The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - The Liturgical Calendar: Ordinary Time is Extraordinary Time

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Do you tend to cruise through Ordinary Time during the Church’s liturgical year? Jeff reminds us that Ordinary Time can truly be an extraordinary time in our lives if we fully embrace the liturgical calendar and its purpose. By understanding the deeper meaning behind the liturgical calendar, we come to understand that Ordinary Time can be incredibly fruitful in our discipleship with Christ if we use it well. Snippet from the Show “Ordinary Time is called ordinary not because it is not special or less significant" Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail] Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

You're listening to the Jeff Kavana show. Episode 172, Ordinary Time is an extraordinary time for a disciple. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. So how have you been using your time so far during this whole COVID-19 deal? Have you been wasting the time by simply watching Netflix series one after the other and constantly looking for and asking people what's the next one? Or have you really used the time in a fruitful way?

Have you bought up opportunities, sort of speak? as Ephesians talks about. Well, we're going to talk about that today. You know, ordinary time is an extraordinary time, and we are in right now, the 12th week, in ordinary time. You might say, well, there's nothing ordinary about my life right now. In fact, well, my life is all jumbled, and my calendar doesn't look right, and I'm not going to work like I used to, and the kids are at home still, and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do in the fall. If you're you just joined us, you know, kind of midstream here. We are still in about our third month of the whole coronavirus pandemic and lockdown to some degree. I mean, some states are opening up,

but a number of states are finding a rise now in COVID-19. And so the beat goes on. I want to talk to you today about ordinary time and how it is an extraordinary time for a disciple. And that's what we're in right now in the liturgical calendar, ordinary time. I have thought, I have thought for so many years, you know, when I was growing up, I heard the, you know, the priest would say ordinary time, or we would see ordinary time written down in the bulletins. And to be honest with you, I just thought that was simply ordinary time. The rest of the year, it's extraordinary. You know, the rest of the year has, you know, things like Advent and Christmas and Easter and all these exciting points in the liturgical year, then we get into ordinary time. We're relaxed. We're

just kind of cruising and waiting for the next big holiday. Well, really, nothing could be further from the truth, as you're going to learn today, that extraordinary time is found in ordinary time. Ordinary time can be extraordinary time for the disciple. And so I want to start off with Ephesians 5. Hey, before I do that, just to let you know, I am going to give you some scripture today. And you can get all the show notes. If you don't get the show notes right now, you can certainly get them by texting my name as one word, Jeff Kaven's at. Here's the number.

It's a biblical one, 3377. So if you just type in my name, full name, Jeff Kavins, one word at 33777. We'll get you the show notes and you'll be on the list. in perpetuity. Big word for forever. So I want to start with Ephesians chapter 5, verses 15 through 17. We are talking today again about making the most of our time and ordinary time. And Ephesians 5 says, therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. I've talked to you before about different ways of understanding the will of the

Lord and knowing whether you are making a right decision or not. And certainly, we can understand the will of the Lord as we look at scripture, as we look at the teachings of the church. But there's another way that I want to introduce to you today that you can, again, know the will of the Lord, and that is by redeeming the time. That's making the most of every opportunity. in one of the ways that you can do that is to embrace the liturgical calendar, to actually embrace the liturgical calendar and understand where you're at in the liturgical calendar at any given day. Now, a couple of concepts here that we need to touch on.

The liturgical year of the church is carefully laid out with something in mind, and that something in mind is for you. That's something in mind that the church takes in mind is the life of Jesus Christ. That's right. The liturgical year, which I did not get growing up, I have to add, is literally walking you through week by week the life of Jesus. In other words, the life of Jesus is broken down into seasons. It's broken down into days. It's broken down into days. so that the Christian can live out the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. You get that? You get that?

The church, in her wisdom, has developed this liturgical calendar in such a way that you can live out the life of Christ in your own life. That's the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Now, the calendar is a means of relating to the saving actions of God, and that is not really a new invention, to be honest with you. When we look at the liturgical calendar, we're not just looking at, you know, random things that happen in the Bible. We're looking at the saving actions of God, but we're looking at the savings of actions of God in the life of Jesus. Now, in the Old Testament, is a little bit different. In the Old Testament, the people of God

entered into feasts and special holy days as a way to remember the works of God and to conform their lives to His will. And so you may recall, as you read the Old Testament, particularly that favorite book of yours, Leviticus. Chapter 23 of Leviticus, you'll realize that there are feasts of Israel and there are seven feasts that are commanded in Leviticus 23, and they are still observed by the Jewish people today. And those feasts which follow this agricultural theme in the acts of God in the life of Israel are Passover, unleavened bread. I'll put these in the notes for you. Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, Pentecost, trumpets, day of atonement, and the feast of booze or tabernacles. You may know that better by tabernacles. Those are the seven major feasts. And in those feasts, what does God do?

reveals himself in these agricultural feasts every year. Now, the seasonal aspect of each holiday involves agricultural activities in what's called Eretz Israel, or the land of Israel. And the feasts were to be a memorial of God's dealings with the people of Israel. Kind of an ingenious invention of the Lord when you say to every year, come back and revisit some of the major events in salvation history. Well, we didn't stop that when we come to the New Testament. In the New Testament, we still have the memorial of God's dealings with His people, but that memorial is Jesus Christ's actions. It's how God has dealt with us through the life of Jesus. And so as in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, they would look at these seven agriculturally based feasts to

dwell on how God has worked with Israel and how he's revealed himself to Israel and how he has loved Israel. Now in the New Testament, that all has been pointed now to the life of Jesus. And so the liturgical calendar in this new covenant era, the Catholic Church has put together an amazing array of days and weeks and months for us to enjoy and to understand and go deeper into the life of Jesus. And you know what? That's the answer. The answer to our problems, the answer to our anxiety, the answer to our difficulties and the conundrum that we face is the life of Jesus. You know, the rosary kind of does this too, doesn't it? It gives us a bunch of mysteries that are the mysteries of the rosary, and it's encountering,

we're encountering the life of Christ, and the Blessed Virgin Mary takes us on that particular adventure. And so the liturgical year, for some, very boring, and for others, very exciting. I guess it just comes down to, do you understand it, or do you understand it, or do you? or do you not understand it? If you understand that the liturgical calendar every year is the life of Christ, it's not boring at all. But if you don't understand it, you will get lost. You will become liturgically colorblind. Are you liturgically colorblind? Perhaps. Perhaps. Well, there is a certain logic of the liturgical calendar. It emphasizes the life of Christ, and so it starts

off with what? Advent. Advent is the beginning of the liturgical calendar. Advent talks about the beginning. It talks about the longing for, and we prepare for the coming of the king, right? We prepare for the coming of the king. And then we move on to Christmas. We celebrate the birth of the king. Now, a lot of us look forward to presents and having a week off, of work, and we hope that Christmas ends up on a Wednesday, so we have Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, Friday off. That's always a magical time of year. But the real point is that we celebrate the birth of the king. So we've got Advent, Christmas, and then we reach, ooh, oh, back off here. Ordinary time. I guess we can coast here. Ordinary time. No, we're not going to coast.

I'm going to tell you just in just a little bit here about what ordinary actually means, but we hit ordinary time. What do we do in ordinary time? We learn the teachings of the king and work to build up the kingdom. That's what we do in ordinary time. So Advent focus on the preparation. Christmas, we celebrate the birth, ordinary time. We learn the teachings of the king and we work to build up the kingdom. Then you move into Lent. That's when we prepare for the most important action of the king, which is his death, burial, and resurrection. We enter at the end of Lent, the Triduim, we enter into that final week of the king's life, and then Easter, we enter into the resurrection life of the king. So we have in the Trituum, the death, the Tritome and Easter, we have the death

burial and resurrection of Jesus. It is the climax of the year. And then what do we do? Oh, back to ordinary time. Again, back to ordinary time. We can rest until we We get to Advent, that's when we turn it up again and we start ordering special meals and everything. Well, you're going to miss the point if you don't understand what ordinary time is. I'm going to get to that in just a moment. But before we get to that, it's important to see that this liturgical season, the liturgical year that we celebrate is really described in a lectionary. And the lectionary is so extensive that over a three-year cycle, nearly the entire New Testament, and most of the significant portions of the Old Testament are covered.

And this is really proof that we as Catholics, what do we do? We go through the whole Bible. You know, we're one of the only groups of people in the world who every three years go through the entire Bible. I challenge you to find a non-denominational church. I challenge you to find a Baptist church, an assembly of God church that will go through as much scripture in a comprehensive way as Catholics do. So we have three cycles. We have cycle A, cycle B and cycle C. Or you could say year one, year two, year three. Well, cycle A goes through Matthew. That's the focus of Matthew. And then you have the Old Testament readings and the New

Testament readings and Psalms. And then the same thing for cycle B, but the focus is on Mark. cycle C, the focus is on Luke, and the Gospel of John is used in all three, especially during cycle A in Lent. And so we see the whole liturgical year, Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Triduum, Easter, Ordinary Time. But what is ordinary time? We'll talk about that. When we come back, you're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Hi, I'm Sonia Corbett, the Bible study of Angelista, and a Baptist turned Catholic. As a Baptist, I thought that Catholic beliefs were invented, that they came out of nowhere and had no connection whatsoever to the Bible. I also happened to believe that the Old Testament was about rules, rituals, and sacrifices that the New Testament gave us permission to ignore for a personal relationship with Jesus. It's a long story, but as God began connecting the Old and New Testaments for me, I would,

was stunned by the beautiful consistency of God in the Catholic Church. I can't tell you how exciting it was when God opened my eyes to the incredible ways the Old Testament foreshadows God's plan for the New Testament and for his Catholic Church. In my book fulfilled, uncovering the biblical roots of Catholicism, I explain these amazing connections, and I share how those connections helps change my life. If you read this book, I promise that you will come away with tools to help you share your Catholic faith easily, answer questions about how your Catholic faith fits with what's in the Bible, and most importantly, grow deeper in your relationship with Christ. If you're interested in learning more or ordering a copy of fulfilled, uncovering the biblical

roots of Catholicism, you can do so at ascensionpress.com or on Amazon. And welcome back to the Jeff Kavan show. By the way, if you do want the show notes for this show in all upcoming shows, then you can just simply write out my name, Jeff Kavens, at 337. This is the number you would send it to, 3377. I cannot tell you at this point, but right, I know, I just want to tell you in the weeks to come, big surprise. Big surprise. That's all you got to do today is tell your best friend who's Catholic and loves all things Catholic.

Just tell them on the Jeff Kaven show, something special is. coming. More about that in the weeks to come or days to come. Okay, we're back to ordinary time. Most of us think that ordinary time is ordinary time, but what we're going to see here is that ordinary time is actually extraordinary time. It's extraordinary time if you're a disciple. So, ordinary time. Okay, we have two major sections of the liturgical year that are are deemed ordinary time. And if you're like me, you grew up thinking that meant ordinary. Ordinary time begins on Monday after the Sunday following January 6th and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. And then it begins on again on the Monday after Pentecost and ends

before evening prayer of the first Sunday of Advent. That's a lot of words. I'm going to put it in the show notes for you. You don't need to pull over. Just get back on the road there. I'm going to put that in the show notes for you. So lots of time to learn the teachings of what? The greatest teacher of all Jesus Christ. And right now, where are we? We're in the 12th week of ordinary time. So ordinary time is called ordinary, not because it is not special or less significant, but simply because the weeks of ordinary time are numbered. That's right. They're numbered. That's where this comes from, the Latin word ordinalis, which refers to numbers in a series, stems from the Latin word ordo, from which we get the English word order. And so there's a, it's a, it's a,

numbered, ordered system. You could say, prepare yourself for this, your days are numbered. Your days are numbered. There is an order to this. Thus, the number of weeks of ordinary time, in fact, represents the ordered life of the church. That's where the ordinary comes from. It's the ordered life of the church. The period in which we live our lives, neither in feasting as in the Christmas and Easter seasons or in more severe penance as in Advent and Lent, but in watchfulness and expectation of the second coming of Christ. Now, the ordinary time is typically focusing on the teachings of Jesus and his kingdom, building up the kingdom, his church, his family. And so what's interesting is that in the time when we think it's just ordinary, it's actually extraordinary

because we are learning the teachings of Jesus in between these ultra-extorinary events, like Christmas and Tridua and Easter. Advent Lent, yeah, the ordinary time is actually extraordinary time. And what's the goal of all of this? Well, the goal of all of this is that you would order your life to Christ. That's ordinary time. Order your life to Christ. Order your life to Christ's life. And remember, the title of this episode is ordinary time is an extraordinary time for a disciple. Hopefully that's you. See, this is this ordinary time doesn't mean a lot to people who are not disciples, because the disciple's all about becoming like the master. A disciple is all about becoming like Jesus, thinking like Jesus, acting like Jesus,

teaching like Jesus, loving like Jesus, being merciful like Jesus, being compassionate like Jesus. We could go on and on that we only have one show here. And so that's our goal is that our life would be ordered to Christ, and one of the greatest tools in the world is ordinary time, because it is about his teaching and about his kingdom, and that's what we are about. And so as you finish one of the two periods of ordinary time in the liturgical year, we really should sit back and say, ah, that was incredible, his teaching. It's unreal. It's amazing, his teaching. And so order your life to Christ. Now, I got some suggestions on this in just a minute, some practical suggestions, so stay with me here. You know, one of the things that I love to say, and I put in my book,

The Activated Disciple, if you don't have that book, The Activated Disciple, we'll put it in the show notes. It's at Ascension Press. It is a book on how to become an activated disciple. and I mentioned that the shape of your day is reflected by the love of your life. Let me say it again, the shape of your day is reflected by the love of your life. It's true. Do you like NASCAR racing? The shape of your day, particularly your weekend, will change. It will.

You like bird watching? You love it? Well, the shape of your day is going to change. You'll get up early in the morning. and you'll get to see those birds that come out early in the morning. Maybe it's late at night. That's when you see your favorite bird. But the point is, your day will change.

It will change. Are you in love with your spouse? Your day will change. Are you in love with Jesus? Then the shape of your day will change. From morning to when you get up and you spend time with Jesus in the Word of God. And by the way, I have two well-worn Bibles. sitting in front of me right now. And they are well-worn. You know why? Because I'm in love with Jesus

and the shape of my day is changing. Evermore, even more during this COVID-19. I've got to be honest with you. This has been a difficult time, but also it's been a gift because it has allowed me to press in deeper and to know the mind of Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection. You see, the disciple, the shape of your day should change because you are a disciple. And so for the disciple, ordinary time is extraordinary time. Now, here's something that I want to encourage you to do. And this is easy to do. And I've done it in my calendar.

I've talked to other people who have done this even in the last week. You need to be aware of Jesus' calendar. Did you know that he has a Google calendar? He does. I'm not kidding. Jesus has a Google calendar. If you go on to Google and look for the liturgical calendar in the Catholic Church, you will find it. And when you find it, here's what I'm going to encourage you to do. Your family is going to get a kick out of this once they tell you. In fact, you know what? I'm going to put a link in the notes here for one option of downloading the church calendar. in case you can't find that. But once you find the church calendar, you can download that. You can download that calendar. Once you download that calendar, and I use Google for my calendar,

once I download it, guess what? I could change the name of it. And you know what I called it? Jesus calendar. And so I have my daughter's calendar. I've got Emily's calendar. I've got my personal calendar. I got my work calendar. Oh, what else do I have? Oh, and I have my favorite, my favorite days for anniversaries calendar, looking through here. And guess what I have at the top of them all? Jesus calendar. That's right. I got Jesus calendar. What is it? It's the liturgical calendar. How do you think I know it's the 12th week in ordinary time? Because I'm looking at Jesus calendar right now. And so I'm going to encourage you to download the church calendar. And you can go, listen, you can go into Google. Let me just tell you this. You can go into Google calendars,

settings, click on calendar, and then you can rename Jesus' calendar. Easy. Now, some of his disciples have done so well that Jesus gives them a whole day to be celebrated on his calendar. That is so cool. To know where you're at in the life of Christ at any given day throughout the year is one way to stay in touch with the Lord. You know what, what Emily and I do. I am holding in my hands this well-worn New Testament with my Great Adventure Bible to my left and another translation above that on my desk. I am holding the Bible that this morning Emily and I read for our devotional time together with our cup of tea. By the way, we had puer tea this morning.

That's a really good kind of tea. I'm kind of a puer, P-U-E-R-H, puer tea, kind of a puer snob. And anyway, with our puer tea and our Bible, we were reading the readings for today. And we were aware that it was the 12th week in ordinary time. So we took Jesus' calendar and Jesus' words, and that's the way we started off the day. You can do it, too. In all seriousness, pick up the calendar of Jesus, put it in your own. It'll really help you stay on target.

And this is really a beautiful thing about Jesus' calendar is that not only do we experience ordinary time as an extraordinary time to get a hold of his teaching, but every once in a while on the calendar, there'll be a feast day, like just recently John the Baptist, will have feast days related to our lady, feast days related to Peter and Paul, Augustine Athanasius, you know, there are people in God's family that are so extraordinary that they're actually put into Jesus calendar. How would you like that? How would you like that if it's in 200 years from now, you were written into Jesus calendar? The Feast of Leroy. The Feast of Donald. You're probably thinking I'm talking about Trump. I just pulled that out. I didn't have anybody in

mind. The feast of Jeff, wouldn't that be nice? Well, that depends on how I live, I guess. But the truth is, you're already in the calendar of Jesus because everything he did was for you. Everything he did was to give you life and to bring you to himself. And so you're really in there already. So I encourage you to do that. And one more thing before we go, when you have Jesus calendar and you see the events throughout the year, you might want to take some notes on some of these things. And in your journal, which I have my well-worn moleskin journal sitting here on the desk too, I can write down throughout the year some of the incredible things that God is doing in my own life.

Well, that's it, my friend. That's what I have for you today. And so I end by just encouraging you to remember that ordinary time is an extraordinary time for a disciple. Don't let it go by. Don't live willy-nilly. Really embrace the calendar of Jesus. Download it from Google.

When Google started, they probably had no idea that they were going to be disseminating the calendar of the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But it is, in fact, what they're going to be. they're doing for now. And we want to take advantage of that and begin to embrace the entire year. It's not vacation time in the church. It's ordinary time. And that means that it's an extraordinary time. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I thank you for my friend. And I thank you, Lord, for the great privilege of being in the body of Christ and connected to so many wonderful people. I thank you, Lord, for dying for us and rising from the dead and inviting us to

join you in your mission. Thank you, Lord, for giving us your calendar. Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to walk in your calendar. I pray, Lord, that we will truly become like you and think like you because we are following your life from Advent to Christ the king and your triumph. I thank you for this. in Jesus name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, I thank you for my friend. Ask you to bless them right now. And my friend, I remind you, if you want to get a hold of me, you can just write at the Jeff Kaven Show. That's easy. The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, everything out there. God bless you. You have a great week.

Thank you.