Adventures in RCIA - The Catholic Church Calender: Ordinary Time

"Ordinary" means "ordinal," here. It does not mean "boring."

Ordinary time comes in two parts. The first part comes between The Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord and ends the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
The second part begins the day after Pentecost, and ends the day before Advent begins.

Solemnities celebrated during ordinary time include:
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, - the Sunday after Pentecost.
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), - the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity.
Solemnity of St. John the Baptist, - June 24th.
Solemnity of Saint Peter (called the first Pope) and Saint Paul (author of many epistles) - June 29th
Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mary the Mother of Jesus) - August 15
Solemnity of All Saints - November 1. Note that the Eve of All Saints, aka All Hallows, is Halloween.

Some Solemnities are particular to groups or regions. For exmple, the Parish I am in Celebrates the Solemnity of the Anniversary of the Dedication of St. James Church,which is one of the churches in our Parish. St Patrick's Day is a Solemnity in Ireland, but a Feast everywhere else. You get the idea, I think.

The decor is supposed to be plants and flowers. The readings come mainly from the Old Testament prophets, Paul's Epistles, and the Gospels where there is teaching on a variety of topics.
The color for this season ( I forgot to tell you the Colors for Christmas) is Green, whereas Christmas is White. The Priest's vestments are green in ordinary time and White during Christmas, and have other colors for the other times in the religious calender.

As of this writing, next Sunday will be the Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord and after it, the Christmas decorations will come down. parishioner have been asked to stay a few minutes and help. I am greatly looking forward to serving in my new church for the first time.
Our Parish is a amalgamation of two parishes, St. James and St Patrick. They have the same pastor but hold special events at one place or another, and hold regular masses at different times, usually an hour or two apart. I am hoping to make it to both services so I can help take down decor at both churches. I have no idea how short handed they are or are not likely to be. I will find out how much the parishioners here like to help out,and whether or not the 80/20 rule applies here, when I get there.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - The Catholic Church Calender: Christmas Time

I will start with the time we are in now, which is still Christmas. If you are one of those people who wishes Christmas lasted longer than it does, you would appreciate the Catholic way of celebrating.
Christmas time in the Catholic Church lasts for several weeks.

Here is a brief list of the times and seasons on the Catholic religious calender.
Christmas time
Lent
The Triduum
Easter
Ordinary Time (from the word "ordinal" since it is ordered by numbers, not "boring" or "blase" time!)
Advent

A Solemnity is the highest ranking of all the special days on the Calender. A Holy Day of Obligation means that it is required to go to Mass that day. Holy Days of Obligation are always Solemnities, but Solemnities need not be Holy Days of Obligation.
A Feast Day is a Holy Day that commemorates an event, a mystery, a person. There are Feast days for every saint in the canon, and not enough days in the year to assign every single day to only one saint.

A shot of the handout from RCIA class, the page on Christmas Time, obviously.

That being said, today we are talking about Christmas Time.
Christmas Time starts with the Vigil of Nativity, held on December 24th, the day before the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, which is Christmas Day.
December 26th is the Feast of Saint Stephen,who was the first Christian Martyr ("Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen..." Now you know what that refers to!).
December 27th is the Feast,of Saint John, the Apostle, evangelist and author of the Gospel of John,one of Jesus' twelve disciples.

December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the babies who got killed in and around Bethlehem, age two years old and younger, when Herod was after Jesus. They are ranked with martyrs and remembered during this special time each year. They were sainted collectively, as only God knows their names now, and are the Patron Saints of babies. I thought that was interesting. We should probably ask them to pray for us to succeed in the fight against infanticide/abortion. It can't hurt anything...

The Sunday after Christmas is the Feast of the Holy Family - Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
January 1, New Year's Day, is the Solemnity of Mary, It is meant to coincide with Jesus' circumcision.
The Sunday after January first is the Solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord, which means Christ Jesus being revealed to humankind - our epiphany of knowing Him and who He is.
Christmas Time ends with the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which is the Sunday right after Epiphany.

All the Church's decorations - Christmas trees, poinsettia's, and Nativity figures - stay up until after the Feast of Jesus Baptism. Christmas Carols are sung all the way through the season, The scripture readings, which are the texts for the homilies, cover the accounts of Jesus' birth, the visit of the magi, and finally, Jesus' Baptism.

Enjoy the rest of the Christmas Season!

Godspeed.

~ Mother Star