphany (which includes the Visit of the Magi, the Wedding Feast at Cana, and the Baptism of the Lord) when Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is revealed to the world. The second follows the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The full revelation of the Trinity is celebrated on Trinity Sunday and then ‘Ordinary Time’ begins.
Each revealing of a Person of the Trinity takes time for us to accept into our deepest selves; we slowly learn to welcome God into our souls and become aware of ‘God Within’. The Catholic Church gives us Ordinary Time as a time in which to recognize this truth, accept it and choose to say ‘YES’ to God as the Lord of our Life. As a very dear friend of mine (an 80 year old nun) says, ‘It is like inviting God to take over the steering wheel of my life, recognizing that I am now the passenger and willingly accepting whatever happens next!’
In the Gospel of Luke (1:26-38), Mary says ‘YES’ to God after some perplexity, pondering and a moment of questioning; then the Holy Spirit overshadows her and she conceives Jesus, the Son of God. Unfortunately, for most of the rest of us, it takes a lot longer for us to overcome our layers of resistance to handing over our perceived independence (similar to layers of an onion is how I imagine our layering of self protection and fear) so as to rejoice in our dependence on God. We need all the Ordinary Time we can get!
So how do we live our life ‘aglow with the Spirit’ as St. Paul describes our new existence filled with the Spirit? He says, ‘serve the Lord, rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality, bless those who persecute you, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty but associate with the lowly, never be conceited, repay no one with evil but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all’ (Romans 12:11-17).
This is a lot to manage, but, God, understanding our fear of losing control, leads us gently into oneness with the Spirit; it is the work of our lifetime. Actually Pierre Teilhard de Chardin describes best what Ordinary Time is all about:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow; let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hearts on Fire).
