Ordinary Time

For Cebuanos,

the holiday season that begins as early as the “-ber” months unofficially ended last Sunday, on Sinulog. The “Merry Christmases” transitioned very neatly into “Happy New Years” which quickly became “Pit Señors.” This year, we had a bonus: the Pope’s visit to our country. I don’t know about you, but I feel as though I’ve been in fiesta mode for the past two months.

I love the fiesta mode. People are nicer. Kinder. More patient. There’s a lot more traffic but, really, who cares when everyone is off to the next big party or novena or parade. It’s all part of the experience, isn’t it?

It’s what comes after the party that’s a little bit harder to digest: when the gifts are all opened, food stored away, face paint cleaned off and when the news coverage returns to its normal fare of crime, politics and celebrity gossip. Goodbye Christmas. Goodbye New Year. Goodbye Pit Señor. Goodbye Pope Francis.

And things go back to normal. The Catholic Church has a simple but very apt name for these times – ordinary time. A greater part of our lives are spent in ordinary time. We go to school or work, care for our families, deal with traffic, make ends meet, struggle against temptation – all in ordinary time. The highs we experience are personal. There’s no longer any collective euphoria as we sing the “Bato Balani” or as we light candles and sing the iconic song “Tell the World of His Love.”

It is one thing to weep at the compassionate words of the Pope but quite another thing to live out his message of going out to the poor. If, like me, you were quietly resolved to “go to the peripheries” as Cardinal Tagle suggested at the last Mass with the Pope while watching him, I must presume that like me, it didn’t sound like such a good idea any more when the weekday came around with all its demands and tight schedules. Who has time to care about the peripheries, really, when things start to close in?

The highs of our lives, the great consoling moments, the important revelations, the grand ceremonies, and sometimes even the tragic ones – all these breaks in our lives are not only meant to tide us over until the next big event, they’re meant to give us direction, too. All the great movements of the world, the ones that made a difference in history, that pushed forward a mass of people to change reality, question boundaries and, yes, seek out the peripheries, needed a dramatic event to get things going. Whether it’s a revolution or a religion, humans are spurred to change the status quo only after a particularly dramatic event.

Although it is the drama that begins an event, it is the everyday that determines its success. Easter may have inspired the Christians to spread the Gospel but it was the regular breaking of the bread, the sharing of the resources, the conversations around the hearth that sustained the mission. If we are to live out the joy of Christmas, or keep our New Year’s Resolutions, or give testimony to the Sto. Niño or witness to the Pope’s teachings, we must be prepared for the inconvenience of the every day, be faithful in creating new habits and routines, be cheerful in the face of adversity.

The fiestas are touchstone experiences but we cannot live in them forever. Those who attempt to do so end up drunkards or addicts. The rest of us, however, must journey on one step at a time, one prayer at time, one person at a time, one tear at a time, one dream at a time. And if we find ourselves lost or weary or confused, well then, that’s what those touchstone experiences are for – to remind us where we’re going and to give us courage to find our way there.