We now enter a long period of Ordinary Time?right through the summer and into the fall?until we see the Season of Advent. Ordinary Time means green vestments, green altar linens, and colorful flowers of the summer?but it also means something "unordinary" ? the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ and His command to us (as individ-als and to His Church) to take up His Cross and carry His mission and ministry of Good News into the world.

This is no Ordinary Time. While we won?t have the festivities of Christmas, or the solemn celebrations of Easter with the sadness of Good Friday and joy of Sunday morning, nor shall we have the feasts of Pentecost or the restraints of Lent, but what we do have is the very practical stories of the Gospel highlighting how we are to carry on Christ?s mission through our lives.

This offers us a time to reflect on what exactly Jesus Christ is asking of us?each one of us. I think that many folks, when they consider sharing in the life and relationship that Christ and the Father share, see it as some kind of future event, as if it were something that doesn?t happen until we die. Jesus wants us to build our relation-ship with Him and His Father today?not waiting till we close our eyes to this world and open them to the next, but today in the here-and-now to forming an eternal relationship by doing the Godly things that Christ did while He walked the face of the earth: feeding the hungry, praying for the forgotten, reaching out to the neighbor in need, having con-cern for the unborn, the frail and the dying; by offering up some form of self-giving love. We can do it in?and?through a ministry of the Church, or through another group that does righteous deeds, we can do it alone when a next door neighbor seems in need or we can simply look around our kitchen tables. All we need to do is Act?like Christ. Nothing ordinary about that!