The calm of the Lord

'Hello friends. We've just come out of once again another lockdown. Certainly not ordinary times for us. Yet we've begun once again on our Sunday celebrations, the time of season in our liturgical year called Ordinary Time. When we use that word in our liturgical season we're not meaning, "ho-hum", or just a bit of mundane “what do we do for the next several months?”. No, it’s ordinary in the sense that the grace of our Lord is ordinarily present with us in this journey that we would make over these next several months. Our ordinary time now will stretch out until the feast of Christ the King in late November, before we begin a new liturgical year for December for the season of Advent.

I just want to, in our extraordinary situation in which we find ourselves in at this moment, that sense of the ordinary grace that the Lord presents to us is something that I want to offer to you today as a sustaining reality for you through these times. We can feel I think a bit like what the disciples felt when they are in that boat on the storm on Lake Galilee. They were frightened, they were distressed, disconsolate. Yet Jesus was there — calmly present among them and in his presence, in His grace, the storm in their lives settled as well.

And so we might take that as an image perhaps that we might hold at this time, in the storminess of our situation. Nonetheless, the calm of the Lord is present with us, His ordinary grace, which is itself extraordinary, is present with us.

So, happy Season of Ordinary Time, and may it be a journey that we each can make with the grace of the Lord in our lives. May the Lord bless you and keep you.'

Archbishop Peter A Comensoli