Not-so-Ordinary Time

Today we return to "Ordinary" time, liturgically speaking. This year, after such an Easter Season, it's kind of good to be back. I didn't want all those reminders, day after day, week after 7 weeks, of dying and rising. But the Lord kept sending them, and not only in the liturgical readings. While Mom was in the hospital (on the mend, we thought), the mother of another of our sisters was admitted for emergency heart surgery. As Mom died, this other mom seemed to be recovering. (Boy, did that reality call for surrender!) But on Mother's Day, Mrs. Connor too entered the fullness of life. Seven days later, my sister called to request prayers for a missing child, the son of her co-worker. The boy's body was found yesterday.

An Easter Season full of death: what meaning can there be? For me, especially after having to say good-bye on this earth to my mother, it has been a repeated call to focus on Heaven. As Mom, as Mrs. Connor, as little Owen all experienced during the Easter Season, this life is not the "fullness" of what we are made for. As beautiful as it can be, it is only the starting block.

So I re-enter Ordinary time with a very different perspective than I had when we left it back in February.  "We are God's children now. What we shall later be has not yet been revealed."