Novus Ordo

As we start a new school year, it’s always a good idea to keep living order in mind. What is living order you might ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like. Having order to your life. But that’s way easier said than done!

Even though I moved into my new apartment a few weeks ago, I spent this past Labor Day weekend cleaning. It didn’t really need it, but it gives me peace of mind that when I wake up in the morning, I have a clean shower to shower in, clean clothes to put on, a clean stove to cook my eggs on, and I don’t have to worry about stepping on anything on my floor when I get out of bed. Everything in my apartment finally has a place. It was crazy busy the first week of school with outreaching to the new freshmen and students on campus and I kept pushing back organizing my desk and putting away the last few things left in my boxes. We don’t need all that crap in our way. It’s hard enough to go throughout the day without all the other crap that is thrown at us. Keeping a clean house is the one thing we can control.

But living order is not just being neat and clean. It’s about order in our lives. Making a set bedtime and a time to wake up is essential. It’s so easy as college students to watch the time slip away late at night as we press refresh on Facebook over and over again. Or suddenly realize it’s 1:30 in the morning and you’re halfway though season 5 of Lost. Making sure you are getting the proper amount of sleep at night is critical for your living order the next day.

Not only did I clean my apartment this weekend, but I also filled out my iCalendar with my schedule. Getting into that routine every week is hard, but if you organize your time right, you’ll find you have a lot more free time than you think. Of course, you have to be flexible. You never know when your iPhone decides to set your alarm off at 7pm instead of 7am.  

The most important part of the day is scheduling in that ever-important prayer time. We’ll talk about prayer in another post, but having that relationship with God and talking with Him everyday, will make you feel more filled and help your day go so much easier. Just starting your day with a quick prayer can make all the difference! 

So, why do we need to be so ordered? Well, look at the way God created the universe. Everyday, he had a plan to create something specific and he followed through with it. It seemed to work for Him didn’t it? As random as the world seems, it has order. We model this order in the Mass as well. In fact, if we look at the Roman Missal, the words for the Mass are called the Order of the Mass. We have order to when we sit, when we stand, when we kneel, when we bow, when we say certain things at certain times, and no matter where you go in the world, the Order of the Mass is the same.  There is an order to what we do. Nothing is random. God has a plan for everything and we need to as well. And when we live this order, we can live our lives to the fullest. As St. Catherine of Siena said, “if you are who you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!”