Pretoria Catholic

Watching little children develop and grow is a fantastic thing to witness. Noah will be two years old in July and Leo one year old in August. Their milestones and progress help you realise how much we all develop from a tiny and utterly dependent infant into a toddler who wants to do everything themselves. Then to a child and before you know into a fully formed adult.  Noah & Leo, 27 June 2022 There are things babies and toddlers do not fully understand, and they need to go under the guidance of their parents. This can be a difficult phase for the toddler and parent as you both learn to understand each other and develop a new form of communication. At first, what we tell Noah or Leo may not make sense, but with time they begin to build awareness. For example, Noah loves blowing out candles but understands he should not touch the flame. He will say: "Wow, it's fire, eina," and for the non-South African reader, "eina" is an expression of pain or trouble.  In t...

The month of May is dedicated to celebrating motherhood. This is fitting considering the month of May also celebrates the Blessed Virgin Mary. A beautiful Marian custom this month is to make a pilgrimage to an image or statue of Our Lady.  Lowveld National Botanical Gardens, Mbombela (Nelspruit) As a family, Cassandra and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary on the 11th of May. We took a family break to the tranquil Mpumalanga with Noah and Leo. We decided to make our pilgrimage, which involves praying the rosary's glorious, joyful, and sorrowful mysteries on our trip to Hazyview.  The problem is that finding grottos, images, or a church open throughout the day is slim in South Africa. We took a chance to drive past a parish in Mbombela, but the doors were closed, and we found no image. The 400 km-plus journey can be tiring for little ones, and we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens for a leg stretch. Noah and Leo were able to play outdoors. On walking back to the car...

In this blog, I respond to a comment I received on a recent blog I wrote titled: The Parable of the Granadilla vine . The title of this blog is a question or remark Catholics are commonly confronted with by fellow Christians from other denominations. The anonymous comment highlighted some questions and statements about what Christianity truly embodies. I welcome such questions as an important opportunity to clear misconceptions.  "Look upon the rainbow, and praise him who made it..." (Sirach 43:11), 1 December 2020 I would like to pull out three broad themes mentioned in responding to the comment:  (1) "Nowhere in the Bible does it say we must pray to Mother Mary to intercede for us or pray to the Saints?" The comment mentioned a specific sequence the Bible "should" be read in, as an adequate guide and manual. I would like to use this sequence of books to indicate where the idea of intercession or the concept of mediation of Mary and the Saints is derived....

I recently wrote about grandparents as humanities living memory and detailed how I had three grandparents still alive. A month later, my grandmother (Maria De Menezes) passed away, and six days later, my grandfather (Reginald Joel) passed on.  14 June 2021, God's Window Mpumalanga Death is a strange thing and most unnatural to human beings as it leaves us feeling empty, confused, and maybe afraid of what might await us on the other side. The most apparent question death makes us ponder is the question of why? Why must we die? Does God enjoy punishing us with the void the death of a loved one can leave in our hearts? The answer is a profound no!  Before sin entered the world, there was harmony between the body and soul. However, when the first man and woman chose to give in to the devil's temptation and succumbed to his luring. The nature of sin that entered the world broke this harmony. When sin enters the world by our free but misdirected choices, we allow corruption to weake...

At the start of spring, I planted a few granadilla seeds from the pulp of a granadilla I ate. We have received a lot of rain this summer, and in no time, the seeds had sprouted into a few young plants. The granadilla grows as a vine, so training it is essential to keep it maintained and under control.  Tendrils holding the granadilla vine, 3 February 2022 I am currently training the granadilla vine to creep up a wooden trellis and noticed something new about this plant. The granadilla casts a tendril, a thin wire-looking line that helps the vine climb. The tendril is quite resilient and latches onto anything secure and then coils itself firmly against the object drawing the vine securely. The granadilla vine hardly needs any support to bind itself to the trellis. It continually casts new tendrils as the vine extends.  In researching more about the granadilla vine, I found that it is also commonly known as the passion fruit. The passion fruit or granadilla flower has five disti...

I am fortunate to still have three grandparents alive, and this year two of them will be 90 years old. My grandparents, Reginald Edwin Joel (1932) and Edith Johanna Van Dyk Joel (1934) are still alive on my Dad's side. My grandfather João De Menezes (1923-1985) passed away on my Mom's side before I was born. While my grandmother Maria de Jesus Afonso De Menezes (1932), is still alive but currently struggling with dementia and recovering from breaking her leg in a fall late last year.  Maria De Menezes with my son Leo, 15 September 2021 My granny Maria grew up on the tiny Portuguese island of Madeira with limited resources. She often recalls eating only a sweet potato a day as a little girl. Her father sought new work opportunities in the US. Still, with the Great Depression, he soon returned and set off to South Africa to work on a mine. My gran left Madeira by ship in the early to mid part of the 1940s decade for South Africa and recalls fearful inspections by sea and her moth...

We set out for a holiday this year to the north coast of South Africa. There is nothing like the big ocean, a wondrous mystery in itself. The sound of crashing waves has a calming effect, and the waves simply never rest. Noah often exclaimed, "Wow, what there!". Mark of "sin" in the sand before the wave, 1 January 2022 As the day progresses and people fill the beach, soon footprints dent the sea sand in all shapes and sizes. However, the waves pick up momentum as the tide turns, and water is progressively pushed higher and higher up the beach. The water fills the dents in the sand and erases the footprints, resetting the sand and returning the beach to smooth and level ground. Although the sand levels out, the imprint sometimes leaves a stain from the former dent or a scar in the newly levelled sand. I find it a cool analogy to explain our own human defects. God made us in His perfect image and likeness. Adam and Eve did not really eat the apple, and then suddenly, ...

We ate dinner at the dining table on the 1st of December when suddenly the electricity tripped. The house plunged into darkness, and this stillness took hold of the nearby suburbs. The silence was soon disturbed by the sound of roaring generators from our neighbours. The power remained out for 12 days, tripped once more, and then restored a day later, so essentially 13 days without electricity.  Darkness as we took an evening walk, 6 December 2021 No electricity for almost two weeks makes you aware of how dependent our lives are on power. Dry ice helped keep items cool in the fridge for two days but was an expensive solution. Food needed to be transferred to a cooler box with fresh ice every second day to keep it cool. Hot running water to wash dishes or bathe little babies was unavailable. So the old-school way of heating pots of water on gas resurfaced. We needed to buy oil lamps to have some candlelight to light the darkness in the evening. The WiFi router was a nice ornamental ...

It is almost a year since my first blog, and I cannot believe how quickly the year has passed. We now enter the Advent Season and await the coming of the infant Jesus. The most beautiful season in the Church calendar is upon us. There is no better time to reflect on some hidden lessons the Holy Family has to teach us.  Nativity scene under our Christmas tree, 30 November 2021 In Luke's gospel, Joseph took his pregnant wife, Mary, and travelled about 130 km from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled for the census. We know enough to realise that St. Joseph was not particularly well off and probably did not own a donkey or cart to make the journey a little easier. So imagine your pregnant wife, with swollen feet, a sore back, and uncomfortable under the weight of carrying the tiny infant in her womb, setting off to travel on foot to the next town.  Bethlehem was full as travellers were coming in from different places and would have been packed with people bumping past each other,...

One of the benefits of working from home is that my guardian Angel has fewer dangers from which to protect me. Before the pandemic, I left the office after 5:30 pm. I took the usual walk through the Pretoria CBD arcades, walking about 1 km in total to reach the public car parking.  Bruce Lee, Hong Kong 2017 About 30 meters toward the end of the arcade, it opens up into a wide passage that leads to Church Square. Unaware as I exited the first arcade, a man waiting for me ran into me abruptly to knock me off my feet and sought to grab my cellphone from my pocket.  My senses became hyper-aware and immediately averted the fall. I instantaneously swung the lunch bag I was carrying striking the man across the face. He came at me a second time filled with intent, and once again, I swung the bag at him, hoping he would stay away, and my lunch bag handle broke off on one side. Now furious and frustrated, he charged me a third time with a broken lunch bag dangling in my hand like those ...

I write this blog holding our second son, Leo, cradled in my left arm and typing with my right hand. He lies, so content nestled into my arms as he catches a nap without a worry in the world. I gaze at him every now and then to admire the wonderful gift of our little baby, who only ten months ago was merely a tiny seed growing in the womb of his Mommy.  Noah meets Leo for the first time, 30 August 2021 No one can take away the heart-warming feeling of holding the gift of a child from God. Not even all the strange comments one receives from being open to the possibility of life a year after Noah was born. I find the times we live in quite odd. On the one hand, we are expected to understand people's choices around gender or be tolerant of pro-abortion decisions. However, it seems the tolerance of families open to children is somehow shameful!  We have received remarks from strangers, including a nurse and waiter making it seem as if the conception of Leo was an irresponsible sex...

Forecasting is often regarded as both an art and a science. Science in the sense that econometric techniques help create equations that predict the future, but an art in the sense that "judgement" needs to be imposed on a model that cannot always be explained by an equation. So forecasting is the business of predicting the uncertain future. Forecasts help decision-makers (in my case, the government) to make informed decisions around fiscal planning today that will influence the future. There is no such thing as a "good" forecast when predicting the future, as the future is uncertain.  Holy Family Art by Cassandra Joel  A key driver of an objective forecast is based on the quality of the assumptions. An assumption is defined as "something accepted as true" and can be regarded as a fact or statement. Obviously, poor or weak assumptions can be hopelessly wrong and far from the truth!  Outside of the world of forecasting, we would lose track of how many assump...