M. Hellinger Feast Days, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist

In Defense of Ordinary Time

Moving back to Ordinary Time after spending the last month or so reflecting on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Second Coming is always shocking in a sense. The parties are over, the lights are down, and here we are, returning to our regular schedules of work and study. This year was great because we had a full week between the Ephipany and the Baptism of the Lord. In fact, its because of this that I felt inclined to reflect on Ordinary Time.

Three things are worth considering: 1) the color green, 2) the ending of the Gospel from the Saturday before the Baptism as a guide for understanding Ordinary Time, 3) the goal of the Christian Life: the divinisation of Man and its relation to the name of the season.

First, green. I love talking about this color, mainly because I never recieved a satisfying answer about it as a kid and once I found one I was so happy (call it my thurst for knowledge taking revenge on ignorance, or just call it a mild OCD, whichever). Anyway, apart from a sad attempt at self-deprecating humor, green is important: it serves as a constant reminder of the nature of Ordinary Time. The best way I’ve come up with to explain this is the example of the Wizard of Oz.

A common misconception is that Oz is green because it is wealthy and ostentatious. I disagree. I argue that it is green because green is the color of hope and fidelity. Oz is Dorthy’s only hope, and she has to remain fixed on it as her end if she is going to get there. The green of Ordinary Time reminds us every time we see it that we have our own “Emerald City,” that place that is our hope: the life of the Trinity. And it is through fidelity to the Person of Christ that we journey onward to it.

The difference in our case is that instead of having a vague idea of a mysterious city that we’ve never been to or heard of before this journey, our journey is in and through a concrete experience of a Person, the God-Man Jesus Christ… but that’s a whole different reflection.

Second, it hit me just this year in the hearing of the Gospel on the Saturday before the Feast of the Baptism. The best guide for what to do with Ordinary Time is found in the words of John the Baptist: He must increase, I must decrease. We get to spend considerable amounts of time each liturgical year reflecting on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Obviously, those are of the highest importance as they are central to the Christian Life. However, I think there is immense value in spending a substantial amount of time simply living with the Lord. 

The Baptism of Jesus, Church of St. John the Baptist
Bastia, Corsica, France

This living with the Lord in the ordinary (not the play on words I’m looking for, see below) is the way in which the mysteries take on their power in our lives and transform us. If Christians needed a campaign slogan to quickly explain themselves, I think the words of John the Baptist pretty much sum it up. Which leads us to the next point.

Third, if you’ve ever found yourself in Mass and super distracted (I’ve never met a Catholic who is completely foreign to this experience) the thought may have crossed your mind, “what am I doing here right now?” (in these or similar words) With eyes to see, Ordinary Time is giving you an answer.

The Name: Jesus Christ came to order our lives and our love in response to the disorder caused by sin. Ordinary Time is “ordered” time, a time that is arranged. While I don’t think the connection is intuitive, after all the Latin directly reads something like “time through the year,” there is wisdom in the English term, because it expresses what is understood to take place in this time. The process of conversion and conformation to Christ takes time and it requires us to allow him to reorder us, or rather, put us back in order.

Divinization: This year it struck me that Ordinary Time begins after the Baptism of the Lord (it does every year). I do not want to go into interpreting the meaning of the Baptism, rather I just simply want to draw the connection that our own life of conformity to Christ began at our Baptism. What a powerful yearly reminder of the call we received. And if we submit ourselves to the life of the Church as it is lived properly in each distinct season, we find a beautiful unpacking of the mystery of the gift that Baptism is and what God has done for us, all accomplished through faith in Jesus Christ.

This short, awkward time between Christmas and Lent is not just an afterthought or some sort of attempt to “fill in the time” with something as we await a new mystery to unpack in prayer with the Lord. It’s a renewed call to a relationship which reorders us, a call to realize the hope that Christ brings in His Incarnation, fulfilled in his Death and Resurrection, and has its beginning in the very mystery which brought us to Him: Baptism.

M. Hellinger Discernment

The spiritual dimension — living in the presence of a friend

One of my favorite aspects of seminary life is one that took me a long time to get used to: that I live in the same house as Jesus in the Eucharist. This is perhaps one of the easiest parts of seminary life to let become ordinary and to slip under the radar of active thought and appreciation. But the fact remains, while at the seminary I have the awesome privilege of living in the true presence of Jesus.

This reality had me thinking about what friendship with Christ really looks like. Generally, someone spends a lot of time in the presence of friends, and in seminary we spend (by choice, and by the fact of living there) a lot of time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. So often, friendship itself, let alone friendship with Christ, is not understood well. It seems to fall apart into either a mutual admiration society or an equal-exchange club.

Friendship with Christ is neither about an equal-exchange club, where I do some nice deeds for Jesus and he gets me into heaven (real friends aren’t keeping score), nor is it a mutual admiration society, where we spend countless hours giving undeserved or useless praise to one another. Friendship with the person of Jesus is a call to a love that exchanges everything about oneself with the friend. Friends make sacrifices for each other and are willing to drop everything for one another. Nothing about us can be hidden from good, long-time friends, and so it should be in our friendship with Christ.

Friends don’t look at each other, they look at a common goal. C.S. Lewis once said of friendship, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” Part of our relationship with God should be spent looking face to face as lover and beloved, but we shouldn’t neglect the aspect of our relationship that calls us to authentic friendship. The reality is that for most Catholics, spending copious amounts of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament is not possible, and even might betray their vocational duties to their family. Therefore, friendship is something that must be intentionally cultivated, because friendship requires the knowledge that Jesus is by your side, with you, in all things, even when you are not beholding his presence. This means that our friendship with Christ can be built when we simply recognize his presence in all moments of our day, and spend those moments in the knowledge that he is with us as we work, play, relax, etc. Invite him to come into your struggles, joys, hopes, fears, etc. A good friend doesn’t really need anything from you, he just wants you.

In this friendship, this life lived with Christ, it is really easy to become caught up in our “status.” This can become a huge impediment to progress in our friendship with Christ, and it is a problem that I have noticed those discerning priesthood can be especially susceptible to. It can really put the brakes on journeying toward holiness. In seminary we sometimes term this the “super-discerner.” Imagine a friend who, every time you spend time with them, is constantly asking or worrying about where your friendship stands. We have to make sure that our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ is lived, not constantly reflected upon. Don’t get me wrong, we should take moments of prayer to reflect on where we are and how the Lord has been with us and moved us, but if that is the only thing we do when we pray, our friendship will not grow.

One of the most important aspects of this friendship to keep in mind is that a friendship must be lived in the present moment and in the first-person perspective. Often, we try to make excuses for our actions and others’ by acting as though we are the omniscient third-person narrator of life. We have to remember that God is the omniscient third-person, and we are the first-person character in our lives. That means, to really grow in friendship, we must live it and trust in the Lord. This frees us from worrying and anxiety so that we can live this awesome life with and for the Lord, especially with him as our closest friend. May God give us the wisdom and strength to invite him into our lives and cultivate a friendship that will challenge us to grow in holiness!

This post originally appeared in Today’s Catholic.