How
ordinary is the ordinary time of the Year? One may ordinarily wonder why in
the list of the liturgical season, we find a season referred to as the
“Ordinary Time of the Year”. The other seasons of the liturgical year are: Advent,
Christmastide, Lent and Easter. These seasons celebrate the preparation of the
birth of Christ (Advent), the actual birth of Christ (Christmastide), the
passion and death of Christ (Lent) and the resurrection of Christ (Easter).
They celebrate in magnificent ways the key events that summarize the life of
Christ.
Therefore, one can easily conclude
that since the chief mysteries of Christ’s salvific acts have been given
special places in the liturgical calendar of the Church and they cannot be
stretched to run throughout the year, the period in between them cannot be as
important as they are. Hence, they are called “ordinary time”. This assumption
is simply incorrect.
However, the Ordinary time of the
year is that part of the liturgical year that celebrates “no particular aspect
of the mystery of Christ. Instead on the Last Sundays, celebration is made of
the mystery of Christ in all its fullness”. (General Norms for the Liturgical
Year, 43).
The Ordinary time of the year is
separated into two parts of the liturgical year. The first begins on the Monday
following Epiphany Sunday (or the Sunday after January 6) and ends on the
Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The second part resumes on the Monday after
Pentecost and ends on the Saturday preceding the First Sunday of Advent.
It is not called ordinary because
it celebrates no particular aspect of the mystery of Christ. Before the 1970
liturgical year, the Sundays of this period were known as the Sundays after
Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost. Instead, this period is called
“ordinary” (from the Latin ordinalis
which refers to numbers in a series) because the weeks are numbered or ordered.
The traditional Latin term for this period is “Tempus per Annum” (literally Time through the year) but it was
later translated to mean “Ordinary time through the year”.
Therefore, rather than mean the
“unimportant” time of the year, let us consider it as the “ordered or numbered”
time of the year.
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