Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord! In addition to being a wonderful feast day, the Baptism of the Lord is also the official conclusion of the Christmas liturgical season. It is now time to take down your Christmas decor if you are being liturgically correct!
Tomorrow is Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time. Yes, my special time of the year is back, the time of the ordinary, plain, usual, and quotidian. Ordinary time is the longest time in the liturgical year. For many of us “ordinary” is also the longest period of time in our lives. If it was always extraordinary, then the extraordinary would be the usual and ordinary. It is in the “ordinary” that the real business of living takes place. It is in the ordinary circumstances of life that we live, work, play, and love. The same is true with our spiritual lives. It is in the ordinary parts of life that pray, that we seek after the good, that we struggle to do what is right, that we fight the urges and desires to do wrong, that we live our faith, not in an heroic way, but in the ordinary, everyday, usual process of growing towards sainthood. Ordinary time is the time of slow, patient growth, like the plants.
So while we enjoy all the special seasons like Christmas, it is good to take time be plain, old ordinary. To grow and to develop. To mature. To become who we are called to be. Ash Wednesday and Lent will be here before you know it!
God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment