Longing for Ordinary Time

Don't get me wrong...I love the entire liturgical year, but most of all I love Ordinary Time. Why? Well, in Ordinary time things are .....well....ordinary. There is a beauty and a rhythm to Ordinary Time and to me that makes it as special as the other seasons.

In Ordinary time we are reminded that it is the regular things of daily living that make us feel human and give us meaning. For me, I equate Ordinary Time and ordinary days when I can do, and appreciate, normal ordinary things. Things like: doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, puttsing in the yard, running errands.

I've had some times in my life that are anything but Ordinary: either really great or really bad. And in both of those times I long for Ordinary Time. Again, there is a pace, a rhythm to the Ordinary that makes it special.

How many times have I heard homlies in which the priest talks about how Jesus speaks to us in ordinary ways through ordinary people. And wasn't it Abe Lincoln who also said "God must have loved the ordinary people - he made so many of them."

Ordinary Time means there is no suped up choir with trumpetts and screechy sopranos sounding off from the choir loft, and an over enthusiastic organist playing so loud that voices of the people below are drowned out and the building shakes! It means there is no very long procession to start Mass. It means that the vestments are green - a nice earthy, ordinary color. Calming. There is no need to shop for gifts like when it is Advent/Christmas. It is just plain and simple....ordinary.

But again.....if you examine ordinary time through the eyes of faith, we realize that so much of the ordinary in life helps us become the people we are supposed to be. It just happens quietly. Day after day. Moment after moment. It is like a baby growing into a child and into an adult. If we see a baby every day, we don't see how they grow. But if we see a baby at baptism and then again at their high school graduation, we see a huge difference in the baby because now he/she has grown up. Ordinary time is like seeing ourselves every day...we change in incremental ways. Small ways, but in time we become who we are supposed to be.

Some people love the pomp and circumstance of setting up poinsettas and Christmas trees, and candles and all sorts of decorations and some people love focusing on the denial called for during Lent with all its purple spirituality. Those are cool things in their own right, but for me....as someone who used to be proud of saying she is a "Lenten person" and "I could live in Lent all the time".....now I am changing. Now I like ordinary time.

I guess as I am growing in faith, I am seeing not that Jesus is the reason for the season ( thinking of Advent and Christmas), but in fact, Jesus is the reason for ALL the seasons, and Ordinary Time is a gift to us.

So, I am longing for Ordinary time.