Pretoria Catholic

Have you ever had a dream which created some panic? A while back I was having a consistent dream that I would return to school and in my dream I was never studying for the subjects or attending the class and it would make me worry that I would sit in the exam and know nothing. Now, this is a random dream and it has been years since I was in school but in the subconscious of dreamland I was going to sit in the exam, know nothing and then fail the exam. Now imagine for a moment you wake up and that dream becomes a reality. I think that is how Adam and Eve may have felt when they had committed the first or original sin.  Satan and the Beast of the Sea, by Jean Bondol and Nicholas Bataille "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked: and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons... 'I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (Gen 3:7,10) The devil's lie was an empty promise. The serpent said to the woman, "You will...

 It is 17:49 on the 4th of September 2024, and I have been stuck in an elevator at my office building for more than 30 minutes. I work on the 20th floor and when pressing the floor to travel down to the basement I got stuck. There is nowhere to go it's just the four walls around me, my computer bag and my guardian angel in the elevator with me. So in these moments, all becomes quiet and we become in touch with our inner selves, our souls. The mirrors in the elevator are positioned opposite each other so if you look into the one mirror you see multiple reflections that seem to run into infinity. If I were in a movie scene I could spice the scene up and start causing panic with highly unlikely scenarios like: What if the elevator cable starts fraying? What if I run out of oxygen? What if ... Fortunately it was pretty chilled and the technicians got me out after 50 minutes.  Stuck in the lift, 4 September 2024 (17:48) So after that dramatic introduction on contemplating death and...

"What's wrong with the world, mama?  People livin' like they ain't got no mamas I think the whole world's addicted to the drama Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma."  (Where is the love - Black Eyed Peas) Raphael (our third son), 13 April 2024 Deep down inside all of us, there is a desire to want to make the world a better place. We see suffering, brokenness and hardship around us and this can leave us begging the question why? Where is God in all of this?  In the second part of the series on ToB, we go deeper and this may help us realise that God has not left us nor does he desire we suffer. We discover that in fact, God has loved us completely by giving us freedom to choose.  In Genesis, we read about Adam. We should think of him more as a placeholder name representing humanity rather than an individual person. Why? The word Adam means human being and so God is telling us the story of all humanity. We label him, Old Adam. We know three thin...

In high school, I attended a leadership conference that used the bestselling book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers' written by Sean Covey the son of the author of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People'. This book has some important Christian undertones but also some advice for us to borrow in the Christian life. This blog retrofits this to look at how we can apply them to our spiritual life.  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens - Sean Covey As Christians, we are called to be apostles in the middle of the world just like the first apostles who were some ordinary fishermen and rough around the edges but after encountering Our Lord and receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost it all changed.  So here are seven habits we can try to develop to be more like the first apostles and carry out what our Lord asks of us: Habit 1 - Be Proactive  We are responsible for our own happiness in life. However, what makes us happy is not found externally beyond our souls but ...

We took our boys for their first glamping trip with their grandparents (my parents) to a resort in Limpopo called Klein Kariba. It had been about 18 years since I last visited the resort and a lot had changed. It is a little over an hour outside of the city of Pretoria and nestled in a beautiful valley.  Noah & Leo feeding Njala, 23 April 2024 One late afternoon as we prepared to make a fire a group of Njala (a lesser Kudu according to Google I won't pretend to know my antelope haha) came past to graze on nearby trees. Noah and Leo were able to feed them leaves and even stroke them. Raphael even got up close and giggled in baby talk as the female Njala was intrigued by a little baby. It is not common to get so close to wild antelope and the young herd may have recalled people feeding them leaves from the tree tops they couldn't reach when they were young. This exchange with creation can beg the question of, "Who are we?" and what makes us so different to the anima...

Any mass of water, such as a dam, lake or ocean, has a source that feeds it. If we see a large dam, we don't often think the source feeding it could be a narrow river stretching and winding for a long distance. In time, the small flow of the river feeds and fills the dam, but it always starts with the source upstream. The dam remains full as long as it is always connected to that life-giving source. Once the source is broken the dam will grow dry and eventually disappear.  In the world, there are about 2.6 billion Christians, with almost 1.4 billion Catholics. However, if we are all Christians, why do we distinguish between Catholics and other denominations? To understand why we distinguish, we have to look at all the bodies of Christianity and trace their rivers back to their source. Only then can we realise where the divisions arose and which remains connected to the original source? The Catholic Church remains unchanged from the very ground roots of Jesus. Catholicism is not som...