The Ordinary Time of the year is the time between the feast of the Baptism of the Lord and Ash Wednesday and between the feast of Pentecost and the first Sunday of Advent. To put it differently, all the days of the Church year that are not the Advent-Christmas season or the Lent-Paschal season constitute what is called the Ordinary Time of the year. In these two periods we have 33 or 34 Sundays. In Latin this period is called tempus per annum. The 33rd and 34th Sundays have in their Liturgy an eschatological character. By all means the Church wants to keep these Sundays to remind all that the universe is moving to its final fulfilment in Our Lord.

History
Before the liturgical reform, the counting of the Sundays started with the feast of Pentecost. We know that in the 8th century the liturgical books of the Franks testify to this custom. In 1334 the feast of the Holy Trinity was instituted. After that some local Churches started the custom of counting the Sundays after the Feast of the Holy Trinity. In some places Sundays were counted also after the feast of Epiphany.

Feasts

During the Ordinary Time of the Year, we have seven feasts of the Lord. Three of these feasts, all of significance, are common to all the liturgical families; the four other feasts are peculiar to the West. The three Common feasts are the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Triumph of the Cross and the Feast of Dedication. The four feasts peculiar to the West – begun as such by the Western Church and movable like Easter – are: the Trinity, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart and Christ the King.

The ordinary Sundays and weekdays receive their real form and content from the celebration of the Eucharist and from the liturgical readings. We know that the Sundays have a three-year cycle of readings whereas the weekdays have only a two-year cycle. Today, through the efforts of many liturgists we have good introductions to the readings of both, Sundays and Weekdays. It would be highly beneficial for priests and faithful alike to study the introductions and meditate on the scriptural texts which are in our missal.