Well, I have just finished Christmas having assisted at 6:30am Mass this morning. This being the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord marks the end of the festivities of the Nativity and the beginning of “Ordinary Time” (which is actually not all that ordinary as we typically use that word), because in a sense, Ordinary Time is the time of the public ministry of Jesus — certainly an extra-ordinary time any way you cut it.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Time as we typically experience it is chronos or chronological time, i.e., one hour after the other, in a linear fashion. Kairos, in contrast, is the sudden breaking into our awareness of the eternal yet present… almost a suspension in time, although not really. Sort of a sense of illumination and awe. You know the saying getting lost in time, lost in thought…. sort of like that but more.
Remember Jesus as a divine person was always in kairos time even as he lived chronos time his human and divine natures. Jesus was always in communion with the Father, even in the most mundane of events of his life.
What a wonderful mystery of our faith!
Ordinary time is a time for us to enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus’ daily life, his public ministry, his sharing in our experience of human life even as he constantly beheld his Father’s face in union with his Father and the Spirit.
Blessings on all of you!
