Ordinary Time
This week we once again entered the liturgical season know as Ordinary Time. I have often remarked that the name is unfortunate in that it does not adequately convey the fullness of what we are celebrating during this season. Advent has its focus on preparation and waiting for the arrival of the Savior. The Christmas season centers on the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ. Lent highlights the need for the conversion that is so crucial for living the Christian life and the Easter season has as its focus the resurrection, the central tenet of the Christian faith. What about Ordinary Time? Is it just filler space for the times we are not focused on the important seasons and feasts of the liturgical year, or is there more to it?
The General Norms for the Roman Liturgy describe the season this way:
Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, there remains in the yearly cycle those weeks that do not celebrate a specific mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its fullness. This period is known as Ordinary Time. (General Norms, 43)
Hearing this definition makes one wonder why the Church didn’t come up with a better name for the season. Celebrating the fullness of Christ seems like a pretty big deal and certainly far from ordinary. It’s not everyday that God decides to become a human being and once having arrived to take it upon Himself to heal the sick, cast out demons, walk on water, calm the winds with His voice, turn water into wine and destroy sin and death.
But somehow I don’t think the word “ordinary” in Ordinary Time is referring directly to these details of the life of Christ, except for the fact that it is in the ordinary situations of life where Christ is most often discovered. Peter and Andrew along with James and John were going about their normal work as fishermen when Jesus walks up to them to say, “Follow me.” The Apostle Matthew also was at work collecting taxes when he heard the call to discipleship. Again and again the Gospels tell stories of Jesus in the ordinary places of worship, in people’s homes for dinner, walking along ordinary roads. In order to understand the fullness of Christ, one needs only to look in ordinary places.
Many days I have spent too much time looking for flashes of lightning to signal God’s presence, but he rarely communicates to me through the spectacular. More often than not He reaches me by way of the ordinary. Today I gave Him thanks as I waited while my brakes were being replaced. Sitting in the waiting area I saw a young girl’s delight at finding a checkerboard there. “Yay, a game!”, she exclaimed at the discovery and sat in the floor to play checkers with her dad.
Perhaps there is one more reason to refer to this time as ordinary. It seems to me that a typical day for Christians always will involve joy and thanksgiving for the ordinary way Christ bestows His extraordinary love and mercy upon every person in this world. Today I am grateful for a run of the mill day, where God has clearly been present to me in His own quiet simplicity.
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