ORDINARY TIME, EXTRAORDINARY FEASTS

The wonderful season of Easter officially (liturgically) ended this past weekend with Pentecost. It marked the culmination of what we refer to as the “Paschal Mystery,” that of the Passion, Resurrection, and Glorification of Christ, and of the beginnings of His Mystical Body, the Church. To offer an indication of this ending, and the beginning of what is referred to as “Ordinary Time,” our banners, altar cloths, and vestments all change from white/gold (and red, for Pentecost itself) to green, the color of hope, the color of fertility and new life.

But for the next two Sundays, priests and deacons will still be wearing white vestments, making a bit of a contrast with the green everywhere else. This is because of the great solemnities of Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi Sunday, the Sunday celebrating the Eucharist [item for lull in conversation—Corpus Christi should be properly celebrated the Thursday after Trinity, but as with (too?) many other solemnities, it’s been transferred to the nearest Sunday in our country]. It’s as though we cannot bear to let go of the joy of Easter season! But how do these festivals connect?

When I consider the underpinnings of our Faith, I go to the core events: giving the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, the Crucifixion on Good Friday, the Resurrection and joy of Easter Sunday and the whole of the season, the promise given in the Ascension, and its first-fruits fulfillment in Pentecost; then I realize that marking the Blessed Trinity and in a special way honoring the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament are a continuation of one overarching theme: LOVE.

Holy Thursday and Good Friday are the ultimate gifts of self in love to us by our Savior: doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, and probably would not have been willing to do. Easter season and Pentecost are the triumph of that love, especially in the gift of the Holy Spirit for the purposes of forgiveness of sins and reconciliation in love.

In the imagery of St Augustine (whom I find the most credible analogy of the Trinity), the Father eternally loves the Son, the Son eternally loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is that Love. So we are talking about a “communion of life and love,” and we are invited to share in it! The pledge we have that this can be is the Eucharist—truly His Body and Blood, given for us.

How can this be? Pope St John Paul II once wrote in his encyclical letter Laborem Exercens “On Human Work” that there are two ways humans can transcend themselves—by love and by work. Both are “erotic” in the sense of the love named eros, creative love. In marital love mothers and fathers are open to new life—a life distinct from theirs (as parents all too well learn!). In works of art, whether it’s Handel’s Messiah or Michelangelo’s Pietà or Chagall’s White Crucifixion, something new is here—dynamic and capable of touching the hearts and souls of others. The Trinity, the Eucharist, the Atonement, the Resurrection: they are all aspects of the love that is so transcendent, so powerfully creative, that it communicates love to all people in all times.

So we might be entering “Ordinary Time,” but never forget the Love that makes all time “Extraordinary” in Him!