How often do we ask the question, “What time is it?”
With the Christmas Season behind us, Catholics now enter into a period referred to as “Ordinary Time” in the Church’s liturgy. In our vernacular usage, the word “ordinary” describes what is commonplace, “everyday” or without uniqueness or special distinction.
The fact is that Ordinary Time makes up most of the Church’s calendar year, roughly 34 weeks between the first and final Sundays of the liturgical calendar. The Lenten and Easter Seasons constitute, for lack of a better term, an “interruption” of Ordinary Time before Advent and Christmas come again. There are also individual feast days and solemnities that appear in the liturgical calendar “interrupting Ordinary Time” here and there.
The expression “Ordinary Time” itself comes from a Latin root word referring to the “order” of numbering the weeks of the year in the “ordered life” of the Church, beginning after the solemn feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which takes the place of a First Sunday in Ordinary Time, and ending with the solemn feast of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, the Final Sunday in Ordinary Time.
What takes place in the Church’s official prayer during Ordinary Time, however, is anything but ordinary. It is the unfolding in Masses, Scripture readings and prayers of the whole life of the Lord Jesus Christ between the seasonal celebrations of his Incarnation and Birth and his Passion, Death and Resurrection.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) reminds us:
The Sundays and weeks of Ordinary Time … take us through the life of Christ. This is the time of conversion. This is living the life of Christ.
Ordinary Time is a time for growth and maturation, a time in which the mystery of Christ is called to penetrate ever more deeply into history until all things are finally caught up in Christ (www.usccb.org, “Ordinary Time”).
The Church’s liturgical calendar is ordered in three cycles of Scripture readings on Sundays – Years A, B and C (we are currently in the Year C cycle of Sundays of 2025) – and two cycles of Scripture readings on weekdays – Years I and II (we are currently in the Year I cycle of weekdays of 2025). This arrangement was established in the revisions of the Church’s liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council.
The vestments used by the priest and deacon at Mass during Ordinary Time are usually green in color. Green is used to represent hope in Christ’s Resurrection that characterizes each day in Ordinary Time. Different colors are used to correspond to other seasons and times and on other days and occasions celebrated during the liturgical year – white (sometimes gold) for the Christmas and Easter seasons and on special feasts of the Lord, the Blessed Mother or saints who were not martyred; white is also frequently worn for Masses of Christian Burial; violet for Advent and Lent (rose may be worn on the 3rd Sundays of these seasons) and on Masses for the Dead; red for Masses of Palm Sunday, the Lord’s Passion, Pentecost, the Apostles, Evangelists or other saints who were martyred. Black is sometimes worn in Masses for the Dead.
With all that in mind, Catholics should spend Ordinary Time to deepen their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his Gospel, to nourish their reading and understanding of the Word of God, to enhance and grow in their spiritual lives and prayer and to strive for personal conversion. Ordinary Time should be the opportunity to make progress in putting the Catholic faith into action with ongoing works of charity and justice toward others, respect for and protection of human life in all its stages, support for marriage and family life, respect for the environment as our “common home,” and personal witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ordinary Time can and will take on special spiritual significance if we live it intentionally. For Catholics, Ordinary Time is the part of the year in which Christ, the Lamb of God, walks among us and transforms our lives.
I think of the encouragement provided by St. Catherine of Siena: “Be who God intended you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” In that way, Ordinary Time can become anything but ordinary for you.