Every year at this time I write about the importance of the six months of ordinary time. Having gone through the six month cycle of holy seasons, holy days, and special liturgies, we settle down to a six month study of one Gospel and the rest of scripture that helps us understand it.
From Christmas through Easter we have heard much of God’s love, and have been given a new commandment to love one another as Jesus Christ loves us. We have been told the way of love is the only way and we must strive to follow it as best we can. But the most important question has been left unresolved. If the way of love is to love others as Jesus loves, how did he demonstrate it so we can try to do the same/? This is the year of Matthew. For six months we will learn through study, and hear in sermons how Matthew reported Jesus’ words and deeds of love. They are to be our teachers, guiding us to ways of love for others more like Jesus. It’s six months to practice what we’ve learned. It’s a life long work. We’re never done. Let’s face it, our progress, ore at least my progress, is slow, halting and well short of the goal. So what. I’m still commanded to try, and so are you. Matthew is a particularly good teacher. In spite of his tendency. To exaggerate, he collected and condensed Jesus’ most. Important words into the Sermon non the Mount. Matthew does more than other gospel writers to connect Jesus as the fulfillment of Hebrew Scriptures, and that’s important because one cannot really grasp the meaning of the New Testament if one does not have a solid grounding in the Old. The New does not annul the Old, it fulfills it.
Use these six months to full advantage. No hurry, take you’re time to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the way of love as Jesus has taught us. Practice making it your way of life.