Blog #101 Ordinary Time

Blog #101 Ordinary Time It has been eight weeks now since we have been dealing with what is referred to in the liturgy as 'Ordinary Time'. The Feast of Christ the King, the four Sundays of Advent, and the Christmas season were all special times, related to the rest, but with a distinctive purpose flavor and goal of their own. Now we are back to Ordinary Time. Does this mean or imply dull, more of the same, boring, uneventful, commonplace or inconsequential? These words may truthfully describe the experience of some people, but it should or need not be so. As it is for feasts and special times in the liturgy, Ordinary Time should be an experience of growth in knowledge and love for the Lord and one another, a time of realizing more fully the value of our faith experience and its power to guide us in our quest for peace justice holiness and God's love in our everyday lives and in our relations with one another. In the few weeks of Ordinary Time before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday March 9, we have a moment of world history and our own personal history that has never occurred before. It will never occur again. It is related to all that went before it and all that will come after. All of it counts. Let's try to use it well, to listen, to learn, to discover, to respond, to grow and be thankful for all that it will offer and all that we will receive. We are not alone here. We depend upon one another in many ways and to an extent that some have never imagined. We are in the process of co-creating with God through our conscience the eternal name by which our Father will call us at the instant of the experience we are in the habit of calling 'death'. Since this instant is theologically our experience of the fulfillment of the promises Jesus brought from Heaven and by faith and Baptism already ours in the personal unique share in God's eternal love which we refer to as the gift of Sanctifying Grace, I think a better word than death we should form a habit of using for it is eternal life. In Catholic theology 'death' is not an interference but a goal attained.