Commitment to Love

Already one month into the new year and we meet our new underlying theme for the year. PicknPay uses a keyword, Inspired, ABSA Bank uses Prosper so couldnt we, as the Church or at least as families, use the word Commitment?

We can use the concept in its broadest sense, or a somewhat narrower application in the theme for the year Marriage and Family, Committed to Love and Life, and on a monthly basis tease it out and apply it.

The full overview of the themes, month by month, can be downloaded from www.marfam.org.za or the SACBC Family Life Desk website.

It includes commitment to and by youth, parents, grandparents, woman-man relationship and more. February, of course, being the month of love, we all as members of families in different relationships are invited to focus on commitment to love.

Marriage Encounter from the late 1970s introduced the concept of a decision to love which means much the same thing. That has been an underlying vision for me for the last 35 years of family ministry in some form and for many who experienced ME, Catholic Engaged Encounter and Retrouvaille, which all came from the same stable, so to say.

A commitment or decision to love is basic to all family relationships. You cant or shouldnt just walk out on relationships because you are disillusioned or even in a stage of misery.

There can be a future for a hurting marriage or a troubled family with the necessary skills, knowhow and commitment to make things work. We do accept, all the same, that this is not always the case because there are situations that are beyond repair, or should never have been started in the first place.

I believe the following idea says it well. Within a family, on good, happy, positive, exciting days of romance and friendship, there is commitment to a person. On OK days, which are most likely the most common for most of us, unfortunately, there is commitment to relationships, to marriage or to family. On bad days, there is commitment to commitment.

That is the bottom line, it is what making a decision to love is all about. It is wonderful but also painful to see how many families do make that type of commitment. However, living in constant misery or conflict just because of determination to stick with the decision may also not be life-giving to those involved. The most difficult decision in such a difficult situation is to be willing and committed to make changes.

Another wise saying that bears repeating, is If you keep doing the same thing the same way, you will end up with the same result. If family members continue to behave in the same negative ways that cause conflict, nothing will change. I get phone calls from time to time, and so do those who work with troubled situations, and someone will say: I want to work at this relationships but he/she isn’t interested. Spouses, parents and children, and the elderly too are invited, even challenged, to consider that a commitment to love requires willingness to forgive and openness to change, not just to maintain the status quo if it is not what it could be.

This can be applied well to the season of Lent too which begins on February 18. Conversion and repentance apply to our relationship with God as well as with others. The major difference, of course, is that God is always reaching out to us, does not need to change but wants us to make the changes that will improve our relationship with him.

While on holiday in the countryside I was more conscious of birdcalls than I normally am in town, where one mostly seems to hear hadeda birds shouting at each other. I heard a call that sounded much like someone clicking and tapping away on their cellphone.

Then too we have people training birds to talk, but it is more likely to have people imitating bird calls.

So I thought of the harmony that is brought about by imitation. Pope Benedict mentioned living in harmony in the second African synod document Africa’s Commitment. I like to think that a commitment to love involves being willing to do things your way, or ideally our way not just my way so as to live in harmony.

It may take some doing to share one another’s music across relationships and generations, but making beautiful music together, sharing love songs, cannot but bring joy to body and spirit.

For the 2015 family year planners and MARFAM resources, visit www.marfam.org.za