It's Ordinary Time!

It's that time again! Time to bust out the green vestments and get real...well...ordinary.

I do kind of love all things green. It's the hip term for eco-friendly these days. It's a great color for me (brings out my eyes ;) But you know what busting out the green means when it comes to liturgical seasons...

Yup, time for "Ordinary Time".

I still kind of can't believe that's really what we call it. In the words of G.O.B. Bluth...
COME ON!

When I went to Mass on Monday after Pentecost this week, both the priest and I had the same thought- we celebrate so many feasts with octaves and entire seasons in the Catholic Church, why doesn't the Holy Spirit get an octave?? (answer- the priest at this particular Mass said technically the Holy Spirit gets the whole year if we are open to It. Touche, Father. Touche ;)

The crazy whirlwind of the Spirit goes as quickly as it came. We are sent out! And magically whisked away too...

Ordinary Time.

To use another Wayne's World reference: "Or imagine, being magically whisked away to...Delaware. Hi, I'm in Delaware"

Not that there's anything wrong with Delaware! Or Ordinary Time! Let's be clear!

Actually we get quite a few feast days coming up these next weeks. I believe this coming Sunday is the feast of the Holy Trinity and then the Sunday following that is Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi is often celebrated with a Eucharistic procession through towns and cities in many parts of the world. I know my favorite memory of that feast was when I went to Guatemala for the second time and we had such a procession through the village:

(You can kind of see Jesus in the monstrance under the canopy ;)

But I am getting ahead of myself! That is two weeks away. And as I've said before, nothing wrong with ordinary.

I've actually been making the most of my "ordinary time" (well, or will be. Technically, last week was last week of Easter, I suppose, but I digress) with a couple of mini-vacays.

Last week, two friends and I went to Florida and literally did nothing but lay on the beach, sit by the pool, eat, drink, and sleep:
And this week- tomorrow in fact- my roommates and I leave to visit our friends in LA (whom I visited and blogged about last year - man, I need some new material, Jesus! But I heart my friends ;)

In thinking about Ordinary Time vs "extra-ordinary" times, I was reflecting a bit on today's Gospel in which Jesus tries to bring the apostles up to speed before His Passion:

"Taking the Twelve aside again, he began to tell them

what was going to happen to him.

'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man

will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes,

and they will condemn him to death

and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him,

spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death,

but after three days he will rise.” Mark 10:32-34

They couldn't have understood what this meant at the time. Here Jesus is doing what we all kind of want Him to do, I think- tell us the future. But what could the apostles possibly make with this news?

And maybe it's like that with us. If Jesus could and did tell us the future, to hurry up and tell us all the extra-ordinary things right now- would we be able to understand without going through the ordinary events leading up to it? Probably not.

So I hold that thought with me as we enter into this ordinary time (in more ways than one ;) And trust it is preparing me for perhaps some of the extra-ordinary times in the future.

Peace,

Julia