Greetings every one. Lent has come and gone and so has Easter. I trust everyone survived the different stages of lockdown, the long weekend and managed to meet with family and friends and perhaps managed to get to some of the Easter ceremonies. But now it is all behind us and we face the rest of the year hopefully with a little more enthusiasm as the promise of the vaccine seems on the horizon. Before anything else let me tell you that I prayed for every one of you at the altar on Easter Sunday. You are a special group of people. You are doing your best to help build a self-sustaining church in spite of the economic pressure that the country is going through.

Where were we before all of that? We have to pick up the pieces from way before March. But we are now in April and next Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday. This Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter was chosen by Jesus himself in his revelations to Sr. Faustina back in 1938. His message is simple, he suffered and died for everyone so that we may live faith-filled lives, loving God and loving our neighbour. However, greed, exploitation, violence, power struggles and rejection of the Gospel seem to be winning the day. The call is to turn to Jesus in his mercy and be reconciled to God and to one another. The late Pope John Paul II said that to understand Divine Mercy is to understand the secret of Easter. The secret of Easter is the Divine Mercy in the form of Jesus. Love of the neighbour, is the heart of Christian living. This makes the Foundation so important as part of the work of the Foundation is the outreach to so many groups and organizations who are in turn reading out to the most vulnerable in the Church. Here is one of our stories from last year.

Many of you have heard of Lambert’s Bay. It is a little fishing village in the Western Cape. It is a poor area. There is a very small Catholic presence in the village. Their most visible project is the Morester Educare School (Educare is the new official name for what we used to call a Nursery School or Creche), which is under the care and administration of the Catholic Schools Trust of the archdiocese of Cape Town. Their fees are very low because of the economic/social situation. To support them in their ministry and witness the Foundation (you) donated R50,000 last year to the school. Thank you all.

Two short notices:

• If anyone has not donated for a while here are the Foundation Bank details.

Name of our account                      SACBC Foundation

Bank                                                    NEDBANK

Branch Code                                      160445

Account number                               1604879564

Type of account                                 Current

Please use your phone number as a reference.

• Please remember the Foundation when you are making or updating your will.

Lastly (there’s always a last message). Do your best to enrol at least one other person in the Foundation. Speak to them, for example, a son or nephew, daughter or niece, give me their name and phone number and tell them to expect a call. Because of the restrictions on people coming to Church I am not able to get around. Help me to expand our donor base.

God bless. Fr. Barney