Today’s feast is a sign of transition. During Christmas, we celebrated Christ’s birth and early life. Yet very little is written about His first thirty years, so today we move on to the beginning of His public ministry. This feast, then, represents the end of the Christmas season. In addition, today is also the First Sunday of Ordinary Time. Starting tomorrow, we wear green vestments again.
When we use the word “ordinary,” we generally mean run-of-the-mill, commonplace and mundane. That may be the way we feel now that the holidays are over and we are getting back to normal, but that is not what we mean in the Church’s use of the word. Our term Ordinary Time comes from ordinal numbers. Many of us are rusty on our grade school math, but ordinal numbers are those used for putting things in order, as in “first” or “second” or “third,” as opposed to the integral numbers of “one, two, three.” So next Sunday is the “Second Sunday in Ordinary Time.”
The important part of that distinction is that there is nothing ordinary about Ordinary Time. Just because we are out of the seasons does not mean that our Liturgies are not special. They may not reach the level of solemnity that we experience during the Church’s special seasons. But every Sunday is a celebration of Easter, and every time we gather for the Eucharist, we are celebrating the greatest mystery this world has ever seen.
If it is true that there is nothing ordinary about our celebrations, then it is also true that there is nothing ordinary about our church. As long as the Blessed Sacrament is present in the Tabernacle, we are in the presence of Christ in our church. Thus we should always show reverence whenever we are in church. When I was a little boy, that meant that we never spoke above a whisper. There was a sense of awe and majesty in the church that rather intimidated us. I do not want to take it that far. The Eucharist we celebrate unites us more closely as sisters and brothers in Christ, so we should be comfortable greeting one another in what is our home. Yet we want to balance that comfort with the sense that this is someplace special. I hope we do not get so comfortable that we forget how special the place is.
It seems like there are several issues where we tend to get lax on occasion. A couple of years ago, I started noticing more men wearing hats in church. Lately I have seen more and more people – adults as well as children – chewing gum. I remember that there were certain places we would never be allowed to chew gum when I was growing up. School was one such place, but particularly we would never chew gum in church. So I ask that everyone take some time to ask whether we really recognize how special our church is. As we approach the special gift of the Eucharist, please remember to keep an attitude of reverence when in our church.
Father H
