This Sunday, June 17, we celebrate the 11th Sunday in Ordianry time. The liturgical season in the Roman Rite of Ordinary Time formally began three weeks ago, on the day after Pentecost. We have just completed the 93-day cycle of Lent/Triduum/Easter. We Catholics are also familiar with the Advent/Christmas cycle. Ordinary Time is the rest of the year.
With a title like "Ordinary Time" one might think that nothing happens in this season. This is far from the truth. To understand this, you have to go to a rather new concept in Catholic theology, the "sacramental imagination." Catholics who are already cashing in their Social Security checks remember the Baltimore Catechism (1884) definition of a sacrament: "An outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace." The current Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) definition of a sacrament is similar yet expanded: "Efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacrments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament." (#1131)
Catholic theologians have taken these classic definitions and expanded on them. They see in the "sacramental imagination" of us believers that grace (that is, God's life, love, presence) is all around us. God's grace and life are not just signified when a deacon baptizes a baby or a priest anoints a sick person in the hospital or when a bishop ordains priests. God's grace and life are also signified when a mom comforts her daughter when she cries; when a friend forgives a buddy for a cruel remark; when young adults give a year of their lives to do missionary work in Haiti or Alaska; when a married couple makes love; when a CCD catechist teaches his second graders about Jesus Christ present in the sacrament of holy communion.
In other words, God's abiding presence is all around us in our wounded world. Father Andrew Greeley identified several aspects of the Catholic sacramental imagination:
^Enchanted: Open to a world filled with angels, saints and mystery.
^Sacramental: A more general attitude that all created reality is open to the present of a God who "lurks" there.
^Analogical: It tends to emphasize the metaphorical nature of persons, places and things.
^Exists in a dense forest of imagery and story.
^Imminent rather than transcendent.
^Recognition that "all space is sacred and some space is more sacred."
[From The Catholic Imagination, 2000, pages 1-21]
This sacramental imagination is also connected to "vision." Cardinal John Henry Newman is often quoted as having said, "The real battles of life take place within the human imagination." In the words of Franciscan Father Michael Weldon, "It is there that our most foundational images of church dwell, the place of our most vital memories of religious epiphany, of comfort, healing or grappling with the realities of sin and death."
I can still remember attending Sunday 8:00 a.m. Mass as a third or fourth grader with my Dad and brothers, sitting in the little upstairs side balcony in St. Wendelin Church. Dad pointed out to me the difference between a low Mass and high Mass: the number of lit candles (two or six). I can still see him gently striking his breast when the priest raised the Host and the Chalice at the consecration of the Mass. And -- in that Catholic way -- I fondly remember conversations with Dad in our backyard, on a summer evening, after we had changed the oil in his car and my car. Nothing earthshaking was said, but the conversations in their own way were holy.
And so, Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary. During the Sundays of Ordinary Time we hear Jesus teach through parables, like the mustard seed which images the Kingdom of God (this Sunday, June 17), and miracles, such as Jesus healing a woman afflicted with hemorrhages and raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead (July 1). We revere saints like John the Baptizer, whose feast we will celebrate on Sunday, June 24. John was conceived in the old age of Elizabeth and Zechariah to proclaim the coming of Christ our Savior. What could be more ordinary--or extraordinary!--when a childless couple who desire to have a baby have their wish fulfilled. We follow in John's footsteps when we witness to Christ's presence in our world, from the time we were in the womb.
Ordinary Time is filled with our ordinary lives: we get out of bed, shower and wash, go to work or take care of kids or do some volunteering, make lunch and wash dishes, watch a little tv and kiss our loved ones good night. But Ordinary Time is at the same time filled with the posibility of seeing God's grace in each and every one of these activities, and so many more. God's loving presence is extraordinarily all around us in Ordinary Time.
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