A very grand Advent

It’s Advent again – the season of waiting. This year, our waiting takes on a special focus – we are awaiting the arrival of our first grandchild. Actually, Francine has been waiting for at least a decade for this child to arrive. Byron however, is still in deep denial – he’s far too young and…

Read More

It Takes One to Tango

|||

We’ve all heard the saying: it takes two to tango. But is it true that the only way to improve a marriage is if both husband and wife co-operate? Marriage is like a dance. If one spouse changes his or her steps, that changes the dance. The truth is, it only takes one spouse to…

Read More

Power and Passion

|

Christians have a rather unusual perspective on passion. ‘Passion’ Sunday marks the beginning of Holy week and the holiest day in the Church calendar celebrates the ‘passion’ of our Lord. To the secular culture, passion is more about energetic living than about suffering and death. The dictionary offers the definition of passion as ‘a powerful…

Read More

Celebrating Saint Valentine

Celebrating St Valentine|St Valentine's Prayer Card - Front|St Valentine's Payer card - back|St Valentine's Day Powerpoint|Powerpoint image St Valentine

Bulletin Advertisment A Message for Married Couples on St Valentine’s Day God does not call us to mediocrity. God calls us to be a radical witness; to bring alive within our marriage the passionate love and extravagant mercy he has for every human person. God calls us to live this reality within our own marriage…

Read More

Help For Marriages Under Stress

January is typically the peak month for divorce applications in English-speaking countries. Having made the decision to divorce, many couples agree to postpone the application for one last Christmas together as a family. The parents hope that by delaying the devastating news until after Christmas, the children will be able to enjoy the day and then have a few weeks…

Read More

Making your marriage last the distance

making marriage last

Falling in love is easy! Staying in love requires deliberate effort. We all start out in marriage full of hope, brimming with love and unbounded generosity towards our spouse. Yet rarely do those euphoric experiences of early love persist unabated. Disillusionment edges in as our natural selfishness and thoughtlessness crowd out our earlier bliss-generated altruism.…

Read More

Trigger Warning: You might not like this!

We write a lot of articles together. Usually one or the other will do the first draft taking the idea forward as much as they can. So far so good. It’s when it gets to the next stage that things often derail. We each have a distinctive writing style and we construct our argument using…

Read More

Stop Whining Already!

It might not be official church teaching, but the admonishment against complainers got as close as it’s possible to get when Pope Francis recently posted this notice on his residential door. Translated from Italian the notice reads: “You are forbidden to complain. Violators are subject to a victim mentality that decreases one’s sense of humour…

Read More

For couples, every day is ‘Passion Sunday’

A friend gave us a copy of a classic book the other day they had found in a street market: The Catholic Marriage Manual, by Rev George A. Kelly, published 1958. It’s in excellent condition and has that old-book smell acquired from collecting dust on a bookshelf for sixty years. In keeping with our perception…

Read More