About ORDINARY TIME DEVOTIONS

High Altar, St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church, Athens, Georgia

Source = Parish Website

This is the third of series of three weblogs I have created to cover every day of the Western Christian year.  The weblogs, in order, are ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS and LENTEN AND EASTER DEVOTIONS, which link into this website.

Ordinary Time, in Western Christianity, is a term which applies to both the Season of Epiphany (from January 6 to Shrove Tuesday) and the Season after Pentecost.  ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS covers the Epiphany portion of Ordinary Time.  So I devote this website to devotions for the Season after Pentecost, which has Sundays labeled according to Propers, numbered from 1 to 29.  Each Proper is for a Sunday closest to a designated date.  Proper 1, for example, is the Sunday closest to May 11.  Rarely will any calendar year see the observance of the maximum possible number of Sundays, but I plan to write devotions for them all, for pondering and writing these constitutes a good Bible study, at least for me.  I hope, however, that what I write, regardless of whether it is for an observed day any given year, will benefit you, O reader.  Generally speaking, the first Proper observed during a year with an extended Season after Pentecost might be Proper 4 or 5, preceded by Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost.

The Season after Pentecost constitutes nearly half of the Western Christian year.  Due to the fact that the main color for paraments and vestments is green, the informal name for this time is the “long green season.”  This season begins on the Monday after the Day of Pentecost and ends on the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent.

The Christian Year, as we of the Western Christian practice it, has two main holy days:  Christmas and Easter.  Christmas is a fixed date, December 25.  The date of the beginning of Advent, which marks the beginning of the Western Christian calendar, can be as early as November 27 and as late as December 3, depending on which day of week December 25 falls.

The date of Easter Sunday depends on lunar cycles.  The range of dates for this holy feast is March 22 to April 25 in Western Christianity.  The Season of Easter lasts for fifty days, ending with the Feast of Pentecost, which can fall as early as May 10 and as late as June 26.

So the Season after Pentecost can begin as early as May 11 and as late as June 27 and end as early as November 26 and as late as December 2.  The season can last about half the year, give or take a few Sundays.

I follow three lectionaries on this weblog.

The first is the Revised Common Lectionary (Episcopal Edition), which operates on a three-year cycle (Years A, B, and C).  The church year spanning Advent 2010-Ordinary Time 2011 is Year A.  I have written and posted a devotion for Trinity Sunday, Year A, at SUNDRY THOUGHTS OF KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR, my original weblog.  I will import that devotion from SUNDRY THOUGHTS.  But the devotions for Propers 1-7, Year A, are original to this website, for the first Proper observed in 2011 is Proper 8.

I use the two-year Monday-Saturday Eucharistic lectionary for the Season of Epiphany and the Season after Pentecost, also.  The Episcopal Church’s Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010) contains this lectionary.  The readings for the Weeks of 6, 7, 8, and Last Epiphany double as those for the weeks of Propers 1, 2, 3, and 4.  So much of the initial content of this weblog is relabeled, copied, and pasted material from ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS.

The third lectionary I use is a six-week topical one found in the Episcopal Lesser Feasts and Fasts and its successor, Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010).  Devotions for all these are present at SUNDRY THOUGHTS, from which I will import them.

I plan to incorporate other material from SUNDRY THOUGHTS into this weblog, too.  My original weblog is home to A Great Cloud of Witnesses:  An Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days, a running project.  From the Ecumenical Calendar I intend to import Independence Day (U.S.A.), Labor Day, the Eve of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Feast of the Reformation, All Hallows’ Eve, the Vigil of the Eve of All Saints’ Day, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, as well as my creation, the Feast of All Faithful Members of the Clergy (June 21).

Many of the Sunday readings for the Season after Pentecost have a theme concerning the Kingdom of God.  So I have chosen an appropriate Latin subtitle, Regnum Dei, for this weblog.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

NOVEMBER 12, 2010 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF ST. JOSAPHAT KUNTSEVYCH

THE FEAST OF CHARLES SIMEON