Budget is the roadmap to your financial independence. It helps you to stop worrying and start ‘enjoying’ your money- rather than compromise your future for a few moments of pleasure today. A budget shifts the power from money to you. You manage the money rather than money managing you.

The following list of qualities of the family as the domestic church and a model for the wider Church is a good overview of family spirituality.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND FAMILY RIGHTS

One would think there is little difference between these two concepts. After all human beings live in families and families are made up of human beings. There is however a big difference and it can be described by the concept “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Patrick began, “When you watch the news on TV there is always some reporting of a war somewhere; Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, DRCongo. And the Israel-Palestinian situation never resolves itself. Have we been inclined to think that it has nothing really to do with me personally? We think to ourselves, ’Surely those are matters for world leaders or for the people themselves.’

Dealing with Loss –from cul-de-sacs to new highways

Margaret Mollett

Personal loss comes in many forms – ranking first, the death of a loved one, followed by going through a divorce; retrenchment; being defrauded of investments;

How could it be that the one who said, “Let the husband render unto the wife due honour” also says, “Among all the savage beasts none is found to be so harmful as woman”?

Indeed one has to read all St John Chrysostom’s works to appreciate how his perspective on family, marriage and sexuality broadened from the time he entered a monastery to when he became a deacon and pastor championing the giving of due honour to the wife

A MARRIAGE HAS MANY SEASONS

A marriage has many seasons. The couple who knows what season they are in and who understands that season’s characteristics and its challenges will probably weather that season well.

You as a baby were born into the big human family.
You were born into your own family that is different from any other family.
You are different and special and like every other child in the world you are a child of God.

I bet you’ve never stopped to think about it but every year Jesus used to celebrate his birthday. When? On the 25th December of course! When he was tiny his mother, Mary used to organise the party and invite his cousins and the neighbourhood children and Joseph would take time off from his carpentry shop and play games with them.

When you think of Mother Teresa who is now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, do you think of someone doing something beautiful for God in her own particular way remote from your own particular way? Do you think of her as someone so imbued with love for Jesus that it makes her way unattainable? Or is it possible to see her also as someone to emulate, a model for the way she both loved Jesus and those she was called to serve?