No Ordinary Time?
The message of Ordinary Time is a stinging rebuke...
It felt like the liturgical calendar was out of sync with the world.
The fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The cantor announced it at the beginning of Mass. That’s what was printed on the front of the weeks church bulletin. A quick check of the Vatican website confirmed it.
Ordinary Time…
It sure as hell doesn’t feel ordinary.
• The president celebrated opening a brand new American concentration camp in the middle of the Florida everglades – no due process required for admission.
• American warplanes flew halfway around the world to drop 30,000 pound bombs on Iran.
• Congress voted to take medical insurance away from millions of our neighbors; and take food off the tables of millions more.
• With the same vote, they made the obscenely rich obscenely richer – at the expense of the poorest among us.
• At the same time, masked secret police are rounding up packing house workers, farm workers, cooks, dishwashers, roofers, construction workers, gardeners, housekeepers, childcare workers, nursing home aides, moms, dads, and children to be shipped off to God-knows-where.
• Arbitrary, politically motivated firings have decimated FEMA, the Narional Weather Service, the National Park Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and scores of other federal and federally funded agencies that provide vital services to us all.
And the list goes on and on and on and on…
Ordinary times? Seems like the Good Lord has a dark sense of humor…
Then again, if we consider liturgical tradition, maybe Ordinary is appropriate…really appropriate…for the times we’re in.
While the other seasons of the church year focus on the high points of the Christian tradition – Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter – during the remainder of the year – Ordinary Time – the Gospel focus is on what Jesus did, said, and taught day-to-day: Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Comfort the sorrowing.
The things that ought to be ordinary.
The message of Ordinary Time is a stinging rebuke to the extraordinary official cruelty we have witnessed and continue to witness every day. It holds up the message of Jesus as a mirror to the message of MAGA and calls on everyone to choose.
To choose to do the Ordinary things in this extraordinary time
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Well said, Jerome. The things Jesus taught and practiced should be ordinary for us--yet for so many of our leaders today are denied and ridiculed.
An extraordinary editorial in a frightening time - and that, too, is an understatement. The worst part about all of this is feeling helpless but trying to hang onto what little hope I have left.