The Weekly Perspective

by Joe Thacker, Pastor

As mentioned last week, the “Ordinary” of Ordinary Time does not mean “mundane,” but is the term used because such Sundays are designated according to their ordinal numbers: First Sunday, Second Sunday, etc. Yet, without any major events or festivals between now and Reformation, there is a certain sense in which we have entered an “ordinary routine” of the liturgical year and cycle. This is not meant to imply that the life lived in Christ by the Spirit is commonplace. Far from it, and yet there is something to be said for the rhythm of life that a regular routine provides. Most of life is not marked by great feasts. We do not live in a constant party, which would be exhausting and diminish the times for celebration, but in the usual day-to-day of rising from sleep, working, eating, drinking, talking, playing, and lying down to sleep. We go to sleep, we “die” each night, only for the Lord to “resurrect” us each morning, to raise us to the life to be lived in Him by faith. That is hardly mundane, and yet it is our common experience, to which we barely give any thought, as we readily and rightly give ourselves to the daily duties the Lord sets our hands to do. Ordinary Time is a significant portion of our lives in which we live out the realities of Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and the giving of the Spirit. It is ordinary, gloriously ordinary.