You made it through Lent. You celebrated Easter with real joy. And now — sometime around the third week of green vestments — something shifted. The fire cooled. The structure disappeared. And your prayer life started drifting.
If Ordinary Time feels like the spiritual equivalent of a long, featureless highway, you are not alone. This is the longest season on the Catholic liturgical calendar — roughly 33 or 34 weeks — and it comes without the built-in urgency of Advent or the penitential gravity of Lent. No candle-lighting countdowns. No fasting rules. No dramatic liturgical shifts to carry you forward.
But here is the truth the Church has understood for centuries: Ordinary Time is where saints are made. Not in the dramatic seasons, but in the quiet, consistent, unremarkable days when nobody is watching and no liturgical calendar is holding your hand.
The word “ordinary” in Ordinary Time does not mean boring or unimportant. It comes from the Latin ordinalis, meaning “counted” or “numbered” — these are the numbered weeks of the Church year. As the Catechism teaches, the Church celebrates “the saving work of her divine Spouse in a sacred commemoration on certain days throughout the course of the year” (CCC 1163). Every single week — green vestments and all — is part of that sacred work.
Here are five Catholic practices for Ordinary Time that can transform the “quiet season” into the season where your faith actually deepens.
1. Adopt a Saint of the Week
One of the hidden treasures of Ordinary Time is the sheer number of saint feast days packed into these months. While Advent and Lent draw our attention to a single mystery, Ordinary Time offers a rotating gallery of holy men and women whose lives can speak directly into yours.
The practice is simple: each Sunday, look up the saint feast days for the coming week. Pick one who catches your attention — maybe their story resonates with something you are struggling with, or maybe their name is unfamiliar and you are curious. Then spend the week getting to know them.
How to do it practically:
- Read a short biography on Sunday evening (5 minutes)
- Ask for their intercession in your morning prayer each day that week
- Look for one concrete habit or virtue from their life you can imitate
- On Saturday, journal briefly: what did this saint teach you?
St. Thérèse of Lisieux called this kind of small, faithful attention her “Little Way” — doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. In Ordinary Time, the saints become your companions for the journey, each one offering a different window into holiness.
July alone offers St. Thomas the Apostle (July 3), St. Maria Goretti (July 6), St. Benedict (July 11), Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16), St. Mary Magdalene (July 22), and Ss. Joachim and Anne (July 26). That is not a boring season — that is a crowd of witnesses cheering you on (Hebrews 12:1).
2. Pray the Sunday Readings Before Mass
During Advent and Lent, many Catholics naturally pay closer attention to the readings because they follow a dramatic narrative arc — the coming of Christ, the journey to the Cross. But during Ordinary Time, the readings can feel disconnected week to week, and it is easy to zone out during the Liturgy of the Word.
The fix is Lectio Divina — or even a simplified version of it — applied to the Sunday readings before you arrive at Mass.
A 15-minute Saturday evening practice:
- Read the Sunday Gospel slowly (available free at USCCB.org)
- Reflect — What phrase stands out? What is God saying to you this week?
- Respond — Talk to God about what you noticed. Be honest.
- Rest — Sit quietly for a moment. Let the Word settle.
When you arrive at Mass on Sunday, the readings will not feel like background noise. They will feel like a conversation you have already started. As the Catechism reminds us, “His Spirit is offered us at all times, in the events of each day, to make prayer spring up from us” (CCC 2659). Ordinary Time is full of these quiet invitations — if we show up prepared to hear them.
If you already practice a morning offering, adding Saturday evening readings creates a beautiful rhythm: offering the day to God in the morning, receiving His Word in the evening.
3. Start a Weekday Mass Habit (Even Once a Month)
Sunday Mass is an obligation. Weekday Mass is a gift. And Ordinary Time, with its slower pace and less crowded calendar, is the perfect season to experiment with it.
You do not need to commit to daily Mass. Start with once a month. Pick a day that works — maybe Wednesday mornings before work, or a noon Mass on your lunch break. The goal is not perfection but repetition. As St. Josemaría Escrivá wrote, “It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God and all mankind.”
Weekday Mass during Ordinary Time has a different feel than Sunday. The crowds are smaller. The homilies are often shorter and more personal. The daily readings carry you through entire books of Scripture over weeks, building a narrative you miss when you only attend on Sundays.
Practical tips for building this habit:
- Find a parish with a Mass time that fits your schedule (masstimes.org)
- Stack it with an existing habit — “After I drop the kids at school, I go to the 8:15 Mass”
- Start with one weekday per month, then increase to biweekly, then weekly
- Track it — even a simple checkmark on a calendar creates accountability
If getting to a physical church is genuinely impossible on weekdays, consider watching a livestreamed Mass and making a spiritual communion. It is not the same as receiving the Eucharist, but it is far better than nothing — and it keeps the rhythm alive.
4. Practice the Daily Examen Through a Seasonal Lens
If you already pray the Daily Examen, Ordinary Time is the season to deepen it. If you have never tried it, Ordinary Time is the perfect season to start — the slower pace gives you room to build the habit without the pressure of a penitential season.
The Examen, developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, is a five-step evening prayer that takes about 10 minutes. During Ordinary Time, try adding a seasonal question to your nightly review:
“Where did I encounter Christ in the ordinary moments of this day?”
Not in the dramatic, mystical, clouds-parting moments. In the ordinary ones. The conversation with a coworker. The patience you showed (or did not show) at the grocery store. The moment you chose to pray instead of scroll. The meal you cooked for your family.
St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). The Examen trains your spiritual vision to see that “everything” — not just the explicitly religious moments, but all of it.
This is the specific genius of Ordinary Time. It teaches us that holiness is not about intensity. It is about consistency. The daily reflection practice you build during these quiet weeks will carry you through every season that follows.
Ready to take your spiritual growth to the next level? Download the Holy Habits app to track your progress, join accountability groups, and receive personalized guidance tailored to your spiritual journey.
5. Pick One Virtue and Work on It All Summer
Lent asks you to give things up. Ordinary Time asks you to build things. And there is no better Ordinary Time project than choosing a single virtue and pursuing it with focused, daily attention for an entire season.
Not seven virtues. Not a rotating weekly focus. One virtue, chosen deliberately, practiced daily, for weeks on end. This is how the saints actually grew in holiness — through what St. Thomas Aquinas called habitus, a stable disposition formed through repeated acts (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, Q.55, A.1). Virtue is a habit. And habits need time and repetition.
How to choose your virtue:
- Start with your biggest struggle. If you keep losing your temper, patience is your virtue. If you procrastinate on prayer, discipline is your virtue. If you gossip, charity of speech is your virtue.
- Find a patron saint who modeled that virtue. Pray for their intercession daily.
- Set one concrete daily action tied to the virtue — “I will pause for three seconds before responding when I feel angry” or “I will say one kind thing about the person I am tempted to criticize.”
- Track your progress. Not to shame yourself on bad days, but to see the arc. Progress is rarely a straight line — willpower fades, but habits endure.
By the time Advent arrives, you will not be starting from scratch. You will have spent months quietly building the very virtue God has been inviting you to grow in. That is the gift of Ordinary Time — it gives you the room to do the slow, unglamorous work that real transformation requires.
Making Ordinary Time Extraordinary
The temptation during Ordinary Time is to wait — to wait for Advent’s anticipation, for Lent’s structure, for Easter’s joy — as though spiritual growth only happens during the “exciting” seasons. But that is like saying a marriage only grows during the vacations and anniversaries. The truth is, marriages are built in the thousands of ordinary Tuesday evenings. And so is holiness.
St. Paul’s encouragement to the Romans captures the spirit of Ordinary Time perfectly: “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Persevere. Not just during Lent. Not just when you feel inspired. Persevere in the long, green, numbered weeks when nobody is watching.
You do not need to overhaul your entire spiritual life this week. Pick one practice from the list above. Just one. Start small. Stay consistent. Let the quiet weeks do their work.
Holy Habits can help you live the liturgical year with daily tracking and gentle reminders — not to add pressure, but to give your Ordinary Time practices a structure that sticks. Because the goal was never intensity. It was always faithfulness.
What's Your Spiritual DNA?
Before you build the next habit, find out where you actually are. The Spiritual DNA assessment is a short self-evaluation that reveals which pillar of your spiritual life is strongest — and which one is holding you back. Most people are surprised by the answer.
We believe that the path to holiness is attainable, not in grand, fleeting gestures, but in daily, intentional habits. Holy Habits exists to empower you to live a life of grace in the midst of a busy world. To love God more deeply, serve others more fully, and build a life that reflects the love of Christ.
The time to build those habits is now. Let’s start today.
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