FROM HALLOWEEN TO CHILDREN WHO SUFFER
I heard about a group of families who organized a Halloween celebration in a local park. Kids dressed up, games were played and everyone had lots of fun. That’s great but I must express some reservations about such an excuse for a party, here in South Africa, where...
NOVEMBER MONTHLY THEME “FAMILY LOSSES AND ENDINGS”
NOVEMBER. Losses big and small are inevitable experiences in daily life. Birth, growth, decline and death are the natural cycle of all of creation. For inanimate creatures it may be a painless letting go of one's place in the sun, or a cataclysmic event. Death and...
MISSIONARY DISCIPLESHIP AND FAMILIES
Every so often I meet up with some young people or a young family from Europe or elsewhere in the world e.g. Philippines, who are volunteering to work for the Church as a missionary family in South Africa for a year or more. Last week in Cape Town I was very impressed...
SALESIANS AS A MISSIONARY FAMILY
October is Mission month and the 2022 theme “you shall be my witnesses” has been well carried out by very many congregations of priests and nuns over the years. Among them are the Salesians of Don Bosco as well as the other members of the SALESIAN FAMILY...
A MISSIONARY WORLD WITH A BUTTERFLY EFFECT
There is a hymn, quite popular with some congregations “God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. God is working his purpose out and the time is drawing near, nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be...
SEASON OF CREATION. HOPE FOR THE WORLD?
While acknowledging the amount of energy and efforts that have gone into all the many kinds of activities around the Season of Creation which will end on 4 October, the feast of St Francis, I have not felt completely at one with some of them, in particular when they...
OUR HERITAGE AND OUR FAITH – TO BRAAI, MARCH OR PRAY
History across time and the world, is a continual process of cohabitation, invasions, wars, foreign occupation, enslavement, liberation, development and regression. South Africa’s heritage includes these features too with successive periods of occupation by Holland...
PANGOLINS, BIODIVERSITY AND THE FAMILY OF FAMILIES
I’ve had an interest in pangolins for quite a long time maybe because they seem such unusual-looking creatures, a scaly ant-eater, and they are among the most frequently trafficked, more than a million in the last 10 years. When one explores that aspect one...
ECO-UBUNTU AND ECUMENISM
The particular value of the Season of Creation is its ecumenical nature. The commemoration was started in 1989 by the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I . Other Christian denominations joined in over the years, Catholics in 2015....
CREATION AND THE SEASON OF CREATION
The Tree of Life. It is the end of the month of August, Women’s month in South Africa, with MARFAM’s focus on Sexuality as a Family Gift. SA focused strongly on gender-based violence, a serious social problem, as well as women’s rights. From a social perspective...
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