What Time Is It?

A Deep Reading of Our Lives throughout the Liturgical Year

Gloria O'Toole Ulterino

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666701821
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Do you long for a more life-affirming, enriching faith life? Are you eager to encounter inspiring models of faith? If so, come! Walk the pages of this book through the seasons of the liturgical year. Come and meet Dorothy Day, perhaps in a new way. Come and be inspired by a seemingly ordinary tent-maker, a woman named Prisca, friend of Paul and leader of the early church. Be surprised by a contemporary woman with cerebral palsy, who breathes abundant life into the Good News of Easter... or an extraordinary founder of a local hospice movement. In this book, you will discover a deep probing of each season, lived in extraordinary ways by seemingly "ordinary" women. So come, be inspired. Be encouraged for your own life's journey.

1

Advent/Christmas/Epiphany

An Introduction to the Season of Incarnation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us. (John 1:1, 14a)

We are flesh. Creatures/clay of the earth. Milking cows. Operating machines. Polishing furniture and words. Scrubbing floors. Cuddling babies. Nursing and washing them. Teaching, cajoling, nurturing them into adulthood. Baking bread. Anointing the suffering with compassion. Simply being present to one another.

Yes, we are flesh, clay of the earth. And yet, so much more besides! For we are “the work of” God’s hand!1 Kneaded by our Potter. Imbued with God’s Holy Spirit. For Jesus, the Christ, the Long-Awaited One, has actually taken on our human flesh! Will, then, the yearnings of the prophet Isaiah of old, finally root themselves in us, as well? “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.”2

Oh, how well we know the darkness! Physical darkness this time of the year for those of us in the northern climes. Or, nagging anxiety-producing darkness. Straining to see beyond illness, financial insecurity, or even ruin. Pondering. Questioning. Aching from isolation, whether from loved ones or our deepest desires. Can we even name those desires?

Yet, the Light has come! . . . and with it, a shred of hope. For a new year begins! Will our longings and dreams sidle up to, or even embrace, current struggles? Will our wrestling produce newfound courage, strength, and even peace? Can we finally claim some measure of the deepest truth of all: that God—the Light and Love of Our Lives, the Heartbeat of the Universe—is simply longing to be birthed in us? To take root in us, breathe in us, hope and dream in us, take on our human flesh, again and again and again.

Will this be easy? No. So much life is crammed into this season. We’re always in danger, each year, of settling for surface frivolities rather than engaging with God’s deepest longings . . . and ours. But, is it possible? Yes, oh yes, indeed! Come and see, walk with me as we encounter so many, like Mary, who have said “Yes” to God, over and over and over again. We begin, then, with this season of incarnation: with Advent yearning and preparing, with Christmas birthing, and ultimately with Epiphany revelation/unveiling to the ends of the earth.

Advent: A Season of Longing, Yearning, Preparing

It takes guts, but we dare to begin another year, even as cold and darkness (in the northern half of the globe, at least) come knocking on our door. For we are never alone. Others, so many other people of faith, have withstood the shadows and emerged stronger, wiser, and fairly bursting with God’s merciful compassion. Listen to the priest Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, now filled with the Holy Spirit at the celebration of John’s circumcision. And do not forget that he and his wife, Elizabeth, had endured years of childlessness before the joy of this day.

By the tender mercy of our God,

the dawn from on high will break

upon us,

to give light to those who sit in darkness

and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of

peace.3

In August 2005, on one morning in Vermont, I experienced something of what Zechariah might have felt, as a stunning sunrise birthed this poem in me.

This morning the angels

left wispy puffs in their wake,

like white cotton candy,

clinging to the mountaintop.

I watch . . . coffee brewing . . .

as dawn shyly curtsies.

Her soft glance tenderly

brightening the Vermont skyline,

until . . . Ah!!!

A shimmering finger emerges,

urgently extending heavenward

from the crest of the hill.

And the sun bursts open the door

upon another day!

Gift! Hope! Promise!

Ours for the taking!

Ours for the making!

Conversing with Our Elders in Faith: Ancient Dreamers and Evangelists of Good News

Advent can startle, just like that! Or, more likely, remain hidden, lost, and alone, for years. That’s how it had been for me. Here I was, forty years old, the newly appointed chair of the parish liturgy committee. Charged with helping folks prepare for the upcoming Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season. My first thought? “Where had Advent been all my life?”

Little by little, however, Advent began to speak to me. In treasured childhood memories. Of the annual Christmas carol “sing” around an enormous neighborhood tree. I never knew exactly how it happened, but every year we showed up, always on the proper night. And we would joyously sing our beloved Christmas carols! About the same time, there was the annual Christmas pageant in elementary school. At the sound of these words, I would perk up: “In those days a decree went out from emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.”4 Ah, yes, that story, the one I love. But the rest of Advent remains a blur . . . of baking, shopping, writing out cards, buying gifts . . . just the right gifts, wrapping presents . . . of getting-ready-for-Christmas-time. I had missed Advent altogether!

Yet—as I was now slowly discovering—there’s more, so very much more! This season is fairly bursting with beauty and hope, for it is nothing less than a time of pregnancy and birthing. Of longing for oneness with another/Another. Of exploding with joy at the moment of conception. Of hoping and dreaming: Who will this child resemble? Will this be a boy, or a girl? (In my day, we never knew ahead of time.) Which of God’s many dreams for us will bear fruit in her? Or him? Will this pregnant time be an opportunity to begin again? To encounter Jesus—God’s Word in human flesh—once again? Not merely the Jesus born over two thousand years ago, as uniquely momentous as that was, but the Jesus about to be born in us! Right here and right now! For we know that birthing takes time. Energy. Attentiveness. Hoping. Dreaming. Planning. Working, hard. Whether we’ve birthed a child . . . or a dream . . . or a project . . . or anyone/anything els...

Table of contents

• Title page
• An Introduction to My Book
• Preface
• Gratitudes and Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
• Chapter 2: Ordinary Time in the Wake of Epiphany
• Chapter 3: Lent
• Chapter 4: Holy Week and the Triduum (Three High Holy Days)
• Chapter 5: Eastertime: Easter Sunday through Pentecost
• Chapter 6: Ordinary Time, According to Mark (Cycle B)
• Chapter 7: Ordinary Time, According to Matthew (Cycle A)
• Chapter 8: Ordinary Time, According to Luke (Cycle C)
• Chapter 9: November, Month of Transition from Here to There
• Epilogue
• Bibliography