Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Ah yes, we are back to Ordinary Time. But make no mistake; there’s nothing ordinary about it!
In the Church calendar, Ordinary Time is divided into two chunks. The first chunk goes between the Christmas Season and Lent, and the second chunk is much longer and runs all the way between the end of the Easter Season and the beginning of Advent.
Advent is all about preparing our hearts not only for Jesus’ coming at Christmas, but also for his second coming at the end of time, or our meeting him at the moment of our own deaths.
The Christmas Season is a big party celebrating the Incarnation, when the Creator of the Universe was born into time as a baby. God is far away and distant? I don’t think so.
Lent is a 40-day retreat for the whole Church where we make a big push to grow in holiness and have a deeper conversion of heart. We do this by stepping up our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (giving to the poor). It’s not about giving up chocolate; it’s about giving up sin!
The Easter Season is the biggest party of the whole Church year! We celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin and death by his rising from the grave and opening the gates of Heaven to us. Regardless of whether you gave up chocolate for Lent or not, the Easter Season is the time to go chocolate crazy! Keep those chocolate eggs coming…
Ordinary time is…not so exciting and kind of vague sometimes. There’s not necessarily a particular spiritual focus for us, so it’s a great time to look at how we let God into all the ordinary moments of our daily lives. How can I live the Christian life at school? At work? At home? On the highway in bumper to bumper traffic? In line at Dunkin’ Donuts? How can I be selfless, not selfish? How can I live my entire life as a witness to Christ; as a giant arrow pointing not to how awesome we are, but to how awesome Jesus is?
John the Baptist had this down. In this week’s Gospel, John points to Jesus and tells his own followers to leave and go follow this new guy. John could have kept his own little fan club, but he knew that it wasn’t all about him. His whole ministry was all about preparing people to encounter Christ, and now here he was!
Could you imagine the CEO of Starbucks coming out and saying to their customers, “Hey guys, we’ve decided that Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is actually far superior to what we can offer, so we want you all to leave us and start going there instead.”? Yeah right. That would never happen. Maybe that was a ridiculous analogy. Maybe I just like mentioning Dunkin’ Donuts as much as possible. But that’s beside the point.
Most people are all about drawing people to themselves, but John the Baptist was all about pointing people to Christ, and we need to do the same. How do we do this? By living for God in all the Ordinary moments of life. By witnessing to Christ by how we live (and by what we say)!
Don’t let Ordinary Time this year be ordinary for you. Let it be extraordinary! (see what I did there?…)
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