Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
This week we enter the half of the liturgical year we call Ordinary Time. We’ve been through several seasons: Advent, Christimas, the Season after Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. Now we’re in the time when there isn’t a season. It’s just . . . ordinary time.
Because of all of that stuff we’ve been doing since last November, it is kind of nice to just not for awhile, you know? To just move ourselves into ordinary after month upon month of extraordinary. Of course, it can get a little old after awhile, but still, it can feel refreshing to come back to the main story.
This is what I like best about Ordinary Time. We essentially read the gospel in order from here until Thanksgiving. We had the call stories in Epiphany and the first bits in the weeks after, so we return to it now, still early, and make our way, through the gospel as we go through the summer, until finally we arrive outside Jerusalem as we prepare for Advent.
There are rhythms of the church year that are built around getting people to know what are traditionally described as the most important parts (around the principal feasts, Lent, and Holy Week). But this only works when our foundation of “ordinary” is firm. When we actually know what Jesus teaches throughout his life in ministry and how he responds to the challenges he faces. It is, much as John Dominic Crossan has argued, that Jesus’s life and ministry is more than just about his birth, death, and resurrection. We learn from him: his life and work.
This is a great time to follow the whole story.
With love,
Drew+
