As a result of being a Catholic educator, I have the privilege of discovering “lost treasures” of the Church. Sometimes finding these treasures is a result of a significant change promulgated by the Magisterium, of which the pope is the primary teacher.
Once such instance was discovering what the liturgical calendar was like before 1969. Prior to Pope Paul VI changing the Roman Missal, and consequently the entire liturgical calendar, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated six liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. Today we have four seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter; while Ordinary Time is not a proper liturgical season, but by definition simply the numbering of weeks between seasons.
Now while today it may be easier to think of four seasons (Advent-Fall; Christmas-Winter; Lent-Spring; Easter-Summer; though the timeframes do not really line up nicely), there has been something lost by incorporating Ordinary Time. We have lost the season of Epiphany and the season of Pentecost, as well as much more—do you know what Ember Days or Rogation Days are?
Being lost in Ordinary Time has caused perhaps a break from our connection with the cosmological nature of the liturgical year. In other words, the rhythm in which we worship is no longer flowing from the cosmological movement that God has ordered in creation. And with today’s resurgence of an ecological awareness and sensibilities, I think the Church might want to re-embrace the rhythm of God’s ordered creation within her year. There is something to be gained by being caught up in God’s cosmos as opposed to being lost in our own ordinary time.
