By IHE Fellow Lucia Ann Silecchia, J.D.
“Ordinary time.” This is a season of the year – and season of life — that is deeply, drearily underrated.
As a child, I dreaded the days after Christmas. Trees were dragged to the curb with faded tinsel hinting of glories just passed. The longest vacation of the school year gave way to cold, holiday-deprived Januaries. Beloved Christmas music abruptly left the airwaves. Easter joy, summer road trips, 4th of July celebrations, and the springtime panoply of graduations, First Communions, Confirmations, family birthdays and weddings all seemed so far away.
To make matters worse, this new season bears what looks like the blandest of names: “ordinary time.” Such a mundane, plain word is the moniker attached to most of the year – and most of our lives.
Read the rest of the article here.
Originally published on 18 January 2019 at the The Catholic Free Press.
IHE Fellow Lucia Ann Silecchia, J.D. is a professor of law, and director of the Summer Law Program in Rome at The Catholic University of America. Her expertise is in environmental law and ethics, Catholic social thought & law, and Catholic higher education.
The Institute for Human Ecology
The Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Avenue, NE
339 Caldwell Hall
Washington, DC 20064
© 2024 The Institute for Human Ecology. All rights reserved.