MARFAM FAMILY WEEKLY E-NEWSLETTER.

CHRISTMAS 2024 REFLECTION from Toni Rowland  prepared on  Epiphany 2025.

This is the last week of holiday time. Next week we will be more fully prepared for the New Year and celebrating the Jubilee Year as Pilgrims of Hope.

Christmas 2024 was the time when Baby Jesus lost his head.   For me that was very significant, although most other people with whom I shared couldn’t really see my point.   Why was it significant? Because it made me think of other children. More than 20 000 children in wars around the world have lost their lives recently,  some were killed by bombs, missiles and drone attacks in places like Gaza and Ukraine. Some children died of hunger, malnutrition, starvation in Sudan and in many other countries affected by war, but also by the effects of climate change, droughts, floods and earthquakes.  Some children were killed deliberately, through abortion or murdered possibly alongside their mothers in cases of femicide.

Are we a child-friendly world?   In developed affluent countries, where consumerism is a big influence in children’s lives, violence also exists in schools and society and some teenagers die at their own hand or kill other children.

Is there a war on children?   I don’t believe our social milieu targets children in particular, but they certainly are most often vulnerable and innocent victims of a world where global social dysfunction is real.  Men do kill women and children as is very often noted, but more men are killed by men, and a few by women.

The media does misrepresents facts to a certain degree by the way figures are reported as from a perspective of gender-based violence which should be viewed as a family issue.  

Who cares?   Pope Francis, is not a father himself, but very often expresses his concern for children everywhere in his various messages to Catholics and the world. The Vatican has been involved in negotiating the return of children abducted and taken to Russia during the Ukrainian war, and is having to deal with other instances of child abuse.  Pope Francis’ most recent focus for January 2025 is on refugee and migrant children and their hope and desire for education. 

But my reflection takes me back to Christmas 2024.  Every year for over 50 years in my own family my nativity setting has differed to greater of lesser degrees.  The beautiful antique statues of all the characters date back to 1941 and my parents’ own family.   The statues have travelled across the world, in 1954 they came from the Netherlands with my family to South Africa, and the only damage, apart from some minor injuries, was the loss of the ox’s head which was never seen again.  Out of us, 3 sisters, my family have kept the figures throughout the last 70 years.    During my marriage our family did a Christmas play every year with singing and reading the story. I have always put together the nativity setting displaying the figures before and after Christmas as the story unfolded.  The camel had lost an eye and so always had to travel from one direction. Sometimes I depicted shacks, sometimes a stable of cardboard, or structures of polystyrene. Backdrops  from city or country scenes varied,  with this year’s having a feather creation backdrop. At one time while awaiting the arrival of baby Jesus a small unborn foetus figure lay in the crib.    Angels came from everywhere, and I have a special musical angel statue choir. 

Over time during our years of family ministry and overseas gatherings of Catholic Engaged Encounter we  exchanged gifts as delegates from different countries. So I have quite a collection of small plaster houses and churches, sculptures, dolls and animals from around the world, Spain, Costa Rica, Guatamala and more. Wood carvings from Africa were added and all of them have some significance for me relating to God and families and  creation.  

My nativity setting for this year included not the usual traditional nativity figures of the Holy Family, shepherds, sheep and kings, but scenes and mementoes from my life. 

A very special one is the Tree of Life from Mexico, and a scene painted on a leaf from India.  I have statues of Mary made from volcanic ash in Philippines and more well-known art portrayals from Europe.  From the Holy Land there is the image of the star from Bethlehem  – not in the sky but on the ground – reminding me of my own pilgrimage there in 2005 when I was so emotionally affected in the place of Jesus’ birth.  This led me to writing my own Christmas story of THE CHILDREN’S PEACE PILGRIMAGE, an imaginary account of children from all over the world who were affected by war. The project was organized by the Franciscans who  invited them to travel to Bethlehem for a Christmas peace celebration. 

How many children did literally  lose their heads as my baby Jesus accidentally did after the carol sing-a-long at our retirement village, and then again after having been mended unsuccessfully with my daughter’s glue gun. Now he needs to be permanently healed, repaired and reconstructed with super glue.   

If only the desire of all families to keep their children in good order and the desire of all of society’s war-mongering, greedy and power-hungry, individualistic nations would learn to love all life and the joy it can bring to all God’s  world  and all of creation.  

That for me would be about being Pilgrims of Hope, FAMILIES IN CREATION.  HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, one that can only be built on love.   Family love.   God love.

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY JANUARY 8 2025

January  8.  Sr Rosinah and Sr Beatrice had been at home with their families for the holidays and were getting ready to go back to their teaching.  Rosinah shared,  “You know, seeing that couple with their new baby after trying so hard and how everyone crowded around and were so warm and supportive was such a nice experience.  I told them I think this is God’s love, tenderness and mercy lived out in our own situation.” 

Scripture:  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be expiation for our sins.  1 John 4:7-10.  Pope Francis: “He loved us,” says St Paul of Christ, in order to make us realise that nothing can ever separate us from that love.   Because of Jesus we have come to know and believe in the love that God has for us. (1 John 4:16) Dilexit Nos 1.   Pray:  Let us ask for the grace to show our love in tenderness to others through our deeds. Choose appropriate action.