34 | Ordinary Time and the Liturgical Calendar: A Charlotte Mason Perspective for Catholic Moms

Ordinary Time, Extraordinary Habits: What Charlotte Mason Teaches About Your Most Boring Homeschool Day

Charlotte Mason believed that habits aren't built in the dramatic moment — they're built in the quiet repetition of ordinary ones. And the Church seems to agree: Ordinary Time, the long green season between the great feasts, makes up the largest portion of the entire liturgical year.

What You'll Learn:

• Why Ordinary Time isn't a "blank" season but one the Church deliberately gives a place and a name
• How Charlotte Mason's discipline of habit explains why your most repetitive, unremarkable homeschool moments are actually doing the deepest formational work
• Why the liturgical color green — the color of growth — is a fitting symbol for the slow, unseen progress happening in your home right now
• One simple end-of-day question to replace "did we get enough done" with "were we faithful"

Free Resource for Catholic Homeschool Moms:

Walking with Mary: A Gentle Pathway Through the Marian Feast Days
 

Come Join Our Facebook Group:
Charlotte Mason for Catholic Homeschool Moms JOIN HERE 

Scripture:

• Galatians 6:9 — "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest"
• Luke 16:10 — "Whoever is faithful in little things will be faithful in large ones"
• Zechariah 4:10 — "Who despises the day of small things?"

Resources:

• Charlotte Mason's Home Education (Volume 1)

Subscribe to Peaceful Catholic Homeschooling.
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Related Episodes:

• Episode 28: Charlotte Mason is not an Aesthetic, It's a Philosophy
• Episode 30: Building Mom Habits — Filling Your Cup This Summer
• Episode 11: You Can't Pour Peace into Your Kids When Your Soul Is Empty

Small steps. Faithful days. This is how your Catholic Homeschool gets built.
 — The Catholic Grandma

Transcript

The Unglamorous Day You Need

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today's episode might be the most unglamorous one I've ever recorded, and I think it might also be the one you need most. Not a big project or nothing exciting like a unit study, just an honest look at the most ordinary day in your homeschool. The one with no field trip, no co-op, nothing special on the calendar, and why I think that day matters more than you realize. So if today already feels a little flat, a little forgettable, stick with me. I promise there's something here for you. So let's go.

A Peaceful Catholic Homeschool Vision

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Are you a Catholic mom trying to build a homeschool that feels peaceful, faith-filled, and actually doable? But you're exhausted from piecing it all together? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to Peaceful Catholic Homeschooling. I'm a Catholic grandmother, nay nay, in my world. Lifelong educator and the mother of a homeschool mom. Scripture tells us to stop conforming to the world's way and let God transform us from the inside out. But when it comes to homeschooling, the world's way is often the only map we're handy. I've watched my daughter to be that way. So entering May Fashion, I decided to talk differently. Together we discovered that deep faith, living hooks, and simple rhythms aren't just a gentleman. They're the life we were actually needing. This show is for the mom who already knows that in her moment and just needs someone to walk beside them. So grab whatever's left of your morning coffee and co-hide in the bathroom if you have to. And let's do this hard and holy work together. Before we dive in, I want to invite you somewhere. If you've got questions or you just want a place to talk through this stuff with others, come find us in our Facebook group called Charlotte Mason for Catholic Homeschool Moms. I'll be there and I'd love to see you too. Advent

Ordinary Time Is Not A Blank

SPEAKER_00 1:51

has the candles, Lent has the ashes, Easter has the allelujahs. And then there's the days when there is no feast, no fasting, no special anything. Just the dishes, the read aloud, nobody wants to sit still for, the math lesson that takes forty five minutes to complete when it should have taken ten. And you know what we call this? We call this ordinary time. And if you're anything like me, that name has always sounded like a consolation prize. Like the church ran out of special days and just left this stretch blank. But here's what I didn't understand for a very long time. The church doesn't skip these weeks. She gives every single one of them a place. Not because they're less than Advent or Easter, but because an ordinary day, live faithfully, is still part of the story. So let's dig into ordinary time in your homeschool days.

Charlotte Mason On Habit Formation

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Here's something Charlotte Mason understood that most modern education doesn't. Habits aren't built in the dramatic moment. They're built in the repetition of ordinary ones. So think about it. No child learns obedience or attention or kindness from one big lesson. They learn it from the same small moment, repeated day after ordinary day, being asked to sit still for five more minutes, being corrected gently for the third time that day. Choosing kindness toward a sibling when no one would ever know if they didn't. I think about this every time my grandchildren sigh through narration for the hundredth time or ask why do we have to do this again about a habit we've been working on for a month. It feels in the moment like nothing is happening, like we're stuck. But Mason would tell us that the stuck feeling is actually the work. She compared habit to a path worn into a field. You don't see the path after one walk across the grass. You see it after the hundredth walk, the same route, day after unremarkable day, until eventually the ground itself remembers the way. That's what happens underneath your ordinary homeschool day, even when it feels like nothing at all. Mason called this the discipline of habit, and she believed it was just as formative as anything in the books. The ordinary day isn't the obstacle to a good education. It is the education. And here's something beautiful. The church actually gives us a visual reminder of this same truth. The color of ordinary time is green, not the white of a feast, not the violet of penance. Green, the color of growth, of things happening slowly, quietly, underground before anyone sees the fruit. Ordinary time makes up the largest portion of this entire liturgical year. There are more Sundays than every other season combined. The church in her wisdom knew that most of life and most of faith happens in this long green stretch, not in the dramatic high points that we remember from Christmas and Easter. We live in the ordinary time. That's exactly what's happening in our ordinary homeschool day. Nothing dramatic, just growth, slow and unglamorous and real, the same way a seed does its most important work underground, out of sight, long before anything green breaks the surface and anyone notice it was there at all. So

Bring Green Growth Into Today

SPEAKER_00 5:01

here's one small way to live that this week. Find something small to bring that green into your day. A ribbon on your family altar, a green cloth on the table where you do morning prayers, even just pausing for a second and saying out loud, Lord, let me grow today, even slowly, something small enough to actually do every ordinary day all season long.

Did We Show Up Faithfully

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Now, if habit is built in the ordinary faithful repetition, and growth happens slowly and out of sight, how do we actually measure whether an ordinary day went well? Not by what we got finished, not by whether you made it through every subject on the list. This makes me think of the moms who email me or message me in our Facebook group on the hard days, the day the baby didn't nap, the day the math lesson ended in tears, or the day she got through exactly one subject before everyone needed lunch. She always asked some version of the same question. Did today even count? Here's what I tell her and what I want you to hear today. It counted. If you showed up faithfully, it most definitely counted. Here's a simple practice you can start tonight. At the end of the day, ask yourself just one question. Did we show up faithfully today? Not perfectly, but faithfully. Did we keep trying even slowly, even imperfectly? That's the whole measure. Because if ordinary time teaches us anything, it's that faithfulness, not spectacle, is what God is actually asking for. And the same is true of your homeschool. So today, if you're standing in your kitchen wondering why this day doesn't feel special, here's what I want you to remember. It doesn't have to feel special to be holy. It just has to be lived faithfully, and that will be enough. That will always be enough.

A Blessing For Ordinary Days

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Before we go, a small blessing for your ordinary day. Lord, make me faithful in the small moments. Let me trust that you are present in the dishes, the read aloud, the math lesson that takes too long. Make this ordinary day holy, simply because I live for you. Amen. I'm so glad you were here for today's episode, and I can't wait to see you again. Until next time.