The prologue to St. John’s gospel introduces God’s Son as the Word. This life-giving Word—spoken down through the ages—became flesh and lived in our midst. For all of Christian history, the Word is intimately connected with all of human life. It is the purpose of TWIL (“The Word Is Life”) to bring the gospel to life and to bring life to the gospel. This blog will feature reflections on the Sunday Scriptures from contemporary Catholic writers, words of wisdom for our Spiritual journey from saints and blessed, and thoughtful reflections on masterpieces of sacred art. We at Living with Christ hope that they will help you grow in your spiritual life and deepen your relationship with the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The liturgical tradition does not have a ceremony for every scenario of loss, but it does offer a rich ritual repertoire from which we can draw inspiration and hope. On this The Word is Life blog, I am exploring how the liturgical year can help us to ritually recognize, hold and welcome the grief of…
Not much information about Mary’s birthday is known. The Church teaches that she was conceived without sin as the Immaculate Conception. We know that her parents were Anne and Joachim, whose feast we celebrate at the end of July. How did families celebrate birthdays before the common era? In the Jewish tradition, a child was…
St. Monica is the Patron Saint of Mothers. Her life, after her husband’s death, was no easy journey. On top of it all, she had a willful and rebellious child (Augustine) who put her to the test regularly. He grew to be a source of great pain to her as his self-confessed life of sin…
A few years ago, I asked my doctor about a spot on my skin and after examining the mark he said it was “chronological accumulation of environmental exposure.” He got away with saying this only because he has been exposed longer than I have. Some of the earliest signs of aging appear on our skin….
For those working in pastoral ministry, keeping a healthy balance in the parish is a constant task. Communities, like the individual people that constitute them, have tendencies to lean towards their preferred models and predispositions. Without correctives, this leads to imbalance. One common area of tension is between action and contemplation. Some parishes focus so…
