After Pentecost is hardly Ordinary - or is it?

Now that we have passed the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary we are here in the Sundays after Pentecost.

It is one of the many heights of humor left us by those meetings of the early 1960s that the Sundays between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, as well as those from Pentecost (roughly) until Advent are called the Sundays in "ordinary" time. It has been explained that since Easter depends on the lunar cycle and therefore shifts, some felt it was awkward to have those extra "Sundays after Epiphany" come in November. What they hope no one notices is that they usually skip one of the week numbers, sort of like an elevator in a skyscraper with no "13"... But some of us have noticed, and laugh!

And of course, as they take up their green vestments today, some former seminarians, armed with their Semitic verbs, their Q-document, their deutero-Isaiah, and their Jose the Spanish Prophet (is THAT how it is pronounced?) will probably feel the urge to talk about how "it's back to the ho-hum, normal boring, ordinary time" since we are "finally done with the big feasts". (Yawn.)

Wow - they must have missed something. Maybe they live very sheltered lives?

First, it should come as no surprise that ALL the Sundays for roughly the last 1972 years have been Sundays after Pentecost - you know, that day over in Jerusalem when the Spirit came in tongues of fire. (Hmm. I hear Gandalf's challenge to the Balrog on the bridge...)

And if we were going to label those Sundays, we would have said, "first, second, third,..."

Now for the fun part. These numbers are ORDINALs - and indicate an ORDER or a position. The Church Militant has been marching to the orderly beat of Sunday after Sunday, all the weeks since that Pentecost. Obligatory GKC quote: "If the Church Militant had not been a thing marching, all men would have been marking time. If the Church Militant had not endured a discipline, all men would have endured a slavery." [The Everlasting Man CW2:372] Rock drummers have something called a "click track" - like a metronome which gives the beat - for us, each seventh turn of the Earth provides our marching tempo!

Moreover, just as each Friday ought to be a "fast" day in commemoration of Good Friday (solemnities excepted), each Sunday is (or SHOULD BE) a feast day and a "little Easter." Perhaps too many of us have treated Easter in too ordinary (ahem!) a fashion - not having had a good Lent, perhaps - but we still have time.

Do something out of the ordinary while you're marching. Have a little Lent on Friday, and a little Easter on Sunday.

All this talk about time and counting suggests two interesting asides:

1. Did you know that the first countdown in literature was actually a count-up? Yes, they counted up to forty! In Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon the great cannon in Florida was ignited on December 1 (in a certain year of the late 1800s) at 10:46:40 PM. Note that this was not the first trip to the moon; the Italian poet Ariosto uses a chariot drawn by winged horses to get there in his Orlando Furioso - this may have been the earliest science fiction story! (RE the Verne story: if the Pope had built it, he might have called it the Roman cannon.)

2. And speaking of Roman things: did you know that the ancient Romans counted their days in the month DOWNWARDS? They were always looking forward to the next feast day! It is almost as if they had some inspiration about the years B.C. - but, my dear Virgil, that is another topic for another time. Hee hee.