Quiet Witness in Ordinary Time

When the Green Season Asks Something of You

Pentecost has come and gone, the red paraments are folded away, and the long stretch of green begins. In the Roman Rite this stretch is called Ordinary Time, and in many Protestant churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary the same term covers the weeks between Pentecost and Advent. The question worth carrying into it is simple: what does a congregation actually do with these months? The answer, in practice, is gratitude and hospitality, offered week by week rather than in one dramatic gesture.

What Ordinary Time Is, in Plain Terms

Ordinary Time is the part of the liturgical year that falls outside Christmastide and Eastertide, along with their preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent. It includes the days between Christmas and Lent, and the days between Easter and Advent. The liturgical color assigned to it is green, a detail most congregations notice in the vestments and the banners long before they learn the reasoning behind it.

The word "ordinary" here is commonly explained as coming from the ordinal numerals by which the weeks are counted. Michael Foley disputes that explanation, noting a lack of ecclesiastical usage and documentary support. For a pastor or an educator, that disagreement is not a distraction. It is a reminder that even the church's vocabulary has a history, and that a season anchored in numbering is a season anchored in habit.

How the Sundays Get Their Numbers

In the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, Ordinary Time begins on the Monday after the last day of Christmastide. Because it starts on a Monday, there is no day called the First Sunday in Ordinary Time. The lowest-numbered Sunday is the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. That first block runs through the Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday.

Ordinary Time resumes on the Monday after the Solemnity of Pentecost. The two Sundays that follow Pentecost are the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, which belong to Ordinary Time but are not numbered. In regional calendars where Whitmonday is a day of obligation, the season and the green color may begin on the following Tuesday instead.

The last day of Ordinary Time is the day before the First Sunday of Advent. The last Sunday is the Solemnity of Christ the King, with the Sunday before it counted as the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, the numbers running backwards from there. If you have ever wondered why the count seems to jump, that is why: the weeks count forward from the beginning and backwards from the end.

Where the Protestant Calendar Picks It Up

Following the lead of the liturgical reforms of the Roman Rite, many Protestant churches adopted the concept of an Ordinary Time alongside the Revised Common Lectionary, applying the term to the period between Pentecost and Advent. Use of the term is not common, which means a congregation may be observing the season without naming it. Churches that have adopted the lectionary include those of the Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, Old Catholic and Reformed traditions.

The numbering differs by tradition, and that difference shapes what a worship committee plans. In some traditions the first period is called Epiphanytide, beginning on Epiphany Day in the Anglican Communion and Methodist churches, and the stretch from Trinity Sunday to Advent is called Trinitytide. In the Church of England, Sundays in this narrower sense are called Sundays after Trinity, except the final four, which are termed Sundays before Advent. In the Episcopal Church in the United States, the older Catholic names in English, Sundays after Epiphany and Sundays after Pentecost, remain normal usage. The total number of Sundays varies with the date of Easter and can range from 18 to 23.

Why Gratitude Fits the Green Weeks

Nothing in the structure of the season demands a program. That is precisely its gift. A season with no dramatic turning point asks a congregation to notice what is already there: the ordinary faithfulness of people who show up, the volunteers who arrive early, the committee that keeps meeting in July when attendance dips.

Gratitude in these weeks can be concrete and small. A note to a Sunday school teacher at the end of the program year. A prayer of thanks naming the person who has run the coffee hour for a decade. A sermon series that walks through the numbered Sundays without treating them as filler. The count itself is a discipline: 33 or 34 weeks, depending on the calendar, and every one of them has a text appointed.

What Changes When the Season Is 33 Weeks?

Due to the configuration of the calendar year, Ordinary Time may have a total of either 33 or 34 weeks. As a mnemonic, if the First Sunday of Advent falls in November, the previous liturgical year's Ordinary Time has 33 weeks. If it falls on December 2 or 3, it has 34 weeks. If it falls on December 1, the previous year's Ordinary Time has 34 weeks only when it is a leap year.

In a year with 33 weeks, the omitted week is the one between the weeks immediately surrounding Lent and Easter Time, which varies with the date of Easter. This is worth knowing before you promise a congregation a full teaching arc on a book of the Bible. The schedule you build in September may not survive the arithmetic of the spring.

Hospitality Between Pentecost and Advent

Hospitality in Ordinary Time looks different from hospitality at Christmas and Easter, when visitors arrive on their own. The green weeks are when a congregation decides whether it will seek anyone out. Summer travel, vacation Bible school, and the start of the school year all fall inside this stretch, and each one changes who is in the room.

Some Protestant denominations mark the end of the season with a distinct period. This can range from the three Sundays prior to Christ the King, as in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, to 13 or 14 weeks, most notably in the United Methodist Church. The Church of England observes the time between All Saints and Advent Sunday. In traditions that keep such a season, the closing weeks carry an eschatological weight that a hospitality plan can lean into: who is not yet at the table, and what would it take to invite them.

A congregation does not need a new curriculum to practice this. It needs a list of names and a reason to use it. The weeks after Pentecost are long enough for a first visit, a follow-up, and a second conversation, which is more than a holiday season ever allows.

Where the Calendar Pushes Back

An Ordinary Time weekday gives way to any solemnity, feast, or obligatory memorial that falls on the same day, and may optionally be replaced by a non-obligatory memorial or by any saint mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for that day. The General Roman Calendar lists feasts and solemnities that may replace a Sunday of Ordinary Time, including the Presentation of the Lord on 2 February, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on 24 June, Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, the Transfiguration on 6 August, the Assumption on 15 August, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, All Saints on 1 November, and the Dedication of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran on 9 November.

Universal norms also list proper solemnities that outrank Sundays in Ordinary Time in the relevant church building or community: the principal patron of the place, city, or state; the dedication and its anniversary for one's own church; the title of one's own church; and the title, founder, or principal patron of an order or congregation. If your congregation keeps a patronal festival, it lands somewhere in the green weeks, and the planning calendar should say so.

A Season That Keeps Its Own Time

The decision to treat the whole of Ordinary Time as a unit led to the abandonment of older terminology, in which the Sundays of the first period were called Sundays after Epiphany and those of the second were called Sundays after Pentecost. That shift is easy to read as housekeeping. It is also a claim: that the weeks between the festivals belong to the same season as the weeks that carry a name.

Gratitude and hospitality are not seasonal decorations you hang for a few weeks. They are the practices that make a numbered Sunday mean something to the person who walks in cold. The page on Ordinary Time lays out the calendar in more detail than any parish newsletter will, and it is worth reading alongside your own denominational calendar, because the two will not always agree.

Pick one Sunday before Advent, name one person who has not been asked, and make the invitation before the green gives way to purple.

About the reference page

The Wikipedia entry on Ordinary Time describes the part of the liturgical year in the Roman Rite that falls outside Christmastide and Eastertide, its green liturgical color, and the numbering of its Sundays. It sets out the rules for when the season begins and resumes, the solemnities and feasts that may replace a Sunday, and how the count of 33 or 34 weeks is determined. It also covers the term's use among Protestant churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, including regional differences such as Epiphanytide, Trinitytide, and Kingdomtide.