The liturgy of the Church is not limited to ordering celebrations in the calendar: it teaches to look at time with redeemed eyes. That is why its language is not accessory, nor merely functional; naming the days and seasons is already a way of confessing the faith and educating the soul. In the liturgy, the word does not simply describe what happens: it reveals time touched by Christ.
The Vetus Ordo offers a theological articulation of the liturgical year that is not arbitrary, but deeply spiritual, by distinguishing two great prolongations of the mystery: the Sundays post Epiphaniam and the Sundays post Pentecosten. Both are times “after,” but not in the same way; they prolong the mystery under different lights.
The Dominicae post Epiphaniam still live under the splendor of the manifestation of the Word made flesh. Epiphany is not a pious remembrance nor a closed episode, but a light that continues to advance. The Child adored by those Magi who personify all the nations will gradually allow Himself to be recognized in preaching, in signs, in His serene authority. Each Sunday is like a new angle from which the Church contemplates the same face of Christ. The liturgical language expresses it with sobriety and precision: Epiphany has not passed; it continues to act.
The Sundays post Pentecosten, on the other hand, are situated under another key, perhaps more interior. Pentecost inaugurates the time of the Church inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and the Sundays that follow express the patient maturation of Christian life. It is no longer so much about an exterior manifestation, but about an interior transformation: the growth of the Body of Christ, the building up of the Church, docility to the Spirit that leads to fullness. It is the long time of everyday holiness, sustained by grace and oriented toward the final consummation.
The liturgy, spiritual pedagogue, knowing that not all sanctified time has the same tonality, names them in diverse ways. Language is not ornamental, but mystagogical: it teaches, leads, elevates. For this reason, the change in nomenclature is never indifferent: when liturgical language loses density, liturgists need to give explanations to the faithful so that they understand what they once perceived almost instinctively. It is not faith that weakens, but its symbolic expression, vehicle of a supernatural reading of time, which in no case is «ordinary,» because time is not merely the neutral framework where the history of salvation takes place, but a reality assumed, penetrated, and transfigured by the Paschal Mystery of Christ.
And so, when speaking of time, the Roman liturgy does not improvise its language, but polishes it, in a nomenclature born of a long sedimentation of the faith celebrated, where prayer always precedes theory. The Church, from ancient times, understood that the great mysteries could not be reduced to a single day: the celebration had to be prolonged, rest, unfold. Thus arose, in an organic way, the times post Epiphaniam and post Pentecosten as the natural way to liturgically prolong what was celebrated.
Epiphany was always understood as a progressive manifestation: to the nations, to Israel, to the disciples. The expression post Epiphaniam emphasized this awareness: it was not a matter of remembering a past event, but of remaining under its light. In the same way, Pentecost inaugurated the proper time of the Church. The Sundays post Pentecosten expressed Christian life sustained by the Spirit in history, in expectation of eschatological fullness. It was like saying: now is the time to grow, to persevere, to be built up. Such nomenclature was not fixed by decree, but confirmed by the centuries. Its authority comes from having been prayed, sung, lived. The antiquity of this language is not an aesthetic argument, but a criterion of ecclesial wisdom: if the Church has persevered for centuries in the same way of naming, it is because there was a profound theological intuition, difficult to replace without loss of nuances.
In reality, it is about living within God’s timeless time. The liturgy sanctifies man by teaching him to sanctify time, and man learns that not all times are lived in the same way, although all live from the same Grace.
The Sundays post Epiphaniam teach to look at Christ, who allows Himself to be discovered step by step. Faith matures, not by sentimental impacts, but by contemplation and persevering virtue.
The Sundays post Pentecosten teach to remain. They are the long time, without apparent splendor, where the Spirit transforms from within, teaching fidelity, patience, everyday holiness.
Whoever allows himself to be formed by this pedagogy discovers that his spiritual life also has similar rhythms: there are times of light and times of silent growth in the night. The liturgy helps the soul to recognize itself; the inherited words, tested by the centuries, teach to offer time as an offering: the believer does not live dragged by the days, but elevated in them toward God. Time is not an enemy, but a companion on the journey, because, when lived in God, the days mature us extraordinarily for eternity. And then there is no room to speak of «ordinary time.»