Ordinary Time — Prayer of the Christian Pilgrim
The Ordinary Time — called in Latin Tempus per Annum, throughout the year — is the longest liturgical time of the Catholic calendar: 33 or 34 weeks distributed in two portions, a short one after the Season of Christmas (from the Baptism of the Lord until the eve of Ash Wednesday) and a long one after the Paschal Time (from the day after Pentecost until the eve of the First Sunday of Advent). Its liturgical colour is green — colour of hope and of growth, symbolising the slow journey of the pilgrim Church between the two comings of Christ. The Universal Norms of 1969 (n. 43) describe Ordinary Time not as a neutral or emptied time, but as that in which «the mystery of Christ in itself is celebrated, without particular reflection». This prayer accompanies the Christian in the long green weeks — in which the Lord is not yet born nor dies nor rises again, but in which one walks through ordinary life, in the blessed monotony of small fidelities.
Lord Jesus Christ, who after the great season of Christmas and before the great season of Lent, and again after Pentecost and before Advent, let your Church walk in the Ordinary Time of green colour: teach me the sanctity of days without solemnity.
It is easy to be Christian on Easter morning, amid the solemn music and the lighted candles; it is easy to be Christian on Christmas night, between the crib and Midnight Mass. But the true disciple is proved in the long green months between these feasts, when life has no special colour — Monday in June, Tuesday in August, Thursday in November. There, more than in the solemn feasts, I discover what my discipleship is worth.
Grant me, in this Ordinary Time, three ordinary graces:
The first: small and daily fidelity — Sunday Mass without fail, morning and evening prayer without dispensation, Friday abstinence, regular confession. There is no sanctity outside these little constancies.
The second: the joy of reading the Gospel of the day in order — Sunday after Sunday, according to the three-year Lectionary — and discovering how each parable, each miracle, each Word of yours speaks directly to my current week.
The third: the active hope of expectation — that the long green pilgrimage of this time may inwardly prepare me for the next solemn feast, and ultimately for the only feast which never ends: the eternal liturgy of Heaven, where there is no longer time neither liturgical nor ordinary, but only the «Day that knows no sunset» — perpetual Sunday of the nuptials of the Lamb with the Church.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.