by Veronica Szczygiel
On Jan. 13, I sat in a pew of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Greenpoint. It was the last day of the Christmas season; evergreen trees and wintry branches still wrapped the church in a veil of warmth. Baby Jesus still looked out from His manger of straw; the Magi still brought their gifts with expressions of wonder and awe.
I was there to hear a Christmas concert given by its organist, Malgorzata Staniszewska. Her jazzy renditions of traditional carols brought, as Father Joseph Szpilski, C.M., put it, “the fullness of Christ’s joy” into my heart. As her bandmates strummed the cello and tickled the piano keys, I couldn’t help but sigh to think that this would be the last vestige of Christmas before a whole year passed again.
As I calculated the time until the next holiday, Easter – which, occurring on the last Sunday of March, is fast approaching – I thought to myself: how dull the next few weeks will be! How much brighter the world is during a holiday!
The liturgical weeks between the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (Jan. 13) and Ash Wednesday (Feb. 13) are called “Ordinary Time.” The English language defines “ordinary” as plain, unexceptional and having no special quality or value. A whole ordinary month had to pass before we enter the season of Lent, where we focus on restraint and reflection.
But when I listened to the Sunday readings, I realized how inept this categorization really is. There is nothing ordinary about Jesus’ message, as exemplified in His life as well as in the founders of the early Church. During this “Ordinary Time,” Jesus turned water into wine at the Wedding of Cana. This was His earliest miracle. How fitting that Jesus turned water into wine, as wine is the very drink He turned into His blood. This miracle – at a feast, no less – was a precursor to Jesus’ last feast on Holy Thursday.
We also hear of the time Jesus recruited Simon Peter as an apostle. Jesus insisted that Simon, a mere fisherman, would be a fisher of men. Although Jesus was calling out specifically to Simon then, we know that this call is really put forth to all of us. We must use the talents we have in order to evangelize God’s message in the way that we can. We hear St. Paul tell the Corinthians (and us) that we each have our own individual gifts to share, as enabled by “the same God who produces all of them in everyone” (1 Cor 12:6). Truly, God designates a unique purpose for each of us.
These are some of the messages given during a time labeled as “Ordinary.” How inaccurate! Rather, this liturgical time is extraordinary. Each moment we have between one liturgical celebration and the next is momentous and powerful. We must recognize this power so that we, too, can realize that every day is a gift from God and must be celebrated as such.[hr] Veronica Szczygiel, a member of St. Anthony-St. Alphonsus parish, Greenpoint, teaches religion at Marymount Middle School, Manhattan.