February 2019

As the first family and the first church of the New Covenant, the Holy Family isn’t just the model family community, but the model ecclesial community. Mary and Joseph show us what and who we can be when we unite ourselves to Christ.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a sentence fragment, perhaps intended as a title: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1). You may recognize the genealogy from lectors tripping over names like “Ammin’adab” and “Zerub’babel” during Christmas Eve Mass. But this section is more than a list of funny names: it is the interpretive key for the entire New Testament.

It’s easy to take a romantic view of the Holy Family, as if they were angels rather than human beings. But even though Mary and Jesus never sinned, that doesn’t mean there were no parental mistakes. And it doesn’t mean Jesus never frustrated His earthly parents.

We’ve been talking a lot about hosting this week and offering hospitality to our guests. One of the best ways to do that is through the gift of food. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant—just putting out coffee or tea is enough.

As Christians, we’re not called to “entertain” people or put on a show. But we are expected to practice hospitality.
“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling,” instructs 1 Peter 4:9.

The first step in leading any Bible study is always to bathe your efforts in prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to use you for the glory of God and to bless the study. Consider asking others to intercede for you and the participants of the study.

We know that the idea of hosting a Bible study and sharing the Gospel can be scary terms. But evangelizing to friends through reading the Bible is much easier than you might think.

On assuming the Chair of Peter, Pope Saint John Paul II chose to devote his weekly general audiences for some five years (1979– 1984) to a catechesis on the human person, the body, and sexuality that has come to be known as the “Theology of the Body.” Almost every Wednesday (except when he was recovering from an attempted assassination in 1981), he gave an address to a gathering of pilgrims either in Saint Peter’s Square or in an audience hall.

The topic of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, caught many by surprise. Moral relativism, secularization, abortion, liturgy—these are some of the themes people expected him to address.
But instead, this new pope—known for his intellect, scholarship, and courage to tackle controversial issues—chose to write on a topic quite simple, timeless, and appealing to all: the mystery of love.