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In the Catholic Church's liturgical calendar, there is a period known as Ordinary Time. What is it exactly and what differentiates this period from the others in the calendar.
The answer should also include the origin of the name "Ordinary?" My understanding is that the period is not called Ordinary Time just because the period is "ordinary."
The Ordinary time is a period within the Church's liturgical year that does not celebrate like Christmastide (25 of dic.- sunday after epiphany) or Pascha(Easter sunday-pentecost), nor is penitential like advent(4 sundays before Christmas-24 of dic.) or Lent(Ash Wed.-Holy Saturday). It is a period of Hope and growth in Christ. It occurs two times, the first from Christmas to Lent and the second from Pascha to Advent. It liturgical color is green.
Edit: "Ordinary Time" implies just that it is not seasonal, this page might help you look more in depth
In Wikipedia it gives a small history of the term
Before the liturgical reforms of 1970, there were two distinct seasons in the Roman Breviary and Roman Missal, known as the season after Epiphany and the season after Pentecost, respectively. Liturgical days in these times were referred to as the -nth Sunday after Epiphany or Pentecost, or Feria II,III,IV,V or VI after the -nth Sunday.
www.cyberfaith.com/calendar/ordinary.html
Also Eastern Orthodox observe Ordinary Time.
The Catholic Church has always divided the year into seasons during which specific aspects of the mysteries of Christ's life were celebrated. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Church began its liturgical year with Advent, beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and running through Christmas Eve. The season of Christmas was next, running through the Epiphany (January 6). The next major season was Lent, from Ash Wednesday (the seventh Wednesday before Easter) until the day before Easter; then the Easter season itself, running through Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter. The two remaining stretches of the year (six weeks or so after Epiphany and twenty-seven or so after Pentecost) were referred to as the Sundays after Epiphany (or Pentecost): thus the Second Sunday after Epiphany or the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
In 1963, the Second Vatican Council ratified the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy known as Sacrosanctam Conciliam, intended to reform the liturgy "in order that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from [it]" (Sacrosanctam Conciliam, paragraph 21) In particular, the Council decreed:
The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons shall be preserved or restored to suit the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained, so that they duly nourish the piety of the faithful who celebrate the mysteries of Christian redemption, and above all the paschal mystery.
(paragraph 107)
Consequently, in 1969, the Vatican issued the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Roman Calendar, which discussed in detail the changes to be made. One of these was the introduction of the season of Ordinary Time, which replaced what had been the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost. The document defines Ordinary Time in this way:
Ordinary Time begins on the Monday which follows the Sunday occurring after 6 January and extends up to and including the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent1; it begins again on the Monday after Pentecost Sunday and ends before First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the First Sunday of Advent2.
1That is, until the seventh Tuesday before Easter.
2The first Sunday of Advent is the fourth Sunday before Christmas. The reference is to the first official prayer service of the previous evening.
As the document states,
There remain in the yearly cycle thirty-three or thirty-four weeks [depending on the year] in which no particular aspect of the mystery of Christ is celebrated, but rather the mystery of Christ itself is honoured in its fullness, especially on Sundays. This period is known as Ordinary Time.
I have found no official discussion of the etymology of the term "Ordinary". The formal Latin term is "tempus per annum", that is, "time throughout the year". One source on the Church year states, without citing sources, that
Many sources, online and in print, suggest that Ordinary Time is derived from the word ordinal, meaning "numbered," since the Sundays of Ordinary Time, as in other seasons, are ordered numerically. However, other sources suggest the etymology of "Ordinary Time" is related to our word "ordinary" (which itself has a connotation of time and order, derived from the Latin word ordo).
Translations into other languages found on the Vatican's website seem to indicate the connotation may be "ordinary", "common", or "usual"—for example, the Italian translation of a homily by Pope John Paul II translates it (in the first paragraph of section 2) as "ordinario", and the Portuguese version translates it as "comum". Both those words appear to translate into English as "common", "ordinary", or "usual", indicating that John Paul II at least believed the phrase "ordinary time" meant "common or usual time".
USCCB has
The liturgical year is made up of six seasons:
- Advent - four weeks of preparation before the celebration of Jesus' birth Christmas - recalling the Nativity of Jesus Christ and his manifestation to the peoples of the world
- Lent - a six-week period of penance before Easter
- Sacred Paschal Triduum - the holiest "Three Days" of the Church's year, where the Christian people recall the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus
- Easter - 50 days of joyful celebration of the Lord's resurrection from the dead and his sending forth of the Holy Spirit
- Ordinary Time - divided into two sections (one span of 4-8 weeks after Christmas Time and another lasting about six months after Easter Time), wherein the faithful consider the fullness of Jesus' teachings and works among his people
Ordinary Time is simply an ordinary season without a particularly special character or commemoration.
It then explains Ordinary Time:
Christmas Time and Easter Time highlight the central mysteries of the Paschal Mystery, namely, the incarnation, death on the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Sundays and weeks of Ordinary Time, on the other hand, take us through the life of Christ. This is the time of conversion. This is living the life of Christ.
Ordinary Time is a time for growth and maturation, a time in which the mystery of Christ is called to penetrate ever more deeply into history until all things are finally caught up in Christ. The goal, toward which all of history is directed, is represented by the final Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
There are other systems of numbering.
The Traditional Latin Mass follows the Calendar before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and counts Sundays after Pentecost for the larger part of "Ordinary Time" and Sundays after Epiphany for the smaller part, with the three Sundays immediately before Lent having their own special names.
In the Personal Ordinariates set up by Anglicanorum Coetibus, commonly called "Anglican Ordinariates", the system is broadly that of the Traditional Calendar, but they count Sundays after Trinity following the system of the Book of Common Prayer which was itself inherited from the English pre-Reformation Sarum Missal.
I'm not a Catholic, but in the traditional Anglican system this would be "the Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity Sunday". Then would follow the various seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent etc until the next Trinity Sunday.
So I speculate that "Ordinary time" simply means "Outside the period of special seasons."
