The bank holiday we just had in late May used to be called the Whit holiday – there is a Philip Larkin poem, Whitsun Weddings, which notes that it was a popular weekend to get married. And there’s an Agatha Christie short story where the solution depends on knowing (of all things) that ‘gardeners don’t work on Whit Monday’. It’s now called the Late May Bank Holiday, and this year did not coincide with Whit which (just to add to the complications) is now more usually called Pentecost.

The church calendar is very important to Christians, while non-churchgoers dip in and out – they know when it’s Christmas and Easter of course, but maybe that’s all.

But there’s a lot more to the religious calendar. After Easter, the risen Lord stays with the apostles until the Ascension, when he returns to Heaven. Then comes Pentecost/Whitsun, which marks the birth of the church.  Pentecost is followed by Trinity Sunday, which was on May 26 this year.

So from a church point of view, we have had Advent and Christmas and Easter and Pentecost: that’s how the church year flows.  Now there’s a ‘quiet time’ for the next few months. These are the Sundays in Ordinary Time, known also as the Sundays after Trinity, or the Sundays after Pentecost.

The writer J Meade Falkner (best known for the adventure book Moonfleet) wrote a lovely poem called After Trinity. It begins:

We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity,
Are with us at last;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast…

And goes on:

The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.

One of the Deacons at our church (St Peter & the Winchester Martyrs), Martin McElroy, wrote very helpfully about Ordinary Time for our parishioners a few years ago, and I am going to share (with his permission) some of his words:

Ordinary Time might be thought of as the green valleys of the Church year, sitting between the mountains of Advent and Christmastide, and Lent and Eastertide. Like the green pasture of Psalm 23, Ordinary Time allows us to take time to take things in, to consolidate the spiritual benefits of the other, more intense periods of preparation and celebration.

The Lord will remain with us through hard times and good times. Ordinary Time is not humdrum or uneventful – rather, we can take advantage of the progression of time, benefiting from routine and repetition day by day, to mature in our life in Christ.

I found that a very encouraging and useful reflection, and I think of it often during this season every year. He uses the word ‘green’ twice, and for a good reason: When there is no big feastday, the priest now wears green vestments. Green symbolises hope, but also life and growth.

Those of us who are Christians find many good things in our way of life, and I think one of them is that feeling for the year not just as the seasons and weather, but representing stages for our inner souls, giving us a way of thinking about our lives, taking stock, seeing how we interact with other people, with the world around us, and with God. It helps us a lot.

Moira Redmond