This year was the year. As the evening wore on past their bedtime, they were very excited with their plans to stay up until midnight. But as the clock strained toward 9 p.m. the youngest started to wane and asked, “How many more minutes to midnight?” In the background we could hear the oldest granddaughter continually counting down the minutes on a favorite Christmas gift, an analog watch with a cat on the face. The entire evening became about time—counting the minutes and hours, changing the days, changing the year, and marking those changes with a celebration. It was a lot for them to take in, but when the ball dropped and it was a new day and new year, they were happy to hear, “bedtime!” With so much emphasis on time and calendars, the new year is a good opportunity to reinforce lessons about the Church’s liturgical year. Students are familiar with time as it relates to them—going to bed, catching the bus, rehearsals, sports practice and games, birthdays and holidays—but, depending on their age, they are usually not familiar with time as it relates to their Catholic faith. Children understand the calendars of their lives because they live them. The school year provides a perfect example. Depending on where they live, children are most likely in school from September to June. This calendar may hang on the family refrigerator, but children absorb it because they experience it. While every Catholic classroom should have a liturgical calendar visible for lessons about the Church’s seasons, the most valuable lessons will be those that students are immersed in—setting out an Advent wreath in the classroom; being involved in decorating the classroom with the changing colors of the Church seasons; honoring the feast days of saints; praying a decade of the Rosary daily during the month of October, engaging in seasonal traditions, like a classroom or parish Jesse Tree; sharing both the penitential and celebratory seasons of the Church year together. Most important is creating opportunities to take children into church. If this is limited to First Friday Mass, then some additional visits for quiet time in prayer might be added. If they have this opportunity regularly, students will notice the changing colors of the altar cloths or the priests’ vestments, parish Advent wreaths, statues draped in purple during Lent, the white lilies during Easter and the red poinsettias for Christmas, all of which have significance for the Catholic faith. Many children no longer attend Mass with their families on a regular basis, so visits to church with their school family are important experiences for their spiritual lives. To increase my own knowledge of the liturgical year, I routinely download the current liturgical calendar from the USCCB website. It can be an invaluable aid for teachers, catechists and parents. In addition, “Praying the Scriptures” is an RCL Benziger downloadable, lectionary-based resource designed to support catechists, religion teachers, and parents who lead others in learning and reflecting on the Sunday Scriptures in the classroom and in the home.
Mary Regina Morrell, mother of six and grandmother to nine, is a Catholic journalist, author, and syndicated columnist who has served the dioceses of Metuchen and Trenton, New Jersey, and RENEW International in the areas of catechesis and communication.