MARFAM FAMILY MATTERS E-NEWSLETTER 11 NOVEMBER 2026

How much can happen in a week, or a year, or a lifetime and more? On this day and this year in 2026 I am in the Netherlands visiting family after a number of days at the Laudato Si Action Platforms 5th anniversary gathering in Rome.

I am grateful that it has been possible to travel to and from Rome but particularly happy to be with my son Alan Martin, born on this day in 1967.  Apart from it being his birthday, it is the feast of St Martin – celebrated in this country in a special way, a bit like Halloween it seems. All I used to know about this saint was that he was an early 4th century Christian saint, a bishop, a convert after being a Roman soldier. He showed compassion for the poor by cutting his cloak in half and giving it to a poor beggar dressed only in rags.  Legend tells us that Jesus appeared to him dressed in a half cloak.  There is also a pre-christian cultural tradition, seeing this time as the beginning of winter and the end of the harvest season.  For this feast children would make paper lanterns and go through the neighbourhood singing and asking for sweets, I does  sound much like Halloween too in other parts of the world.  We know that many Christian feasts originated in the northern hemisphere where feast were originally linked with, or adapted from, an association with nature, even All Saints, or Mary as the queen of May and springtime.  Those traditions should be of interest to the Laudato Si way of thinking and be part of its spirituality as Marfam does from time to time.     

11 November is Armistice Day, commemorating the end of WWI in 1918 and still significant in many countries, where it is associated with peace-building in addition to remembering the many men who died in that war.  There were major geo-political world changes at that time,  but has peace reigned ever since?  With hindsight and eyes and ears of today one could say other wars, including World War II were partly spawned from those geopolitical re-alignments after WWI.  Acknowledging that I don’t have a much wider world knowledge, I have heard how the various countries in the Middle East, especially Israel and Lebanon and the Palestinian people were affected. This has been an important contributor to the current conflictual situations in Gaza and Lebanon.    

Traditions really do matter, as is sung in the musical Fiddler on the Roof which incidentally is based on stories of a Jewish family set in Ukraine in early 20th century and already dealing with Russian aggression.  Another of the songs from that musical  is “If I were a rich man?”  one wonders how that would fit in our Laudato Si “sustainable living” vision.   

I was very honoured to be invited to participate in the 5th anniversary of the Laudato Si Action Platform in Rome last week. We commemorated the successes and challenges associated with implementing the vision of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato S.  This  particular action initiative of the Vatican dicastery for Integral Human Development is associated with the Laudato Si Movement (LSM) which was founded earlier and is still involved with the operations of LSAP.  Both LSM and LSAP are active in South Africa.  Because of the important vision of Care for Creation or CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME (the subtitle of the encyclical) and the growing reality of climate change consequences these need much greater support from the church as a whole. 

At the gathering which included a press conference and was followed by workshops and input sessions as well as a celebration we heard from the leaders how the LSAP stared in 2021 as a call to action.  We also heard  from other countries where some national bishops’ conferences, dioceses, parishes and schools, even universities and very many religious congregations, often through projects by sisters, have organised support groups working throughout the year towards alleviating harm to the environment and promoting sustainable lifestyles. Climate change, loss of diversity – in animal and plant extinctions, pollution of air and water, are issues that can be highlighted, addressed and studied at all levels on an ongoing basis in the world.  A new tool, a LSAP Atlas can show communities around the world what is happening anywhere and is offered to provide information and resources that can be shared.  

MARFAM is a partner with LSAP in the family sector and so our focus of developing a mindset of Becoming Eco-Friendly Families includes addressing relevant issues from the home to all places where family members interact with others in schools and workplaces too.    For me, visiting a much more efficiently developed country,  it has been fascinating to see how efficient homes can be when it comes to the call to recycle, reduce and reuse.  Thrift shops seem to be very common where all kinds of good reuseable items can be bought cheaply.  Solar heating can reduce one’s electricity bill to almost zero in summer.  

And of course riding a bicycle to school or work is a major petrol saver.  I believe there are more bicycles than people in this country, but I haven’t yet been invited to try one of the family bicycles, but will probably settle for an electric model if I get a chance to test my confidence level.  After all there are plenty of 80 year olds here who ride to the shop, pack their groceries – which they have self-cashiered, i.e. rung up and paid for – in saddle bags or manage the bike with one hand with a parcel or an umbrella in the other.  And sometimes a small child in a container built out in the front of a bicycle.    Viva the good life I say,    provided the quality of food is good too.  I had a most amazing steak at our family lunch – commemorating birthday, engagement and just a general sense of family wellbeing.   Yes, viva the good life, good family life.   

Being out of SA at this time, I have done a bit of catching up on what is of interest and significance, happening  elsewhere   in the Church and the world.   Elections in SA, Israel, the US,   the pope who we saw and heard on the day we arrived in Rome at his weekly public audience.  He touched on the importance of work which is surely relevant for all of us.    Now he is in South America for 12 days visiting 3 countries and in his public events meeting with public and church leaders,  with family people, especially the disabled and vulnerable, in whom he always takes an interest. 

A lesson I am learning or possibly reinforcing at this time, is that Laudato Si – on Care for our Common Home, is not about abstract theology but takes the line of pastoral care but based on a pastoral theology rooted deeply in the Gospel and the love of the Trinity, of which the family is a model, an icon, a reflection.  I am happy to have received a copy of the booklet, Integral Ecology in the Life of the Family from the 2 dicasteries (Ecology and the Family) I believe we dare not forget all those aspects in our efforts to “save the world and its elements from harm.”   Yes, Family Matters, of course.    TR  11,11,26,

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

November 11. SEE.  AllIllnesses, physical and mental, result in a loss in the quality of life. Some are fatal.  Some diseases cause a loss in dignity too as sufferers are discriminated against and stigmatised.  Many of those infected with HIV and those who have died from Aids related diseases have suffered serious psychological and emotional pain too.  Leprosy was a terminal disease until recent times and in Jesus’ day sufferers lived as outcasts from the community. Jesus’ gift of his healing ministry extended to anyone, outcasts and foreigners but he still, and rightfully, expected some recognition and thanks. As a family activity why not consider the stories of all ten of the lepers, the one who did give thanks and those who maybe took this for granted. Give them names. Use your own imagination: How would you react if suddenly you were restored to life and community: What did you miss while you were excluded?   

JUDGE. Reflect, share, Scripture:  One of the lepers when he saw he was healed turned back praising God.  Jesus asked, Were not ten lepers cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except his foreigner?”  Luke 17:11-19.  Pope Francis:  the family can discover together with the Christian community new approaches, a different way of understanding and identifying with others by welcoming and caring for the mystery of the frailty of human life.  Al 47 Pope Leo: in the 16th century  St John or the Cross and St Camillus de Lellis took on the mission of serving the sick with total dedication.   “Each person should ask the Lord for a motherly affection for their neighbour so that we may serve them with all charity both in soul and body, in hospital, on battlefields, in prisons and on the streets they embodied the mercy of Christ the Physician.  DT 50 .