MASITHETHE April 2020

A Holy Week message from the National Exco

As we journey through Holy Week we are invited to celebrate the Passion in a new way. On the surface, this invitation feels more like a command: we are legally mandated to stay at home and pray the liturgy before our screens. But what is the invitation for us within these constraints? Colleen and Sabie have shared with us their own reflections, and we, as the National Exco invite you to reflect upon you own
invitation and the invitation to us as CLC in this time.

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MASITHETHE March 2020

A message from the National Exco: Living CLC in the time of COVID-19

We are sure, for many of you, this week has been one of big adjustments as our country has readied to face our portion of the global pandemic of COVID-19. We would like to encourage you to take our President’s call to action seriously: to practice social distancing and to self-isolate if you have any symptoms or reason to believe you have been in contact with someone who has. On this note, we encourage you to cancel all regional events planned for the coming weeks, and to seriously consider taking your small group meetings online. We also encourage you to make use of online mass options (consider, for example, the Sunday 9am Jesuit Institute Mass available on their website), and to work together in your groups to consider ways you can support more vulnerable members of your group and surrounding community. Above all, we ask you to join us in prayer for our world, and for the courage and love required for people throughout the world to act now for the common good.

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MASITHETHE February2020

You have to go to the desert to see the stars

Last weekend, the last before we entered into Lent, I found myself on a journey into the desert. I was joining a trip to Sutherland, a
“Star Quest” as we called it. Despite some initial disappointing clouds, we were surprised by sudden moments of clear skies and
stars upon stars upon stars. The next morning, I spent a few quiet moments outside, absorbing the landscape and the silence, and the
eery slow creaking of the windmills. I found myself reflecting on the relationship between the desert and the stars. It was dry and
isolated; we had seen very little of the usual bustle of life around us. But it was here, when looking in the right direction, that we had
seen the true layered depths of stars, pulling us up out of ourselves in wonder and delight.

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MASITHETHE January 2020

Reflections on Spiritual Growth in CLC – by Kaye Henrick

some years I have been concerned how we, as CLC, give practical expression to making the experience of the full Spiritual Exercises accessible to the members. In our General principles it is stated that “we hold the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as the specific source and the characteristic instrument of our spirituality”. (GP 5). We also require that members desiring to make permanent commitment to have completed the full Exercises in some form. In GP 12, “regular spiritual direction, and annual interior renewal, (retreat), in accordance with the sources of our spirituality” are recommended as our way of life.

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MASITHETHE December 2019

Greetings! 2019 is about to end, and I am almost convinced that the lessons in it are going to stay very long into the new year. I am well known for my procrastinating, and writing this message was no different. The year that’s ending was eventful.

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MASITHETHE November 2019

WAITING ON GOD, LIVING WITH HOPE – AN ADVENT REFLECTION by Colleen Callahan

Life is hard and requires much patience. Each day, reports of suffering flood our lives through our media and social-media platforms. “What is the world coming to?” we lament. “Surely, life in earlier days was better than this?!” we ponder, as the negativity threatens to drown our hope in the goodness of life. Life, though, has always had its challenges. The writer of James (in James 5:7-10) encourages his audience to wait on the Lord with patience, just as the prophets once did.

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MASITHETHE October 2019

CLC East London hosted a community dinner at Ketha uBomi House to mark the end of the semester. CLC members, house residents, and ACTS students enjoyed a fun pizza evening.

CLC Katlehong enjoyed a one day retreat on the 12^th October. The event was facilitated by Fr Patrick Dladla and ended with a rosary procession. To close off rosary month the group bought 50 rosaries to be blessed by their priest and to distribute along with a guide on how to pray the rosary to Holy Communion and post-communion candidates in their parish.

During October, the Synod for the Amazon has been meeting in Rome. Many important issues have been discussed including environmental justice, women deacons, and married priests. See attached for World CLC’s letter of support (delivered by former World CLC President, Mauricio Lopez) and a link to a summary of the final

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Dear Pope Francis,

We send you all our gratitude, trust and joy! As an association of Ignatian lay faithful throughout the world, the members of the Christian Life Community (CLC), would like to express our great joy for the celebration of the Amazonian Synod.

A universal message

We are aware that this Synod transcends that beloved region and involves all of us, because the Amazon affects the entire planet. It is a universal message that, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, takes place in each of our homes, neighborhoods and countries. Although the pain caused by the different resistances affects us, the joy of the Amazon Church fills us. We feel that the entire universal Church is being transformed by the action of the Holy Spirit in this synodal process.

Listening to the Voice of the People of the Earth

Around the world we perceive how the great majority of Humanity feels a deep joy for the Amazonian Synod. There is a silent Christian majority that does not usually have a voice in the Church. Although sometimes only those with the largest loudspeaker are heard, the silent Church is made up of billions of persons. Thank you, dear Pope Francis, for hearing, and being their voice. An Integral Ecology makes us hear the voice of the Earth and the voice of the people of the Earth. Thank you because this Amazonian Synod is bringing the voice of the people of the Earth to the center and the heart of the Church.

The Amazonian Spirit Deepens the Synodal Church

Perhaps the most relevant event in all these years is that many human beings have sensed an invitation to look at Jesus and follow Him along His path. In believing Jesus when he says, “I am the Way,” we find ourselves on a synodal path with him. We trust that this sense of synodality will deepen the Church in following Jesus’ way, making it more open, inclusive, welcoming and audacious.

We know the difficulties of the synodal path. The pyramidal structures, the temptation to please the powerful, the clericalism, the risk of following and serving only our own purposes, leaving people – especially the poor, weak and suffering – in the gutter, etc. Thank you, because this Amazonian Synod strengthens our notion of being God’s people walking together, leaving no one behind.

The urgency of uniting everything in God

Laudato Si’ and the Amazon Synod have made us profoundly feel the urgency to make everything one in the Father, care for the gifts we have been given, and multiply them so that all may be fulfilled. We fully embrace the appeal to care for our common home, “the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.” Burning and destroying the Earth is to squander ourselves as the Prodigal Son squandered his inheritance Thank you, Your Holiness, for the prophetic message of Integral Ecology.

In the next 50 years, the whole world will consider the Doctrine of Integral Ecology as a natural outcome, just as we now consider natural the Church’s commitment to social issues and the welfare of workers during the nineteenth century. We are experiencing that Integral Ecology is at the center of the Holy Spirit’s prophetic message in this twenty-first century.

We also feel the loud noise made by the messages of the powerful. It is not limited to the political arena, but it also seeks to tame the Church into servitude. These same power figures threaten and slander from the same places. They desire, as Ignatius of Loyola used to say, to have God come where they want. Thank you, Your Holiness, for not allowing the Church to be used for the interests of the powerful. Our only separation from Christ would be separating ourselves from the poor and the Earth.

We are particularly committed to the ecological conversion of people and institutions. We know the importance of offering experiences of encounter and discernment in this fundamental area for Humanity. Integral Ecology is about healing the foundation of all our relationships. That is how we feel, and we are joyful that the Amazonian Synod will offer a deeper understanding and experience.

Sharing Jesus in the diversity and plurality of humanity

In a world community as large and diverse as CLC, the message of inculturation and the plurality of people and their cultures has touched us very deeply. This message of the Amazonian Synod is not only for the diversity of ethnicities of the Pan-Amazonian territory, but it takes place in the increasingly diverse heart of all our cities and communities.

The world is like the Pentecost Square: full of people with a vast diversity of beliefs and ways of life. The Holy Spirit impels us to go out and share God using the Language of the Heart. We believe that this is the message of the Amazonian Synod.

There is another great call that we have felt in the preparatory work of the Synod: getting to know Jesus alongside people in the language of their life, listening to how the Holy Spirit has worked in those cultures over centuries… All regions and ethnic groups that are part of CLC wish to renew our commitment to the inculturation of the Gospel and the path to the Incarnation. We reaffirm our decision to have discerned and chosen Ecology as one of the four frontiers of our action. Integral Ecology is an inseparable part of seeking God in all things. This Synod is a gift that encourages us to continue deepening, sharing and renewing our commitment “in bearing witness to those human and Gospel values within the Church and society which affect (…) the integrity of creation.” (CLC General Principle n.4).

We are very grateful to you, Your Holiness, to the Synod Fathers and Mothers, and to all those who are making this Synod possible. We are in communion with everyone at the Synod and are confident that they will encourage us to build the Kingdom of God with more boldness and joy. We pray to God every day for the Synod and for you: for your health, for your reforms and, above all, for your joy.

With gratefulness, we are at your disposal for anything- each and every CLC member, including us who serve in the World Executive Council:

Denis Dobbelstein, Ann Marie Brennan, Catherine Waiyaki, Fernando Vidal, Daphne Ho, Diego Pereira, Najat Sayegh, Alwin Macalalad, Rojean Macalalad and Manuel Martínez.

(original in Spanish)

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MASITHETHE September 2019

CLC East London hosted an evening of prayer and reflection on gender-based and xenophobic violence at the Holy Redeemer Parish, Quigney. It as attended by the ACTS students and other members of the community.

CLC Eastern Cape has recently held a retreat directed by Kaye Henrick and Sr Geraldine Carolan M.S.A. Please keep the retreatants in your prayers as they finish up their retreat and return to daily life this week. We have a new email address! If you need to contact the National Exco you can reach us at christianlifecommunitysa@gmail.com

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MASITHETHE July 2019

A note from Kaye: Reflections on retiring as National Coordinator 

Dearly loved CLC members

Most of you know already that I have finished my term as national coordinator as of 6th July. I have so many feelings of nostalgia and gratitude for what I have learned and how I have grown as a person and a CLC person through the experience of 10 years as national coordinator and a few years before that on national exco. I am so grateful to those who went before me and handed CLC onto us, and to those with whom I worked on exco and to those who are taking it forward. I remember so many people in CLC but I am not going to name them in case I miss one or two inadvertently. I remember also with deep thanks the help, support and encouragement of our EA’s and Society of Jesus brothers. Many before them, but in my time, Frs Mike Lewis, Graham Pugin, David Smolira, David Rowan, Anthony Egan, and the late Shaun Carls. The scripture passage I am praying for
you all is Ephesians 3:14-21, and it is heartfelt! I have handed over the office, hat, and mantle of CLC coordinator to Malesabe Makgothi with the greatest confidence as she is a wonderful example of fully integrating the CLC charism into the complications of daily life and has been in tune with both national and world CLC for many years. The current national exco members are vibrant and energetic and I am filled with hope for the continued growth and development of CLC in SA. I am so grateful for having had the opportunity and experience of leading CLC over the past years and know that we had some difficult times and that we kept CLC anchored to our centre. Looking back over some of the difficult times, with hindsight, I might have done some things differently, but know that I did the best that we knew at the time. To the new coordinator and national exco team I want to say go forward in openness to the spirit, trust God and keep to the spirit of our CLC principles. For myself I am committed to CLC as my way of life and to the growth of lay people, their empowerment in church and spirituality. I am looking forward to serving on the national formation team and on EC regional exco. My prayer is from the hymn “Lord you have come to the lakeside” and the lines from the refrain “ I have left my boat by the lakeside and now with you I will seek other shores” in CLC and the last verse “ Lord other seas call me onward, hope eternal for hearts that are searching, and love will bind us as friends forever” in CLC. Thank you all wonderful CLC people who encouraged, supported and challenged me and enabled me to grow through our wonderful gift of CLC.

Kaye

Regional Leadership Training June 2019

I am so pleased that we had the opportunity to present this weekend, and so grateful for the grant from the Society of Jesus Endowment Fund that enabled us to have the weekend. For once the unpredictable winter weather of PE played along and gave us a beautiful weekend and no power outages. The idea of this training was first proposed by national exco in 2017, but we didn’t get our proposal in in time, but we got there. I was anxious about the model I put together as it is always difficult to get the balance right between inputs, reflections, discussions and plenaries, but from the evaluations by the participants, it worked. We achieved, I believe, a growth in community on the national level as we were able to share, discuss and interact with people from other regions. The inputs from our presenters from the membership of CLC were insightful and informative
and show that we have what we need to take CLC forward. One of the desired outcomes from the training was to affirm and grow members on the regional levels to lead their regions with more confidence. From the evaluations it seems that this happened and participants went home with more information, more confidence and an understanding that our founding documents are not way beyond their understanding. CLC PE members were superb in their background work, meeting flights, delivering food, and the great fruit cake we all enjoyed, real community effort. Having to take people out and go to the bank to effect changes to signatories on the national account broke into the programme, but it was such a blessing to have all the signatories present and get the changes done. Those who have been through this process before will know how much time, effort and stress this saved us. We also missed having an EA with us and had to take time out for Mass in a parish, however it showed a CLC presence. Sabie’s dedication to CLC was again affirmed, when despite the sudden death of her father she continued with the programme, did her slots and participated fully. We send her our continued support as she deals with this loss and all the add ons. I think that some similar national training programmes can be considered in future, maybe in the years when we don’t have a national assembly.

CLC Western Cape Retreat

Blue mountains, fields of cows and frisky goats, and a peaceful garden greeted us on arrival at the Capuchin Adoration Convent in Swellendam. From early days, many in CLC have chosen to travel to this part of the Overberg for retreats. The Sisters, now mainly from Mexico, welcome us with great love. It is a place of prayer and perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the Chapel, with daily Mass. Our rooms in the retreat house were comfortable and sunny, with private bathrooms and the food was good. In spite of sickness and other problems before setting out, we
came with strong desires and were greatly blessed. We found unique encounters with the Lord, healing and gratitude – new hope in facing life’s challenges ahead. So thank you to all who came from CLC and our monthly days of reflection. Thank you to all who made this retreat possible. It
was a privilege to accompany each person – to the ‘greater glory of God’!

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