Spiraling Into Eternity

Yeah, Christmas is over, the Wise Men were here and gone, and we’re back to Ordinary Time.  I imagine it as a Hollywood director managing the liturgical calendar and shouting out orders for the next scene, “Thank you Magi, great job prostrating!  Gold, frankincense and myrrh - check, check, check.  Magi, if you could make a quick exit stage left, we need to move on.  Mary, darling, you were wonderful, as usual.  Could someone get this baby out of here?  Okay, bring in John the Baptist and where’s our adult Jesus?”

Not much time to contemplate the Epiphany this year, in fact, the Christmas Season is cut short since Christmas was on a Sunday.  I love the Christmas Season after Christmas Day.  I find it hard to find the time to contemplate the Incarnation of God as the infant Jesus on Christmas Day between breakfast, rushing off to Mass to get seats, unwrapping presents, preparing a feast, and finally feasting.  The whole day is a blur.  Thanks to the wisdom of the Catholic Church we get some extra time to contemplate Christmas.  

This year, I got cheated.  I was sad to see Christmas go, again.  I wanted some more time to wonder and that’s when I reminded myself how good it is to be Catholic.  Every year we mark the same Seasons and Feast days.  Each year we celebrate the same events, but each year it should be different.  And Ordinary Time isn’t ordinary.  It refers to ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc) and how we count the weeks of the liturgical year.

In “normal” life we think of time as a line with a start and end point.  In the Catholic Church, time is more like a spiral in a shell.  When we are young in the faith the spiral is small and tight; we take in the essentials of God.  As we grow up the spiral should become larger and wider; we gain deeper understanding with each year.  Our wider scope should take in more people and concerns as well.  It’s not just me and God.

So, Happy Ordinary Time!  Hope you enjoy your spiraling into Eternity!