2 Christmas, Monday

Not Quite Ordinary Time

Now that the frantic Christmas and New Year's holidays are past, many people are sighing with relief that things are "back to normal." As a neighbor said after we devoured the spread at yesterday's Packers/Bears football game, "Now I can go back to eating salads for dinner!"

But let's not settle down too much, too soon. According to the liturgical calendar, we're still in Christmastide -- yes, the Twelve Days begin, not end, with Christmas -- and it'll only be after the Feast of the Epiphany this Thursday that we enter into Ordinary Time.

The Church Year follows two cycles of feasts focused on celebrating the mysteries of Incarnation and Resurrection. In each cycle we have a season of preparation (Advent/Lent), the celebration itself (12 Days of Christmas/50 Days of Easter), and then a season of Ordinary Time in which we reflect on the meaning of the mystery (Epiphany/Pentecost).

The Old Testament reading appointed for Morning Prayer today gives us a foretaste of Ordinary Time. Jacob is traveling, as many of us do, and stops for the night in "a certain city" which could really be anywhere. That night he dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. When he wakes up, he says, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" (Gen. 28:16).

Ordinary Time is like that. We emerge from our celebration, look around our everyday lives with new eyes, and say, "Now I recognize that God is here!" Wherever our travels may take us, we see the presence of God in the normal places, the everyday experiences, the colleagues, family, and friends all around us.

So don't stop celebrating just yet -- this miracle of God with us, Emmanuel, is still worth pondering for a bit longer.