Sanctuary Retreat Centre

25/12/2017

Wishing all our dear friends of Sanctuary a most Blessed Christmas!
And may 2018 be a special year of Our Lord’s Grace for you.

Love from all of us

19/11/2017

I'm excited to share some pictures with you of last weekend's amazing event where we welcomed the Koinonia community to Pretoria. A most beautiful service with some of the many blessed people who are involved @ Sanctuary. In a special way it felt like the whole church was represented, East and West, with Archbishops Willian Slattery and George Daniel, also our dear friend Bishop Antonious Markos from the Holy Coptic Orthodox Church.

Koinonia John the Baptist now have a permanent presence in Pretoria, with resident members of the community from Lourdes Mission in Umzimkulu, under the leadership of Sr. Maria Gracia.

At the service we shared some stories from the very beginning, of how Sanctuary started. Bishop Markos shared about how he came to establish the Coptic Monastery, which you can see from Sanctuary, and that it was while he was on retreat at Sanctuary, that he received the inspiration.

I can see now that Koinonia coming to Sanctuary is like a third wave of Blessing. Fr. Michal and I, shared the story of how Koinonia came to be here. The story is quite extraordinary and something that I know needs to be written down along with the many experiences and "holy interventions" I have witnessed.

We all feel that Our Lord is strongly guiding us and that He has bigger plans that we can imagine. :-)

I also want to include a massive word of thanks to all of you who support us in so many ways.❤️❤️

Love and Blessings

Tony

12/11/2017

The destruction caused on the chicken farm a small way down the road from Sanctuary.

28/09/2017

Spirit filled weekend

29/08/2017

Queenswood 1st year Camp

27/08/2017

This weekend Sanctuary hosted the Lynnwood confirmation camp. What an amazing Jesus filled weekend. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

27/08/2017

Beautiful sanctuary sunsets...

21/05/2017

18/04/2017

We had some special visitors at Sanctuary this weekend 😱. Dinokeng Game Reserve is about 25km from Sanctuary - as the crow flies, so the Elephants must have walked over 40km. It must be well over 100 years Elephants have set foot on Sanctuary😊. No-one saw them.... but we do have some damaged fences and footprints 👣 as proof of their visit 😁.

http://m.news24.com/news24/SouthAfrica/News/attempt-launched-to-lead-escaped-elephant-herd-back-to-reserve-20170417

04/04/2017

This weekend at Sanctuary, Tony facilitated a retreat on Bishop Robert Barron's Three Paths to Holiness. Starting at 10am and finishing at 3pm, the one day retreat was divided into three sessions focusing on each path, 1. Finding the center 2. Realising that you are a sinner and 3. It's not about you.

The three part DVD series provides a practical guide to navigating through every day life. Like the North Rose Window in the Notre Dame Cathedral you too will radiate beauty and light by stepping off the rim of the wheel of fortune and making Christ the center of your life. Helping you find peace regardless of the season you may find yourself in.

Changing the trajectory of your life to one which is more Christ centered means stepping into a life in which you become more and more aware of your sins. Accepting that you are sinner helps you restore internal order, seek reconciliation, extend compassion and forgiveness.

Finally realising that we have but a small role to play in a universal drama helps us to detach from our ego-centric lives and pursue God's purpose for our lives. Which, may not make sense to us, but fulfills a vital role in the greater scheme of God's plan for His creation in its entirety.

At the end of the three part DVD series the retreat was closed with Stations of the Cross outside. Stations of the Cross or also known as the Way of the Cross, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of his crucifixion. We walk from station to station (or image to image), pausing at each station for the purpose of; reflecting and meditating on what Christ went through on the day and praying. A form of penance some would say, in Saturday's blistering heat, but the beauty and tranquility of the surroundings was more than enough to compensate. Stations at Sanctuary always provides for an experience like no other!