A Long Obedience: Discipleship in Ordinary Time
The Catholic Liturgical year certainly gets started with a bang. We begin with four deeply contemplative weeks in Advent, preparing our hearts and minds for the coming of Christ at Christmas with beautiful symbols that engage the senses like coloured candles and wonderfully scented Christmas trees. After a bit of a wind down, we jump straight into Candlemas then Ash Wednesday and the forty day journey of Lent, where we reflect on Christ’s redemptive suffering. Lent concludes with Holy Week and the Triduum, one of the most memorable expressions of our faith, before we enter into Easter and Pentecost which involve weeks and weeks of feasting and celebrating.
And then, seemingly all at once, these wonderful celebrations come to an end. Not until All Hallowtide (end of October/early November) do we again find Liturgical practices with as rich symbolism as the Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter cycles. For many of us, it can be easy in this time to let our faith slip into the background.
The Liturgical Calendar is a gift to us because we are finite beings who worship an infinite God. There is so much about God to contemplate and meditate on and if we tried to take it in all at once, our brains would explode. The Liturgical Year is one way to help us discover various aspects of a God who exists outside of time through the confines of linearity. Thus, every season and feast in the Liturgical Calendar exists to teach us something about the character of God.
So what is Ordinary Time meant to teach us about God and how can we receive its lessons more deeply? Without a clear anchor or practice in the calendar of the Church, how do we still maintain an active life of faith throughout “Ordinary Time?”
I think one of the big opportunities for us in Ordinary Time is to dive deeper into understanding the deep and beautiful intimacy of God and His presence in the quiet, even monotonous moments. If we live a spiritual life that only has room for the big moments of Easter and Christmas, it will be much more difficult for us to understand that God also wants to be with us in the mundane and the ordinary. In fact, it is often these ordinary moments that have the most transformative potential.
When we accept the circumstances of our regular, everyday life and give them over to God, we have the opportunity to be sanctified over the long haul through humility and obedience, two of the most powerful tools at our disposal for spiritual growth. Ordinary Time gets us out of a cycle of spiritual highs and lows and teaches us to walk with God in what Pastor Eugene Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.”
So with that in mind, here are two very simple anchor practices for Ordinary Time, so that this season can be as powerful for you as the other seasons of the Church.
1 - Ora et Labora
The Benedictine monks have lived by the simple Latin phrase “Ora et Labora” for centuries. In English, it means “prayer and work,” and it contains a deep wisdom for the rhythm of Ordinary Time. In a season marked by ordinariness, we go about our regular day to day tasks but we try to do so with great love and in a spirit of prayer.
The brilliant Russian-Canadian spiritual writer Catherine Doherty writes: “The duty of the moment is what you should be doing at any given time, in whatever place God has put you. If you have a child, your duty of the moment may be to change a dirty diaper. So you do it. But you don't just change that diaper, you change it to the best of your ability, with great love for both God and that child.”
To learn to make our work into a prayer, we must find ways to connect everything we do to love for God and for others. When you clean a toilet, do it so that it might be clean for your brother or sister. When you cook a meal, do it with hospitality in your heart for those you serve. When you organize files on your computer, understand yourself to be restoring the order of the Kingdom of God to the chaos of our fallen world.
When we lean into the simplicity of combining our prayer and our work, we find that every task, no matter how menial, is an opportunity to experience the joy and peace of the Spirit’s transformation.
2 - Stability
Another important element of Ordinary Time is a commitment to stability. While other seasons emphasize more intense disciplines of feasting and fasting, Ordinary Time shifts the focus to transformation by acceptance of the way things are. This practice of stability can range from committing to being a regular part of a Parish community, even when things there feel stale and dry to eating the foods that are local and in season, even when your palette craves something more exciting.
What we’re seeking through stability is not necessarily suffering but growth in the virtues of moderation and self-control. In a world that constantly seeks out more and more stimulating experiences, Ordinary Time is our opportunity to draw a line in the sand and say that we’re content with the blessings of regular, day to day life. Fasting and feasting have their place but God is just as active in times of normalcy. Stability is, ultimately, accepting with humility the circumstances of our lives and giving God space to do His transforming work in them.
Ordinary Time is a season potent with transformative power, even if on the surface it seems mundane or even boring. It reminds us that most of the best work God does is slow, subtle, and even monotonous. The rhythms of our regular lives and participation in community become the fertile ground from which great spiritual fruit can grow. When we practice Ordinary Time with intentionality, we become people marked by a deep interior peace and a gratitude for even the most regular parts of life, which are undoubtedly gifts from a God who loves us.