Besides the liturgical periods that have a clearly expressed specificity of their own (Lent, Easter Time, Advent, Christmas Time), the liturgical year also includes 33 or 34 weeks in which no particular mystery of Christ’s life is specially celebrated, but the mystery of our salvation is recalled in all its fullness. This period is called «Ordinary Time». The liturgical color proper to it is green.

Ordinary Time begins on the Monday after the Sunday of the Baptism of the Lord (the first Sunday after January 6) and continues until the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. Then it continues from the Monday after Pentecost and ends before First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent.

At Masses on all weekdays of Ordinary Time (except on feasts and memorials of saints), the prayer texts of the Sunday with which that week begins are used.

The Sundays of Ordinary Time are not distinguished by anything special and fully retain their original character as a «little Easter». Each of them involves the celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection.

In the current Roman Missal, eight options for the preface are provided for these Sundays; the first is dedicated to the «wondrous power of the paschal mystery», while the others reveal its inner content and consequences.

The banquet of the Word of God offered in Ordinary Time is quite varied. The cycle of Sunday readings exists in three versions (A – B – C), which succeed one another with the beginning of the new liturgical year (on the First Sunday of Advent). In year A the Gospel according to Matthew is read, in year B – the Gospel according to Mark, and in year C – the Gospel according to Luke. Besides the Gospel, two more readings are provided at Sunday Mass: the Old Testament reading is harmonized with the content of that day’s Gospel, while the second reading from the Apostolic Letters has a moral character. The Sunday liturgical prayers (the opening prayer, the prayer over the gifts, and the prayer after Communion) were taken into the current edition of the Roman Missal from the Tridentine Missal for the most part without any changes. Some were changed, and individual ones were written anew.

Two Sundays of Ordinary Time have a special character, since solemnities are provided on them: on the first Sunday after Pentecost – the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity; on the last, the 34th Sunday of Ordinary Time – the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe.

In the opinion of a number of liturgical scholars, it is precisely the Sundays of Ordinary Time that express the Paschal Mystery more fully than others, as well as the mystery of Christ’s life in general, precisely because of their “neutrality,” their freedom from one particular point of view, as is characteristic, for example, of the Sundays of Advent or Lent.

The material is taken from the website of the Siberian Catholic Newspaper