Hello world! We’re happy to announce the beginning of our new blog. We are Michael Anthony and Danielle Abril, and we’re both experienced with the Internet but we’ve been too busy living life to blog in recent years. Danielle once ran a great blog called clothdiapertales.com back when we only had one kid to chase around.
Nowadays we typically have four kids in the house, but we are foster parents so the number changes. Danielle homeschools our two older daughters and I teach graduate-level theology at the Aquinas Institute of Theology. We are both experienced catechists, and Danielle in particular has worked on the diocesan level designing curricula and she currently does freelance work for Ave Maria Press.
We started this blog because God has blessed us so thoroughly and we want to share with others. We’ve learned a lot about being a family, teaching our kids, and growing together in faith. While we don’t pretend to be experts at life, we know that our experiences can benefit other people and we can grow from your comments and responses.
Just as our family is diverse, so also will the content of this blog be diverse. We have tips and stories to share about catechesis, homeschooling, educational technology, and Catholic culture in general. We also would like to share spiritual reflections and tidbits of theology.
Today is Epiphany, a very special feast though somewhat ambiguous in the western Church today. It apparently was originally focused on the baptism of Jesus as a key moment in which Jesus is revealed to the world. The Church has also emphasized other epiphanies or revelations of Jesus to the world on the same day, such as the visit of the Magi and the wedding at Cana. In the mid-20th c., the Latin Church added a separate feast for Jesus’s baptism, and that made Epiphany especially confusing, such that nowadays it tends to be associated in the West mostly with the Magi.
We are launching this blog today because we hope that it will be an epiphany too: a special moment in which Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. May the Holy Spirit bless our efforts, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.