Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: January 12, 2020
With today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Christmas “season” in the Church officially ends. (Unofficially, moving the Christmas decorations out of the Cathedral really marks that moment!) For the next 6½ weeks, until Ash Wednesday (February 26 this year) begins Lent, the Church simply counts off the weeks. Thus this period goes by the name of “Ordinal Time” – or more popularly, “Ordinary Time.”
It’s an accurate description: the Church lives and works and prays in very nondescript ways over these weeks, celebrating nothing special in particular but constantly mindful that we must grasp Jesus’ offer of salvation day-in and day-out, and not only just on high holy days.
In ordinal time the seasonal liturgical color is green, which traditionally has stood for the virtue of hope. We should live each day in hope, wondering how close we’re coming to our eternal destiny. It also strikes me that there’s a more artistic and poetic connection, too. Green is such a common color in nature – the base color that covers lawn, field, garden and forest – that artistically green connotes ordinariness. I read somewhere once that the most popular color for children and young people typically is some shade of either red or yellow, because these vibrant colors connote excitement and energy. Yet once the fires of youth begin to fade, most people identify more soothing and reassuring greens and blues to be favorites – with purples and granite greys beginning to appeal even after that. Hmmm. I guess I’m glad I’m still in a nice, long, personal “green phase” – and lucky that I can still remember my “red period”!
The Bible readings proclaimed in church on these ordinal Sundays this year feature a semicontinuous reading of Matthew’s Gospel. The community for which the first evangelist wrote was a “mixed” and sometimes fractious one, made up of some Christians who had been pagans before their conversion as well as of some Jews who had realized that Jesus was their Messiah. Often the customs of the former Jews had to be explained to the former pagans who had never been Jewish; often the former Jews had to be reassured that the former pagans weren’t pagans any longer! Little hints of tensions exist throughout that first-century Gospel that life in their community wasn’t always easy. They often had to wrestle with important decisions. That sounds familiar! That sounds typical! That sounds, well, ordinary!
I’m thinking as I write this of the Middle East, and especially regarding heightening tensions between the USA and Iran. I can’t predict the future, but I certainly hope that the various debates now going on – in the halls of government as well as in the media and around kitchen tables everywhere – concerning the situation lead to an approach which fosters peace, not war and violence.
Remember, debates are not bad things, and in fact form part of the basic foundation of our democracy. Many are weighing in with some very good ideas and Orstrategies – and some not so good ones. Just like you, I wince when important civic discourse descends to name-calling and intransigence, and just like you I am encouraged when folks respectfully put partisanship aside and show themselves willing to work together for peace, and for the common good. Promotion of the common good is a most basic value which both society and all religions claim to embrace. And peace, well, it’s always preferable to violence: it really is a matter of life and death!
Sincerely in Christ,
Very Rev Paul D. Counce
