Clergy Resources

Ordinary Time
Trinitytide

The long, green, growing season — the Church's largest single block of time, given over to discipleship, formation, and the patient work of the Kingdom

"The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labour. For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building." — 1 Corinthians 3:8–9
Growth
Formation
Harvest
What is Ordinary Time?

The Longest Season

Ordinary Time is the longest season of the liturgical year — comprising roughly half of all Sundays, spread across two stretches either side of the festal cycles. The name does not mean dull or unremarkable; it comes from the Latin tempus ordinarium, meaning counted time — the Sundays are numbered in sequence (the Second Sunday after Trinity, the Third, and so on) rather than named for a feast or fast. "Ordinary" here means ordered, numbered, sequential.

In the Anglican tradition, Ordinary Time after Pentecost is sometimes called Trinitytide — taking its name and character from Trinity Sunday, which stands at its threshold. This name is particularly apt: Trinitytide is the season in which the Church, having received the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Easter cycle, now lives out the implications of that revelation in day-to-day Christian life.

~26
Sundays

The Scope of Ordinary Time

From the Monday after Pentecost Sunday through to the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent, Ordinary Time encompasses approximately twenty-six Sundays — the largest single block of the liturgical year. In a three-year lectionary cycle, this amounts to over seventy Sunday services in green, the colour of growth. It is not a gap between the feasts; it is the field in which the seed sown at Easter grows to harvest.

"Other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop — a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear."

— Matthew 13:8–9
A wheat field under open sky — the image of growth and patient waiting
Ordinary Time — the long season of patient growth, rooting, and bearing fruit; the Church at work in the world.

Liturgical Colour: Green

The colour of Ordinary Time is green — the colour of life, growth, and the created order in its abundance. Green is the colour of the living plant, of the fields in season, of the hope that persists through the ordinary days. Unlike the heightened drama of purple, red, and white, green is the quiet, persistent, everyday colour — appropriate to a season that asks the Church to be faithful not in great crises but in the long, unremarkable accumulation of prayer, teaching, service, and love.

Green

The standard colour throughout Ordinary Time — worn on all Sundays and weekday Eucharists unless a feast intervenes

White

For saints' days, feasts of our Lord (Transfiguration, All Saints, Christ the King), and occasions of joy within the season

Red

For feasts of martyrs (including St Peter and St Paul, 29 June) and occasions where the Holy Spirit's work is being commemorated

The Rhythm of the Season

How Ordinary Time is Ordered

Unlike the festal seasons, Ordinary Time has no single narrative arc that drives the congregation from week to week. Instead, the lectionary sets up a pattern of semi-continuous reading — tracking through one of the Synoptic Gospels across the whole season — interspersed with Old Testament readings that are either thematically related (in the Anglican/Roman continuous track) or drawn from the same Old Testament book being read in parallel. This gives the season its distinctive character: depth over breadth, sustained attention over dramatic movement.

The Gospel Track

Year A — Matthew's Gospel: the Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the Kingdom, Peter's confession, the woes and the judgment. Matthew is the preacher's Gospel — structured, substantial, and full of teaching material.

Year B — Mark's Gospel (with a long digression through John 6 for the Bread of Life discourses): the urgent, breathless, action-driven Gospel; miracle follows miracle; "immediately" is Mark's signature word.

Year C — Luke's Gospel: the Gospel of the poor, of women, of the outsider; the parables of mercy (the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep) are concentrated here.

The Epistle Track

The second reading runs as a semi-continuous track through the Pauline epistles and Hebrews, generally independent of the Gospel. This is not a weakness but a feature: it invites the preacher to engage with the full range of the New Testament rather than always anchoring to the Gospel.

Key epistle sequences in Ordinary Time include Romans (Year A, a sustained theological argument that rewards sequential preaching), 2 Corinthians and Ephesians (Year B), and Galatians, Colossians, and 1 & 2 Timothy (Year C).

The Old Testament Track

Ordinary Time gives the preacher a rare opportunity to preach substantial Old Testament series. The continuous Old Testament track runs semi-independently of the Gospel, allowing for extended engagement with the narratives of Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, and the Wisdom literature.

This is the season to preach the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the narrative arc of Israel's history — texts that the more dramatic seasons rarely provide space to inhabit.

The Weekday Eucharist

The weekday lectionary in Ordinary Time runs through the Synoptic Gospels in a different pattern to the Sunday track, and the epistle track covers much of the New Testament over the two-year cycle. Parishes with a regular weekday congregation can, over time, offer their people a genuinely comprehensive diet of Scripture.

The green vestments of a quiet weekday Eucharist — a handful of faithful people, the unhurried Eucharistic prayer, the ordinary miracle of bread and cup — is itself one of the best images of what Ordinary Time is for.

Notable Feasts & Observances

The Feasts Within the Green

Ordinary Time is punctuated by a rich sequence of feasts and observances — Principal Feasts, Festivals, and Lesser Commemorations — that interrupt the green with white, red, and gold. These are not distractions from the season; they are the season's jewels, giving the long weeks their shape and texture. Clergy are encouraged to observe them with appropriate festivity and to use them as occasions for teaching on the saints, on the nature of Christian vocation, and on the fullness of the Church's calendar.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

6 August — a Principal Feast; white or gold

White

The Transfiguration falls near the middle of Ordinary Time and functions as a theological summit within the season — a burst of eschatological light in the long green weeks. The readings (Matthew 17 / Mark 9 / Luke 9; 2 Peter 1:16–19 or Exodus 34:29–35) hold together the full humanity and the unveiled divinity of Christ, the Law and the Prophets giving way to the beloved Son.

  • A preaching gift — Few Sundays in the year offer the preacher a richer moment: the dazzling light, the bewildered disciples, the voice from the cloud. "Listen to him." Preach the Transfiguration as the disclosure of the endpoint — the glory into which the whole creation is being drawn.
  • Possible Baptism occasion — The Transfiguration, with its imagery of new creation and the unveiled glory of God, is a fitting occasion for Baptism where the season's pattern allows.

Holy Cross Day

14 September — red vestments; the exaltation of the Cross

Red

Holy Cross Day (the Exaltation of the Holy Cross) commemorates both the discovery of the True Cross by Helena and the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335 AD. It is an ancient feast with a distinctive theology: the Cross is not merely the instrument of suffering but the throne of glory, the standard of the King. The reading from John 3:13–17 ("as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…") and Philippians 2:6–11 (the great Kenotic Hymn) frame the Cross in its full cosmic significance.

Red vestments are worn — not the red of fire and the Spirit, but the red of the royal blood of the King who reigns from the tree.

All Saints' Day & All Souls' Day

1 & 2 November — principal feast and commemoration

White / Purple

All Saints' Day (1 November) is a Principal Feast, observed with white vestments and festive celebration. It is the Church's great act of thanksgiving for the whole company of heaven — those who have gone before in the faith — and one of the traditional occasions for Baptism (Baptism into the company of the saints). The readings across all three years draw on the Beatitudes and the vision of the heavenly multitude in Revelation 7.

All Souls' Day / The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (2 November) follows immediately. This is a day of prayer for all who have died — a more sombre and intimate observance, often celebrated with a Requiem Eucharist and the reading of the names of those who have died in the past year. Purple or black vestments may be worn, and the sanctuary may be kept simple.

  • Many parishes observe All Souls with a special evening service to which bereaved families are invited — a liturgy of naming, candle-lighting, and intercession that can be one of the most pastorally powerful services of the year.

The Feast of Christ the King

The last Sunday before Advent — the culmination of the year

White

The Sunday next before Advent is the Feast of Christ the King (officially: the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe) — the final Sunday of the liturgical year, the culmination of all thirty-odd weeks of Ordinary Time. It does not merely close the year; it names what the year has been about: that Jesus is Lord, that every Sunday has been a rehearsal of his kingship, that the whole sweep of the Christian calendar has been a school in which the Church has been learning to see the world through the lens of his reign.

The readings in all three years draw on royal and eschatological texts: Daniel 7 (the Son of Man), Revelation 1 (the first and the last), and the passion narrative of John 18 (Year B: "My kingdom is not of this world"). The contrast between the kingship the world recognises and the kingship Christ exercises — from the Cross, from a throne of service — gives the feast its extraordinary homiletical charge.

  • The Solemn Blessing for the End of the Year — A solemn blessing at the dismissal, commending the congregation into the new year of grace that begins with Advent, is a fitting close to the feast and to the year.
  • The Recessional — Consider a festive recessional hymn of the Kingdom for the close of this feast — "Crown Him with Many Crowns," "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," or "Rejoice, the Lord is King."

The Feasts of the Apostles & Evangelists

Ordinary Time is also the season in which most of the Apostles' and Evangelists' feasts fall. These are days on which the green is interrupted by red (for martyrs) or white (for confessors) — and on which the preacher has the opportunity to draw the congregation into the stories of those who first bore witness to Christ.

June 24 — The Birth of John the Baptist (White). June 29 — St Peter and St Paul, Apostles (Red). July 22 — St Mary Magdalene (White). July 25 — St James the Apostle (Red). August 24 — St Bartholomew (Red). September 21 — St Matthew (Red). September 29 — St Michael and All Angels / Michaelmas (White). October 18 — St Luke the Evangelist (Red). October 28 — St Simon and St Jude (Red). November 30 — St Andrew (Red).

Where a parish has a particularly strong devotion to a saint, or where a saint's day falls on a Sunday, the feast may be transferred to or celebrated on the Sunday, displacing the Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is always a pastoral and liturgical gain: the congregation learns the Church's story through the stories of those who lived it.

The Shape of the Season's Sundays

A Rough Map of the Sundays

While each Sunday in Ordinary Time stands on its own, the lectionary creates several recognisable clusters and movements across the season. Understanding these movements helps clergy plan preaching series, thematic emphases, and pastoral priorities across the long green months.

Tr.2–5
Early
Foundation

Early Trinitytide — Building on the Trinity

The season opens in the wake of Trinity Sunday with a focus on the fundamentals of Christian discipleship. Year A begins the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). Year B moves from Mark's early miracles into John 6 (the Bread of Life). Year C opens with Luke's account of Jesus in Nazareth ("The Spirit of the Lord is upon me") — an ideal opening for a preaching series on mission.

Tr.6–13
Mid
The Kingdom

The Parables of the Kingdom

The middle weeks of Ordinary Time are rich with parable. Year A concentrates the great Matthaean parables here: the Sower, the Wheat and Weeds, the Mustard Seed, the Pearl of Great Price, the Unmerciful Servant. This is the heart of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom, and one of the finest extended preaching series available in the three-year cycle.

Tr.14–22
Late
The Cost

The Cost of Discipleship

The later Sundays of the season consistently turn toward the harder edges of discipleship — the cost of following, the demands of love, the judgment that awaits. Matthew's community discourse and Year C's concentration of Luke's "journey to Jerusalem" narrative both press toward the question: What does it mean, in practice, to follow this Lord? These Sundays sustain the best preaching on ethics, social justice, and the Christian life in the world.

Tr.23–26
Closing
Eschatology

The Last Things — Towards the Kingdom's Consummation

As the year draws toward its close, the lectionary consistently introduces eschatological themes — the coming of the Kingdom, the final judgment, the end of all things. This is not accidental; the Church's year moves, like Scripture itself, toward a consummation. The closing Sundays of Ordinary Time prepare the congregation for the Feast of Christ the King and for the threshold of a new year in Advent.

Last
Sunday
The Year's Culmination

Christ the King — The Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

The whole year's journey finds its name and its destination here. White vestments, festive celebration, and the proclamation that Jesus is Lord — of every power, every principality, every human institution, and every human heart. Next Sunday: Advent begins again.

Preaching in Ordinary Time

The Homiletical Opportunity of the Long Season

If the dramatic seasons — Advent, Lent, Holy Week, Easter — are the mountain peaks of the preaching year, Ordinary Time is the valley and the plain where most of life is actually lived. The great risk of preaching in Ordinary Time is that the absence of a compelling narrative framework leads to a series of unconnected weekly addresses that leave the congregation with no sense of the season's cumulative meaning.

The great opportunity of Ordinary Time is precisely this freedom: the preacher is not constrained to the drama of a single narrative and can undertake the sustained, sequential, formational preaching that is hardest to fit into the more pressured seasons. A well-planned Ordinary Time series through Romans, or through Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, or through Luke's parables of mercy, will do more for the congregation's theological formation than almost any other single pastoral initiative of the year.

"Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction."

— 2 Timothy 4:2

Planning a Preaching Series

Ordinary Time is ideally suited to sustained preaching series. Rather than treating each Sunday as a separate unit, consider planning three or four series of four to seven weeks each across the season. This gives the congregation a cumulative experience of Scripture and allows the preacher to develop themes with proper depth. Suggested series across the three lectionary years include:

Hymnody for Ordinary Time

Resources for Clergy

The following resources are available to clergy of the Diocese for planning Ordinary Time worship and preaching. Contact the Diocesan office for further assistance or for guidance on specific observances, feasts, or pastoral occasions within the season.