Welcome to St Mary's the Virgin
Easter Season is behind us, but the Church calendar remains full of festivals. After Easter comes the Ascension, after that Pentecost, then Trinity Sunday, and next week contains Corpus Christi, when we give celebrate the presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. Much to give thanks for then.
I wondered though, the set dates aside, whether this ongoing banquet of feasts indicates a desire of the Church calendrists of old to hang on to the joy of Easter and its glorious golds as the prospect of green ‘ordinary’ time encroached. If so, this is rather a shame, I think. The vast portion of the liturgical year is green; it would be at best unfortunate if we felt unable to look forward to it. Corpus Christi’s long title is the ‘Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ” and was instituted as a festival in 1264.* What the day celebrates is the presence of God in the very ordinary – bread and wine have always been ordinary expected ingredients in staple diets, and while some see the bread as representing the hum-drum of daily life and the wine signifying more celebratory moments they are equally relevant in any case.
Yes, ordinary time is coming, but it is green, growing, ripening time. I think of it like the days when the people you have had staying at your house have just left – yes, it was lovely to see them, but isn’t it also rather good to have your home back to yourself? The festivals encourage not to forget the great miracles: ordinary time reminds us of all the minor miracles that make up our lives – each little flower that opens and every bird that sings as the old familiar hymn tells it.
So gentle readers, approach Ordinary Time with happy anticipation: God loves the ordinary.
Fr Neil.
* Since people had taken to worshipping the bread and wine rather than Jesus himself, Corpus Christi was made illegal in England in 1548, returning to the Anglican calendar in 2000.
