SUMMARY OVERVIEW FEBRUARY: Love gives Families life. For more go to http://www.marfam.org.za/2024-family-year-planner/february. God, the creator, is a lover and it is God’s love, as Trinity, that is life-giving, creating life continually and sustaining and renewing creation. Our task and gift as human beings and life-givers is co-creation, with God. By its nature, of total and lifelong commitment, marriage is the ideal love relationship. Love of nature and creation is a way to sustain life in its various forms. The theme can be taken up during Lent for reflection and action.    Pope Francis: AL62. Loving human relationships are mirrored and carried forward in care for creation.  Caring for trees and rhinos and yet rejecting unborn human life and the needs of the destitute and poor is not fully lifegiving. Every creature is the object of the Father’s tenderness.. LS 77.

February 1. Benedict Daswa.  At the time of his murder there was clearly serious division within the community of the village of Mbahe.  There were those who believed in the magical power of sangomas and there were those who had rejected those beliefs and had adopted Christianity.   Benedict was a teacher, a lay minister in the church he built and a loving husband and father as well as caring for others in the community.  He rejected the power of witchcraft and spoke and acted with great love. Through resentment and jealousy in his community he gained the crown of martyrdom. 

Reflect, share, Scripture:  If I give away all I have and if I deliver my body to be burned but have not love I gain nothing.  1 Cor 13. Pope Francis: In difficult moments of history how often do we hear, ‘Today our country needs heroes’? We ask, ‘Today what does our Church need?’ Martyrs, witnesses, everyday saints of ordinary life, lives lived coherently; but we also need those who have the courage to accept the grace to be witnesses until the end, until death. Martyrs are the lifeblood of the Church.” April 2017. Pray: for the month ahead that we may be open to the call to love one another and increase our love for the greater world of families.  Choose appropriate action.