Year 130 - November 2018Find out more

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12 sheets full of days

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

"Calendar" comes from the Latin kalendae: the ancient Romans used this term to indicate the first day of the month, which coincided with the start of a new lunar phase. Today the calendar shows us the beginning of a year, a month, a week, fixing the days on paper or on the screen. It's a way of looking at them as a whole, an arcane desire to keep time flowing, almost to dominate it.

For many years, our Association has been preparing a personalized calendar that recalls the aims and life of our Anthonian reality. We do it beyond the usefulness of knowing when Christmas, Easter or an important feast falls; beyond the need to note down an anniversary, a trip or a medical visit.

How many elements of our life are present in the sequence of the days that go by: days of work and times of rest; the change of seasons and the phases of the moon; Sundays and civil holidays; the rising of the sun and its sunset. We do not want this to be just an unavoidable flow of minutes and hours, of sunrises and sunsets, that is why we are called to live the time that is given to us as a gift.

The passage of days is not only a chronological sequence, but an anthropological and sapiential opportunity. We can live time as a necessity and we can live it as an opportunity. The days and seasons have already been lived by many of our brothers, sisters and friends. The names of some of them are noted down next to each day of the week. It is the saints who have already lived their life to the full, that is, they got the most of their time. Every saint of the day is a way of holiness. That name, which recalls our name, tells us that we have a friend, an intercessor, a patron who watches over us. We also have a model of life to live our days to the full. Their lives are an incentive, and example, a testimony. The saints of the calendar are the signposts of the annual human path, that point to the direction of heaven.

In the twelve months before us we will find civil and religious anniversaries mixed; weekdays and holidays. Our year is marked by a continuous and vital bond between different moments that give depth to our life. They follow one another as an endless series, without separation between the different perspectives, human or spiritual or religious. Yes, they are equally present perspectives, without a clear separation, because even civil recurrences belong to the category of rituality. A ritual made up of spaces and memories, gestures and symbols, words and hopes. Because man needs to mark time, to possess it, to grasp it, that time that escapes inexorably, especially after a certain age.

For us of the Universal Association of Saint Anthony, the special day is certainly 13 June, which is in the middle of the calendar year. We do not want to diminishing the importance of the other solemnities of the liturgical year; we recognize, however, the beauty and strength of the celebration of this figure of holiness who accompanies us. We have done this in a simple way, with a light and delicate watercolour painting, because we feel his intercession is familiar and varied in form and tone. The memory of the most significant deeds of his life is once again a blessing intercession.

Dear members of the Association and dear friends, let us keep these handfuls of days before our eyes. Every page we turn is a gift that does not return, a finished effort, a hope realized, an opportunity that is given to us. A calendar says this and much more. Not only 12 sheets full of days to hang on the wall, but a set of human and spiritual symbols that contain meanings, expectations, graces, potentiality.