The term "Ordinary Time" is one of the optional terms The United Methodist Book of Worship (see page 224) gives to two periods of the Christian Year. Following the great festal seasons of Christmas and Easter is a period called "Season after . . . ."
The term "Ordinary Time" does not mean boring, nothing new, or featureless. Laurence Hull Stookey in Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church (Abingdon, 1996) explains that the term "ordinary" as used in the Christian calendar comes from the way the Sundays outside Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter are numbered with ordinal numbers (first, second, third) instead of cardinal numbers (one, two, three). In Ordinary Time, the Sundays are designated as First Sunday after Pentecost, Second . . ., Third . . .and so on.
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The Wiki version of Ordinary Time:
Ordinary Time is a season of the Christian (especially the Catholic) liturgical calendar. The name corresponds to the Latin term Tempus per annum (literally "time through the year"). Ordinary Time comprises the two periods — one following Epiphany, the other following Pentecost — which do not fall under the "strong seasons" of Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter.
The term Ordinary does not mean common or plain, but is derived from the term ordinal or "numbered." The weeks in ordinary time are numbered, although several Sundays are named for the feast they commemorate, such as Trinity Sunday (first Sunday after Pentecost) and the Feast of Christ the King (last Sunday in OT), and for American Catholics, the Feast of Corpus Christi (second Sunday after Pentecost).
The ChurchYear.Net version:
Basically, Ordinary Time encompasses that part of the Christian year that does not fall within the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. The Catholic Church celebrates two periods of the year as Ordinary Time. In the United States, the first period begins after the Masses have been said on the evening of the day of the Feast of the Baptism of The Lord (the Sunday after The Epiphany), meaning that the feast itself falls within Christmastide, but the whole day does not. The Sunday Masses fall within Christmastide, but Evening Prayer that night is in Ordinary Time. The next Sunday is still reckoned "The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time," because it is the Sunday of the second week in Ordinary Time. The reckoning can be confusing, and has many asking "what happened to the first Sunday in Ordinary Time?" This first period of Ordinary Time runs until the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The Second period of Ordinary Time runs from the Monday after Pentecost until Evening Prayer is said the night before Advent begins. This includes Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of Ordinary Time. In some denominations, the Sundays of the second period of Ordinary Time are numbered "Sundays After Pentecost."
Ordinary time does not need to be "ordinary," and is not meant to mean that somehow we get a break from the Liturgical Year. The opposite is true: Ordinary Time celebrates "the mystery of Christ in all its aspects." Many important liturgical celebrations fall during Ordinary Time, including, Trinity, Corpus Christi, All Saints, the Assumption of Mary, and Christ the King. In addition, the Church continues to celebrate Saints days and other events such as The Octave of Christian Unity. The major feasts, when occurring on a Sunday, trump the regular Ordinary Time Sunday lessons and liturgy. In the American Catholic Church, Corpus Christi is usually transferred to a Sunday, so often there are fewer than the 33 or 34 Sundays labeled "Sundays of Ordinary Time," although these Sundays still fall within Ordinary Time. We also may remember and celebrate the parts of Jesus' life that were ordinary, much like our own lives. The color of green is appropriate because it is the most ordinary color in our natural environment.
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