Living Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Ways

We have just come out of the Easter Season and now find ourselves in Ordinary Time. But how can this season be considered “ordinary”? It has started out with such a celebration of feasts that this time seems like anything but ordinary! Last week we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Trinity. This week we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, and next week we celebrate both the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

So, with such a brisk tempo being set here, I think the church is telling us that this time is something special. It is not telling us that this is a time to relax and take a breather. It is not a time to take things for granted. On the contrary, it is instead a call to action, a call for us to live out those formative seasons we have just come through.

Let me explain how the church year is set up. The church year has two major formative seasons, with each having three parts. Christmas is the centerpiece of one season and Easter is the centerpiece of the other. Then, the centerpiece of Christmas is flanked with Advent and Epiphany; while the centerpiece of Easter is flanked with the Lent and Pentecost.

Now within each of these two seasons there is a common rhythm. That rhythm is one of Promise-Fulfillment-Response. The first season of promise, fulfillment, response is made up of Advent (being the promise), Christmas (the fulfillment, and that being as the Incarnation), and Epiphany (the response). The second season is made up of Lent (again, being the promise), Easter (again being fulfillment, only this time as Resurrection), and Pentecost (again being the response).

It is in these seasons that the great mysteries of incarnation and resurrection are unfolded. It is in these seasons that we come to understand the depth of God’s love for us and the extremes He is willing to go for us.

Then, each of these two seasons is followed with a period of what is called “Ordinary Time.” The first period of ordinary time starts at Epiphany and goes to Ash Wednesday, and the second starts at Pentecost and lasts until Advent.

This liturgical cycle supports a process of formation through which we learn to live in the present as Christians. It is not a mere recalling of the past. It is through the revealed mysteries of the liturgical year that we are prepared to live our ordinary lives in an extraordinary way. We come out of these seasons with our approach to life recalibrated through the mysteries of the incarnation and resurrection and prepared to bear fruit in ordinary time in the reality of day-to-day living.

Take all that for granted, and now come into Jerusalem with Jesus and his disciples for a farewell meal, a last Passover together. One at which things will be said and done which will have a profound impact on how they lived their lives and how we go forth to live ours.

This meal said something; and it did something, actually changing them so that, after it, part of who they actually were was ‘the people who shared that meal together, with all that it meant!’

This meal explains, more deeply than words could ever do, what Christ’s action, and passion the next day, really meant; and, more than explaining it, it enables his followers, from that day to this, to make it their own, to draw life and strength from it. If we want to understand, and be nourished by, what happened on Calvary, this meal is the place to start.

At this meal, Jesus let himself be our food and drink. At this meal, Jesus does for us spiritually what bread and wine do for us physically. Jesus wants to nourish us. He wants to take away all our hungers and thirsts: our hunger for peace and justice, our hunger for joy, our thirst for freedom and forgiveness, and our thirst for purity and for love. He wants to fill us with himself, to be part of us, to live in us just as food and drink become part of us. That’s why he said, “Take the bread; this is my body. Drink the wine; this is my blood.”

His message to us was more than just those words. We, as did he, couple those words with action. His actions – taking, blessing, breaking and giving the bread; taking, blessing and giving the cup; enabled his followers not only to understand his death but also gave them a way to remain in Christ in their continuing lives.

And this brings us back to the significance of “Ordinary Time”. It is a time of “ordinary” action, a time of “ordinary” fruit bearing. It is the application part of our faith; application outside the seasons of special emphasis; outside the focus of media and social celebrations. It is where we put into practice our Christian values as normal, ordinary, expected parts of our lives. It is where we see them embedded in the very fabric of how we go about doing even the most routine of tasks. And, it is the Eucharist that regularly sustains us in those efforts.