It’s always something of a relief for me when we reach the point in the Church’s Year which we call “Ordinary Time.” It’s those very many Sundays which follow after Easter and Pentecost. As I write we’ve already begun it, though a number of saints’ days this week are getting in the way.
Ordinary Time is when you get simply to live life with a rhythm that it’s up to you to establish. Christmas is the time of excitement, Easter the season of joy in the Risen Lord. Ordinary Time – the words may seem to indicate that it’s nothing much special. But that’s not true! Sunday by Sunday we’ll be working our way through the Gospel of Matthew (in other years it would be Mark or Luke) – what do we discover once more through his account of Jesus’ life and ministry? We open up other books of the Bible along the way. We need to be able to allow them to speak to us – where we are, in whatever we are doing.
Personally, I have found recent months to be full of activity – and very demanding. First selling a family home, and all the clearing out that required. Then buying another – an ongoing project but I need somewhere to live very soon! All this alongside lots of continuing demands from ministry and the daily stuff of parish life. Things are not slackening off, but there’s that change of gear into “Ordinary Time” – the need to work out a new rhythm and to take responsibility for setting the agenda.
I wrote last month that with all the recurrent events of parish life deleted from my diary from the beginning of July, my calendar was looking quite empty. But that means that it’s also full of opportunity. Life is full of opportunity for us all!
Sometimes we refer to Ordinary Time as “Green Time.” That’s the liturgical colour which we use when nothing else “special” is happening in church. But it’s not ordinary and boring. It’s the colour of life and growth. I’m aware of the demands I face when the diary empties and I move from the Vicarage into a place which will for the first time be my own. All our lives need to be fashioned – and that’s a responsibility we all bear. But it’s also one in which we can find God is our Companion on the way.
Martin Jackson - Parish Magazine, June 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment