Keeping up to date

I am a calendar person. I have at any time about five or six calendars in my possession. I work a lot with the calendar, using the liturgical one, also taking note of national and—can one avoid it?—some of the commercial days such as Mothers’ and Father’s Days.

For my various enterprises, such as magazine articles and presenting programmes on Radio Veritas, I always try to connect with something meaningful on that day or around that time. Birthdays of pop singers or who discovered the electric can opener leave me stone-cold, but the feast day of St Francis or Heritage Day do resonate with the teacher in me.

When our children were at home I tried a lot harder to keep a family calendar going. We entered birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, special feasts and celebrations, and would even put up pictures of those family members who were being remembered during that month.

That has now been reduced to a collection of photos of our late beloveds during November as our own family pious list. Next will be our Advent calendar, which doubles as a Jesse tree, in preparation for Christmas.

Family moments are faith moments. That is the concept I have been ruminating over during the last month or so. It is therefore the theme of the latest Marfam booklet produced in time for Advent but focusing mainly on family prayer for all families and at any time.

Those family moments, the hellos and goodbyes, birth and death, the nursery school graduation or university graduation, need to be noted, savoured and remembered whether with pain, joy or gratitude because it is in all those intimate moments that we come face to face with God in and with one another.

Noting some of the other days like World Aids Day brings us face to face too with the wider social reality to which we as family people are called to respond. Sanctity of Life day links very beautifully with the feast of the Presentation

A calendar is a talking point, a teaching aid and a tool for spiritual growth. The various liturgical calendars available are very helpful in that they give the scripture readings of the day.

The 2007 Family Life Calendar, on the theme “Children, Give Them Love”, serves a different kind of purpose. It does note the main liturgical days but is essentially a vehicle for family life education and invites reflection and sharing on the needs of children in our own families and the world. Using a family calendar wisely promotes good communication and accountability too in all family members. In doing this we are building and strengthening the family bonds that persevere year after year.

But being a calendar person doesn’t necessarily mean that one gets all this time-keeping right. If one doesn’t enter the important dates, such as the due date to pay a traffic fine, it is easily forgotten, resulting in an unnecessary and maddening extra penalty for contempt of court. I live in hope that this misdemeanour won’t give me a permanent criminal record, but I doubt that it would blot my copy-book with the Lord. I hope and believe that he has other records to keep and dates to make, like every Sunday with us.

And, of course, I hope too that God will choose our family calendar as a reference point.