3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Parish Family,

In our Gospel for this weekend, the Evangelist, Luke, lays out the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. In a way, we have really finally begun the season of Ordinary Time. You may recall that the last three weeks have been expansions on the mystery of the Epiphany, where we heard about all three events of Jesus’ manifestation as God and Man. They follow a logical order leading to today’s passage. The time of fulfillment has come. Jesus says so.

We are living in that time of fulfillment now! A quick word about this season called “Ordinary.” It’s a misnomer, really. We think of Ordinary as hum-drum, boring, unexciting. This is certainly not what the Church has in my mind for this liturgical season. It is not the meaning of the word in this context. The term “Ordinary,” as we are using it here, comes from the word “ordinal,” meaning, a sequence or a list that is numbered. So we are currently in a sequence of Sundays post-Epiphany and leading up to the season of Lent. After Easter, we will pick up that sequence of Sundays, then being post-Pentecost.

This time is not ordinary! It’s the longest season of the year, and it’s within this season of Ordinary Time that we get the bulk of Jesus’ instruction for how to live life in following him. It is the time of fulfillment, which means that Jesus continues to do his work, but now he does it through us. When we recognize that, it clearly becomes much more than “ordinary.”

Peace.

-Fr. Kennell