BY FEBRUARY, the calendar has turned, the intensity of Christmas has passed, the ordinary days have resumed, and meetings are back in the diary. Decisions wait to be made, and the familiar language of urgency has returned. This is the moment that reveals what our faith is really made of. The light of Christmas has not disappeared, but it no longer gathers us effortlessly. It moves ahead of us, asking to be carried into places where faith must justify itself, not by atmosphere, but by integrity.
The gospel never suggests that revelation is meant to be preserved: those who encounter God are always sent on. The magi leave by another road; the Holy Family moves again; and the light that reveals God also rearranges life. After recognition comes responsibility — something that we, as a Church, sometimes forget. We are good at moments, but we are less confident with months. We know how to host festivals, launch initiatives, and articulate vision, but we find it harder to inhabit the slow discipline of faithfulness when the work is unglamorous and the outcomes are unclear.
February exposes this, gently but firmly. There is no obvious drama in the lectionary, no emotional crescendo. What remains is presence, prayer, and attention; and the Church is asked whether she truly believes that these are enough.
FOR those working in and with the Church, this is the most revealing time of the year. The temptation now is to replace depth with activity, to compensate for fading intensity with increased management, and to reach for strategy where silence might be more truthful. Planning has its place, but it cannot replace grounding.
The light entrusted to the Church is not given to be admired, but to be borne. Bearing light is costly work. It exposes what we would rather keep hidden, because it unsettles routines and resists reduction into measurable outcomes. This is why the Church must resist the urge to make faith manageable. When belief becomes primarily about reassurance, it loses the strength to endure. The child revealed at Christmas grows into a presence that cannot be contained. He confronts power, unsettles complacency, and insists on truth. The Church does not exist to soften that reality: she exists to remain faithful to it.
Ordinary time is when this fidelity is tested; holiness here looks unimpressive. It appears in prayers said without an audience, in care offered without recognition, in decisions made with patience rather than in panic. This is where faith is formed: not in moments of intensity, but in sustained attention.
THERE is a reason that the Church does not rush from celebration to spectacle. The liturgical year trains us to trust that faith deepens through repetition, restraint, and endurance. What grows slowly tends to last, whereas what depends on constant stimulation does not. In a world that feels increasingly anxious and brittle, this matters deeply. People are not looking for a Church that mirrors their restlessness: they are looking for one that knows how to stand, without needing to dominate conversation, but to remain present within it — not to explain everything, but to hold space for truth.
When the light moves on, the Church must decide whether she will follow it into the ordinary places of work, conflict, doubt, and responsibility, or whether she will attempt to recreate moments that once felt safer. The first path leads to faithfulness; the second, to exhaustion.
February is not a failure of imagination. It is the testing-ground of belief, and the measure of the Church now is not how brightly she remembers, but how steadily she walks. The light has not diminished, post-Christmas: it has moved ahead of us, and the calling of the Church — at this point in the year and in the life of the world — is not to recover the glow of yesterday, but to carry what has been entrusted into the long, faithful work of today.
