The Church Year

The church year is a set of holy days and seasons that are ordered to deepen faith through ritual.  Each church year begins in November with the Season of  Advent, and moves through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time.  Within those seasons special days and services are set aside to remember important events in Christian history.

Pentecost and Ordinary Time

The season after Pentecost, according to the calendar of the church year (BCP, p. 32). It begins on the Monday following Pentecost, and continues through most of the summer and autumn. It may include as many as twenty-eight Sundays, depending on the date of Easter. This includes Trinity Sunday which is the First Sunday after Pentecost.

This term Ordinary Time is used to indicate the parts of the liturgical year that are not included in the major seasons of the church calendar. Ordinary time includes the Monday after the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord through the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and the Monday after Pentecost through the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. Ordinary time can be understood in terms of the living out of Christian faith and the meaning of Christ’s resurrection in ordinary life. The term “ordinary time” is not used in the Prayer Book, but the season after Pentecost can be considered ordinary time. It may be referred to as the “green season,” because green is the usual liturgical color for this period of the church year.