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Ordinary Time: Rest

The Season after Pentecost is not actually a season with a single
common focus, but is simply the weeks between the Day of
Pentecost and the First Sunday of Advent. It is often called
“Ordinary Time.” These weeks hold both the slower pace and
peaceful quality of summer months and the quicker pace and
flurry of activity in the early fall. These are our “ordinary” days,
in which we live the Christian faith in our daily lives.

During these weeks, as the liturgical scholar Leonel Mitchell
puts it, we celebrate “the time in which we actually live — the
period between the Pentecost and the Second Advent.” Two
thousand years after the first Pentecost, the church still lives in
this “in between” time before the fulfillment of time in Christ’s
second coming. You might also hear these weeks called “the
long, green season,” referring both to the green color of the
vestments and altar hangings for these weeks as well as to the
summertime of year in which many of the weeks fall in the
northern hemisphere.

After Pentecost we settle into the growing season, nourishing
the seeds planted at Easter and putting down roots in our faith.

 

Daily Prayer for All Seasons, p. 119