The Church Year is arranged in two cycles around the feasts of Christmas and Easter. In each cycle, we spend some time preparing for the feast, celebrate the feast itself, then spend some time understanding what just happened.
The preparation we do in the seasons of Advent and Lent. Christmas and Easter we celebrate for 12 days on the one hand, and for 50 days on the other. And after each of the feasts, we enter a period known as Ordinary Time.
After Holy Week, which often culminates in baptisms at the Easter Vigil, we celebrate the Great 50 Days of Easter and the power of the resurrection life. In the long, green stretch of Ordinary Time after the Day of Pentecost, we work out the implications of our baptism for our daily lives.
In just the same way, after the 12 Days of Christmas, which culminate in Epiphany and in our celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, we work out what it means for the world that God has entered it in such a way. We also rehearse the many ways that Christ, "the pioneer of our salvation" (Heb. 2:10), is made manifest in our ordinary lives. These manifestations, or epiphanies, are the subject of this green season.
In the Daily Office, we can tell we've hit Ordinary Time. On Monday morning, we started back at Psalm 1. We've resumed the course reading of Scripture, this time with the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John. It's kind of calm after the relative drama of Advent antiphons and Christmas feast days.
We call it Ordinary Time -- it's really anything but. All our daily lives are shot through with the presence and power of God. What we do in the long stretches of Ordinary Time is keep ourselves awake and attuned to the signs of God's activity, even as we relax a bit from the hustle and bustle of the feasts and return to our regular work.
1.12.2010
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