Pretoria Catholic

A few months ago we went away for the weekend to a little resort nestled in a ravine in Limpopo. It was the tail end of winter and so the chill of the early morning would bite, but this also meant watching the sun rise over the mountain, slowly pierce through the trees, stretching the first rays of the morning sun through the thick of the bush that had been in complete darkness through the night. Bela Bela, 07:17 - 26 July 2025 This made for prayer inspired by the treasure of nature, free of the distractions and hustle of city life. The sight of the sun sparked the words of the Mass in the common Eucharistic prayer, which quotes Psalm 113:3: "From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the LORD is to be praised!" The sun rises and sets day after day without fail. As I sat there, I realised how small I was in the universe, a tiny insignificant dot at the tip of Africa in some random bush. However, at the same time, I felt so loved that in the immensity of the univers...

I received a gift of this plant from my friends, Alex and Thato probably about five years ago. It was originally two succulents in a small boot pot. Over the years it started producing new shoots so I transferred it to a bonsai training pot. I put this training pot next to my desk and one day I ate an apple took some of the seeds pushed it into the pot and honestly forgot about it. At the end of November, I saw three little shoots sprouting and realised the apple seeds had taken. Two of the sprouts were growing nicely until...   Apple seed sprouts, 9 December 2024 First, let me start by saying this blog will be very personal and intimate but this sprouting of seed is a testament to something the world has neglected in the past 60 years or so and this parable is very telling. If you search global fertility rates by country you find a marked decline from around the 1960s when the data was first collected to now. In the 1960s the average number of children per woman was around 5 ...