ORDINARY TIME

   Last Sunday we celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, a feast which arose from the Church’s desire to return once more to the institution of the Blessed Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. It was the last of the great feasts relating to the mysteries of our redemption which began on Ash Wednesday over four months ago.

     Now on Sundays week by week once again we will see the green vestments which characterise “Ordinary Time”, as contrasting with the white of Eastertide, Trinity and Corpus Christi, the red of Pentecost and the purple of Lent.

    Ordinary (or “green”) time does not celebrate any one particular mystery, but the whole of Christian life between Christ’s first coming and His second on the Last Day. During this long period of five months we will return to the weekly, almost continuous, reading of excerpts from one of the three “synoptic” Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), each of which is read in turn in the three yearly cycle of Sunday Masses, of which this is St. Marks’s year.                               ~   Fr. Paul Dobson