St. Patrick's Online Bulletin

With the conclusion of the Masses last Sunday where we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord we entered another phase of the Church Liturgical Year called ordinary time. This portion of ordinary time will last until March 8, 2019 which is Ash Wednesday. From that point on we will focus on the forty days of Lent, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the fifty days of Easter. Then on Monday, June 8, 2019 we will once again resume ordinary time in our Liturgical Year. Even though we call our current time ordinary, there is nothing ordinary or mundane about it. Yes, we all have our daily routines. The lights, decorations, and splendor of Christmas decorations have run their course and now we are in ordinary time of winter in the world of nature. But there is nothing ordinary about our lives. If we get ourselves into the rut of a routine we can all too easily slip into the melancholy idea expressed in the first line of my column last week which came from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun!” The ordinary presence of the people we love and who love us are far from melancholy and mundane. Their presence is inspiring, encouraging, and life giving. Hopefully we can see the joy we bring to all those we encounter every day. Most importantly, hopefully we can see the presence of God.