A few weeks ago, a friend reached out to me because she and her mother were looking for a place to stay while in my city for a week-long training. I offered to host them, since I had the space to offer and I was happy to have the chance to catch up. As I was preparing their bedroom, making […]
Joannie Watson
About the Author
Joan Watson was born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, but college and graduate school took her to Virginia, Ohio, and Rome. After graduating from Christendom College with a B.A. in History and Franciscan University with a M.A. in Theology, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to be part of the explosion of Catholic culture in the middle of the Bible Belt.
She has been blessed to work for Dr. Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia at Aquinas College. She is presently the Director of Adult Formation for the Diocese of Nashville. When she’s not testing the culinary exploits of new restaurants or catching up on the latest BBC miniseries, she’s FaceTiming with her eight nephews and nieces and enjoying her role as coolest aunt. She likes gelato, bourbon, and the color orange.
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Help my unbelief: The lesson of Peter of Prague
This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, or Corpus Christi. As I wrote last year, the feast was established to strengthen belief in the Real Presence, to encourage people to draw close to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and to make reparation for sacrilege committed against the Eucharist. While we remember and celebrate […]
Four Starting Points for a Well-Formed Laity
In my last post, I was little strong about the need for a well-formed laity. It’s no secret that we have suffered for years from a lack of solid catechesis in most communities and the effects only increase – exponentially—as the years pass. Much ink has been spilled on what we can do as a Church to remedy the problem. We […]
What the Church (and world) needs from you
Graduation season is upon us, when everyone from Ph.D. candidates to preschoolers don gowns and caps to accept accolades and degrees for their hard work. For some of these graduates, their work as students is finished. As humans, the quest for knowledge must never have a conclusion. Sadly, for many Catholics, their completion of Catholic high school or their reception […]
A Reminder of the Mission
The readings at Mass during the Easter season are a constant reminder of our mission as disciples. Throughout the season, the first readings come from the book of Acts, detailing the events of the early days of the Church when the Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, were obeying the command of Christ to teach the nations. These first followers […]
The Message of a Mother
This Saturday is the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady to Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia at Fatima. She would appear six times to them that year, on the 13th of May, June, July, August (this apparition occurred on the 19th, due to the arrest of the children on the 13th), September, and October. On the occasion of these […]
A lesson of mercy, a story still being written
A few weeks ago, four of my friends and I had a mini-reunion. We have all gone our separate ways since college, and it usually takes a wedding to get us all back together. That was the case this time. As we were all traveling by car or plane to the wedding destination, one of my friends reminded us via […]
Don’t Stop Celebrating
In a culture that moves quickly to the next thing, it is hard to celebrate Easter for fifty days. We are probably better at living the forty days of Lent than we are about living the fifty days of Easter. As soon as Easter Sunday comes and goes, it almost feels like it’s back to Ordinary Time. Even though the […]
This Joyful Eastertide
Augustine once proclaimed, “We are an Easter people and ‘Alleluia’ is our song!” When the Easter Vigil’s beauty is over, when family visits have come to an end, and when the last egg is finally found in the yard, we must not forget that Easter is not merely a one-day celebration. It is a fifty-day celebration. And more than that, […]
My people, what have I done to you?
The Reproaches The Good Friday Reproaches, or Improperia, are among the most unsettling prayers of the Church’s liturgical tradition. They are fitting for the most unsettling day of the year: that day we dare to call “Good,” the day our churches stand stark and empty, the day when the comforting words of the Holy Mass are not uttered, the day […]