On the Church Calendar the “season” we find ourselves in is “Ordinary Time.”  When I was first introduced to the Church Calendar I went through the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and then I ran into the long season of Ordinary Time.  It is easy from the name of the season to assume that the first part of the year is about Jesus (his birth, death, and resurrection) and the second half is about getting on with our “ordinary” lives.  This is what I thought the term “ordinary” meant and I thought it strange that the year would end in such a way.  However, the name ordinary here does not mean “common” or “mundane,” but rather “counted.”  Ordinary comes from the word ordinal which by definition means to number.  Thus, this season is the time that we count from Pentecost to Advent.

The question then is what are we suppose to be doing during this time?   Feasts and fasts marked all of the other seasons, but what are we to do now?  The answer lies in the fact that we count “from Pentecost.”  The first half of the Church year focuses on the life of Christ, thus we celebrate his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension. The second half of the year focuses on us living out the Life of Christ in our lives.  Between those two halves lies the Feast of Pentecost. This is the time that the Church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it possible to live out the life of Christ.  So the Feast of Pentecost is the bridge between the first half of the Calendar (the Life of Christ) and the second half of the Calendar (ordinary time).  It is the time that the Church calls us not to simply celebrate the Mysteries of Christ’s life but embody them in our everyday lives.  This time is not marked by an absence of Christ, but an infusion of Christ’s life in the here and now.  Thus, we count each day as “such and such day after Pentecost,” remembering that the coming of the Spirit was not for mere emotionalism, but for the empowerment to be the hands and feet of Jesus here and now for those around us.  The Church Calendar from start to finish is about Christ: Christ with us…Christ in us.