This year’s calendar for 2021 presents the lively art of Laura James, inviting us to reflect on her illustrations of five Scripture passages that offer inspiration and insights about the mystery of death and our Christian hope in eternal life. At the center, the heavenly scene from Revelation 4 presents God enthroned, overseeing all, surrounded by twenty-four elders and accompanied by the Lamb (Christ) and four winged beasts that came to symbolize the four books of the Gospel. In the upper left corner of the calendar, Michael the Archangel weighs the souls of those recently raised from the dead. In the upper right, the shepherd from Psalm 23 leads the sheep beside still waters and spreads a table before them. At the lower right we see Isaiah’s prophecy (in chapter 25) of a great banquet on a holy mountain where tears are wiped away and death is no more. Finally at the lower left, the artist illustrates the metaphor from John 4 of a grain of wheat falling and dying in order to produce much fruit—an image of the Paschal mystery—the foundation of our hope in salvation. All of these scenes offer messages of comfort, hope, and redemption. The liturgical year 2021 follows the Sunday Year B cycle and the Weekday Year I cycle, beginning on November 29, 2020 (First Sunday of Advent) and ending on Saturday, November 27, 2021.
LTP’s circular display of the liturgical year makes its key features easily understandable. We can see at a glance the liturgical seasons in their characteristic colors, Sundays on the outer rim, and the days and weeks radiating from the center.
Use the Year of Grace notebook version in many ways: