On Ordinary Time
Categories: faith
Date: 15 May 2008 17:08:14
Hey ho, a change from ranting about the BNP, George Galloway and Boris Johnson (incidentally, Mr Mayor, if you're paying £600 per tree for your tree-planting programme, you, and by extension the London taxpayers, are being robbed blind).
Easter was massively early this year - Candlemass, marking the end of the Christmas season, was on 2nd February, and Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent, was on the 6th. This means that the long swing down through the year to Christ the King, the feast which marks the last Sunday of the Church's year, is going to be a rather long stretch of green.
Green is the colour the Church uses for Ordinary Time, to signify the Holy Spirit, and growth and new life. I didn't use to like ordinary Time, seeing it as boring, compared to the feasts and festivals - I came to the Catholic Church via a church which did feasts and festivals rather well, and I've always been a drama queen at heart, and a well done Corpus Christi procession is a thing to gladden the eyes and lift the heart and mind to God.
Growth is an interesting thing. Whether it is plants or people, it happens on an incremental basis, with occasional spurts, slowly and gradually and step by step, and then one day you turn round and the orchids are taking over the bathroom.
Feasts and festivals are good and necessary things, the leaven that raises the daily rhythm of life, but it's not in the feasts and festivals where the majority of a Christian's growth happens. Most of your walk with Christ takes place in the green spaces, the ordinary days that mark the rhythm of most people's lives, and the slow unfolding of the Church's year is a necessary support for the great high feasts.
Take an orchid as an example.
The drama of the flowers couldn't happen without the support of the roots, stems and leaves. The slow growth of the green parts is required for the flowers, and you can't have one without the other. The gradual unfolding of the stems leads surely to the glory of the flowers, and the gradual unfolding of the church's year, the growth of the Christian as they walk with Christ, leads just as surely to the glory of Heaven.
Plants need food to grow, and so do Christians. The Eucharist, Scripture , the writings of the Saints, works of mercy, all nourish the soul in different ways, as a plant is fed by water and soil. You may think that nothing is happening, but keep on keeping on, and then suddenly you will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
(Rudyard Kipling)