Living life, day by day

Advent has sprung upon us. From now on for a whole year I am promoting the idea of “Day by Day with God and Family”. So please allow me a little deeper promotion of the idea and the resource material to go with it.

First the concept. Every day, all day and all night, no one is an island, no one is entirely alone psychologically and spiritually even if we are alone physically. How can we, or do we, relate to the idea of being with God all day, every day?

Is it a comfort, a challenge, a joy, a bother? Is it like having someone looking over your shoulder all the time?

We’re not only with God every moment of every day, but belonging and being part of a family are essential elements in one’s identity. Even while being a widow and living alone much of the time, my relationship with my late husband, Chris, is not cancelled out. Nor am I not a mother if my children are far away. I am mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and probably more remotely sister or sister-in-law, and even more distantly aunt.

Whether I see my children or not—and I do wish that I was living closer to them and the grandchildren—their lives are connected to mine, their joys and worries are more mine than those of a colleague or friend.

Maybe it can best be described figuratively as if my family is in my blood. This is somewhat of a cultural issue too. When I ask at a workshop what a family is and who your family is, I do have people mentioning neighbours or members of their sodality. There is however a mysterious sense of belonging to kin, while a degree of intimacy is also important.

At the end of November, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of Bl John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation “The Role of the Family in the Modern World”, also known as Familiaris Consortio. It sets out the essence of Church teaching on family life.

Familiaris Consortio describes family as “an intimate community of life and love, bonded together for life by blood, marriage or adoption.” The family has several tasks to perform in the Church and the world. Firstly, to form and become that intimate community. Secondly, to serve life, nurture it from conception until natural death. Thirdly, to be active in the world and fourthly to share in the life and mission of the Church.

In the early days of our marriage preparation work, Chris and I were given a poster by a couple. It reads: “The closer we get to God, the closer we get to one another.” That poster still stands in my bedroom. Chris tried to convince me it works the other way round too: “The closer we get to one another the closer we get to God.”

I wrote a prayer poem on this when I became widowed, one that is contained in the booklet Becoming Widowed (Redemptorist Publications): “Now God, or circumstance has called you from this life to become one with God and my remaining option is that to become closer to you, I must become closer to God.”  We did not fully achieve that unity, that intimacy that is our calling. We experienced glimpses of it, sure, but the calling and the journey to love and intimacy, ideally in marriage and family relationships, remains in a different way. It is still my calling, our calling as family people. Day by Day.

The 2012 Family Yearplanner calendar has themes for the months to highlight areas of family life. As we reflect and share and pray about these areas with the help of the little MARFAM booklet Day by Day with God and Family (Part 1), we can and should hopefully grow in intimacy with one another as spouses, as parents and children, siblings and as family members across the generations.

Family ministry does not aim to change people, but to help them grow, in a sacrificial way yes, because there is sacrifice in all relationships. Most importantly we recall the words of Jesus “that they may have life and have it to the full.”

As we prepare for the coming of Jesus once again at Christmastime, and also for his second coming, let’s remember that image,” Life to the Full” and imagine too aspiring to that, Day by Day.