This Sunday (2023) we return to Ordinary Time in the liturgical sense. Ordinary Time includes the days not part of the Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter seasons. The Easter season extends to and includes Pentecost Sunday. Ordinary Time starts the Monday following Pentecost. Apart from special feast days and memorials, the liturgical color is green, but you may have noticed the two Sundays following Pentecost used white as the liturgical colors. Still, the Solemnity of Holy Trinity (9th week) and Corpus Christi (10th week) are part of Ordinary Time.

Did you know that the word “ordinary” as used here comes from the ordinal numerals by which the weeks are identified or counted. The weekly count moves from the 1st week of Ordinary Time in January (typically the Baptism of the Lord) to the 34th week that begins toward the end of November. In 2023 we celebrated the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time just before Ash Wednesday, the week following Pentecost was the 8th Week of Ordinary Time. The 9th and 10th Sundays were noted above – and that brings us to the 11th Sunday.

Will this always be the same each year? Nope. It all depends on when Easter is celebrated which in turn affects the date of Ash Wednesday, which always falls 46 days before Easter Sunday. The earliest Ash Wednesday can be celebrated is February 4th. Of course that last happened in 1818 and won’t happen again until the year 2285. The latest Ash Wednesday can be celebrated is March 10th, but it has to be in a Leap Year with other factors falling into place and that won’t happen again until 2096.

For the record, the last Sunday of Ordinary Time is the Solemnity of Christ the King. And since we are on the topic, the liturgical year can have either 33 or 34 weeks of Ordinary Time. How that shifts is too long to explain, but here is an easy way to remember. If the following liturgical year starts in November, the previous liturgical year’s Ordinary Time will have 33 weeks.  If the following liturgical year starts in December, the previous liturgical year’s Ordinary Time will have 34 weeks.

Image credit: Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308-1311, National Gallery of Art, Public Domain