Seasons of Change

As Fr. David said in his homily on Sunday, Summer is over: it's not that season anymore, when the living is easy. Now that Fall is coming, with its cool air and colored leaves, Winter and hardship won't be far behind, and we need to prepare. The point is, he said, that we're deluding ourselves if we think our lives will be one endless summertime; things change, and we have to be ready for them. If we aren't, we'll be like the foolish man who built his house on sand and expected it to last through the storm.

The Church has historically been the guardian and keeper of our seasons: festivals and holy days mark every change. Thanksgiving in Fall, Christmas in Winter, Easter somewhere around Spring. The liturgical seasons of the year don't always follow the path of the sun, but no one can deny that the Church has a very clear sense of the movement of time.

Right now, we're in the season after Pentecost, also called "Ordinary Time." The liturgical traditions of the West all have one thing in common: the colour they're using right now is green.

Green is meant to remind us of life, of growth and growing things, but it also reminds us that nothing special is happening at the moment. We take green for granted. There's no Easter or Christmas or Pentecost. Time just rolls by like a gently-sloping meadow, so easily that you don't really notice it. Whatever you call it, Ordinary Time is a lot like summer because it's easy, fading into the background and making you feel like you have all the time in the world. A sense of timelessness starts to pervade our worship. And sometimes we start to forget that it won't always be like this.

Will we be ready, when Advent comes around, to say: "bring on the purple"?