Ordinary Time

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Disciplinary status: Church discipline
Theological status: Theological synthesis
GuideThe entry combines Catholic doctrine about worship with approved liturgical discipline and theological explanation; the labels do not make every ceremonial norm irreformable.
Contents

Ordinary Time is the weeks of the Roman liturgical year outside Advent, Christmas Time, Lent, the Paschal Triduum, and Easter Time, ordered principally to the celebration of Christ's saving mystery in its fullness.[1]

Place in the Roman year

Ordinary Time occurs in two periods. The first begins on the Monday after the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and continues through the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The second begins on the Monday after Pentecost and continues through the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. Together they comprise thirty-three or thirty-four weeks.

The word ordinary refers to the ordered numbering of the weeks, not to worship that is unimportant or spiritually uneventful. Every Sunday remains the Lord's Day and the primordial Christian feast, and every Mass makes present the one Paschal Mystery of Christ.

Sundays and weekdays

The Sundays unfold Christ's preaching, signs, call to discipleship, journey to Jerusalem, death, and resurrection through the semicontinuous proclamation of the synoptic Gospels in the three-year lectionary cycle. The final Sunday celebrates Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe and directs the year toward its eschatological fulfillment.

On weekdays the Roman Lectionary reads the synoptic Gospels in a one-year sequence and provides a two-year cycle for the first reading. A weekday yields according to liturgical precedence when a solemnity, feast, or obligatory memorial occurs; an optional memorial may be celebrated according to the rubrics.

Color and observance

Green is the ordinary liturgical color of the season, expressing the Church's persevering life and growth in Christ. The color does not determine rank: a Sunday in Ordinary Time outranks ordinary memorials, while a solemnity or feast of the Lord can replace the seasonal formulary according to the table of precedence.

Sunday Mass remains obligatory apart from the excuses and dispensations recognized by law. Weekdays of Ordinary Time are not holy days of obligation merely because they belong to the numbered cycle, although a solemnity observed on one of those dates may carry an obligation under universal or particular law.[2][3]

References

  1. 1.Catechism: The Liturgical Year — Paragraphs 1163–1173 on Sunday, Easter, the annual cycle, and the sanctoral cycle
  2. 2.Mysterii Paschalis — Paul VI's promulgation of the revised General Roman Calendar and universal norms
  3. 3.Code of Canon Law: feast days and days of penance — Canons 1246–1248 on Sundays, holy days of obligation, and participation in Mass