Today marks the end of Ordinary time in our liturgical calendar. Tomorrow, we begin Advent, the beginning of our new liturgical year.
In my Daily Reflection when Ordinary time began, way back on January 8th, I told you that Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary. The purpose and benefits of this liturgical season are extraordinary, indispensable, and fundamental to our following of the Lord Jesus Christ. During Ordinary Time, the Church’s prayers and selections of Sacred Scripture readings have we believers accompanying Jesus in his public ministry and the Apostles as they ventured out of their locked room to evangelize the world. The Church has selected healings, signs, and essential teachings from the life of Jesus so that followers can be reminded, reaffirmed, consoled, and challenged in how they live the Christian way of life. Through Ordinary Time, the community of disciples are told to forgive, accept others generously, be healed and serve as instruments of healing, seeking peace, living humbly, praying, and trusting in God’s care for them. In fact, the season is one of the sources from which our Christian lives are fed and upon which our celebration of the high feasts is grounded.
Ordinary Time has served as a welcome signpost along the path of our discipleship and of our lives. It has been an opportunity for us to put urgent things in check, so that they don’t dominate our existence, and a sacred time for us to renew and cherish important things so that our lives can flourish, and we can enrich the lives of others.
This examination of discipleship has provided us an opportunity to review the lives and times of many saints honored by the Church. We have visited the lives of all the Doctors of the Church, whose lives and writings have helped us finely tune what we know about salvation. Likewise, we have discussed many regional saints who represent the areas of the world where our Order has a presence. We have learned from their lives why the Jesuits use the motto Age quod agis, “Do what you’re doing.” Don’t worry about tomorrow, or yesterday. Don’t worry about this afternoon or this morning. Live here, live now. Focus on what you are doing. Ordinary Time stresses that God is the Eternal Now. It humbles us with the lesson that we are most with God when we are living in the present moment.
During Ordinary Time we have learned to open our hearts to the Lord. Do not let the world cause it to be closed, not hard, not without faith, not perverted, not deceived by sin. Live your life today in the presence of the Lord. Let your heart be open, firm in the faith, led by the Lord. Let us ask the Lord for the grace that we need to live our lives in the now.
I want to thank you Followers of the Order of St. John Paul II for allowing my Daily Reflections to be part of your lives for the last year. As we move into Advent tomorrow, I invite you to continue following in the path of our patron saint, St. John Paul II.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!