Cynthia, What motivated you to go into this ministry?

I spent many happy years working in deaf education in Cape Town. Then for four years I was in St Dominic's Priory in Port Elizabeth, working mainly with some of our elderly and frail sisters. I decided then that I needed to make some preparation for my own retirement which was eight years down the line.

How did you go about the preparation?

I, along with three other Cabra Dominican Sisters followed an Adult Biblical Interdependent Learning Programme which was a week-long course run by an American, Eugene Trester. It re-awakened my appetite for Biblical study. I had a wonderful sabbatical in 1995. I did three months in Ecce Homo, Jerusalem, a biblical course run by Sisters of Sion. It gave me an opportunity to see the Holy Land, and to meet its people. In short - I learned about the book, the people and the land.

After that I spent four months following a Biblical Pastoral course run by the Divine Word Missionaries. There were twenty-four participants, on the course representing sixteen countries. Twenty-one of us were from Asia – plus an Irish sister, a German sister and me – a South African. This enabled us to experience different Asian cultures and the way they celebrated liturgy. Their pastoral experience far outshone that of the three westerners - they worked with the people at grass-roots level. It made for great richness both academically and from a pastoral point of view.

How did the Catholic Biblical Foundation actually come into being?

 Bishop Verstraete initiated the establishment of CBF and annually collected money in Belgium. Now that he has retired we rely solely on income generated from workshops. The situation is such that we have to seek funding otherwise our Cape Town office is not viable. It would be a pity to have to close after all the hard work Sister Dympna and Brother Joe did to establish such a wide outreach to eighty-three parishes in the Archdiocese. We are always on the look-out for generous donors who would like to support our work – do please advise us if you know of any!

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Is there any on-going formation in your work?

I was privileged to receive a scholarship from Bat Kol , Israel and all additional expenditure was paid for by generous friends who believe in this work. It was a month-long course dealing with Hebrew and Christian studies, and there were Jewish and Christian lecturers trained in Midrash and Talmud. It was a great blessing because one got the opportunity to see Scripture as it was written for the culture and time of the people, and so new insights could obviously be gained.

We run workshops most weekends in various parishes of the Archdiocese. The initial one is the Basic Bible Seminar which takes five sessions. We go to the different parishes for two and a half-hour sessions, the final one ending with a very special

Eucharistic celebration at which certificates are presented to participants who have completed the course. This programme has also been done with pre-Confirmation young people. We also do a programme called Youth Exploring Scripture Together. This is a very lively, enthusiastic and inspiring course for young people. Their reaction inspires us and impels as to go on and develop new material.

We have another programme called Windows on the Word which is an in-depth looking at Biblical texts at twelve different levels. This is aimed at people who have completed the previous course or have some knowledge of Scripture, and leads on to our next programme which is Lectio Divina.

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 Publications

 Over the past two years we have been working through the seasonal readings for the year eg Matthew - Year A, Mark - Year B, and so on, and we hope to publish Luke next year. For this we use special simplified commentaries which have been specially prepared and translated into different languages by the CBF. I was also asked to edit a special edition of the South African publication Grace and Truth when CBF celebrated its tenth anniversary which coincided with the Year of the Bible and the fortieth anniversary of the Dei Verbum document.

Prison Outreach

A recent venture began in 2005 when our team visited Malmesbury Prison over a period of five weeks. In 2006 we visited Goodwood Prison. It was sad to note that of the sixty-three Catholic prisoners, only ten attended the sessions. However it was gratifying to see how keen and enthusiastic they were each week, and how eagerly they had covered the work we had done the previous session. It was unfortunate that most of them had no Bibles of their own, and we had to request that they be given them for the sessions. Some of the CBF members were very aware of the high security taken on admission and while the sessions were held. We realized there was need for great sensitivity in presenting the material and the questions we asked.

We feel there is an enormous need to be more involved in presenting God's word to the prisoners, as this can lead to a deeper relationship with God and in the process, a transformation of character.

Finally – would you like to add a last word?

 Yes. Although at times the work can be wearisome as we often have to cover many kilometres to reach our destination, it always proves stimulating as we find that we gain more from participants than we give. It always remains a challenge as preparation has to be carefully done, and great pains taken to present the Word of God in a profound and reverent manner. The Word is always life giving, and we hopefully pray that it leads to greater understanding and a deeper relationship with God.