Blessed Ordinary Time when everything in the Divine Office is simple and simply in one place! A time when we are relieved of that maddening fiddling and flipping back and forth which a confrere of mine calls ’an occasion of sin’. Blessed is this time when there are no liturgical extravaganzas to organise, no exultets to be practised, no dress-rehearsals to be endured. It is an uncomplicated time; it is elemental; it is ordinary. It is not, however, bland. As we leave Easter and move into the weekdays of Ordinary Time’s 8th week, we are straightaway confronted by the gospels of the challenge to the rich young man, the thrusting ambition of the sons of Zebedee, a fig tree cursed and withered and the temple being cleansed – strong and vivid stuff indeed. The first days of ordinary time are a reminder that this season is in fact an almost unbearably bright array, a ’dappled thing’ and full of things ’spare’ and surprising, lying in wait to astonish and stupefy Chris Chatteris, S.J.
Blessed Ordinary Time
Show Comments ()
2
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
18 years 1 month ago
As much as I enjoy the pagentry of Easter, although I've never 'articulated' it until I read this, I do find 'ordinary' time peaceful, and less distracting. Simple. Blessed indeed.
18 years 1 month ago
I've always found it helpful to remember that the word "ordinary" in this context connotes less "commonplace" or "conventional" and more "following in a numerical sequence." It's a sense (pardon the pun) that is not ordinary (i.e. usual); it survives in some technical language (as in the "ordinary numbers" 1, 2, 3, 4, ...). FWIW. Paul Nienaber SJ
The latest from america
Perhaps it is the hard-won wisdom that comes with age, but the Catholic rituals and practices I once scorned are the same rituals and practices that now usher me into God's presence, time and time again.
"Only through patient and inclusive dialogue" can "a just and lasting conflict resolution can be achieved" in the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, said the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations.
The ”Bad Guys” films ask, how do we determine who the “bad guys” are? And if you’re marked as “bad” from the start, can you ever make good?
In these dark times, surrounded by death and destruction in Gaza, we hear the command in the first reading, “Choose life.” What are the ways we can do this in a world that seems to have gone mad?