Before I encountered the community in Ann Arbor, Michigan while I was studying, I was really only living a nominal Catholic life, and going to Mass on Sunday was my only Christian activity. The experience with the community completely changed my life, and gave me a renewed faith, and desire to share it with others.   […]

John 15: 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” The metaphor of the vine and the branches says to us that we have to stay connected (“abide”) to the […]

Over this past year, we have discovered great joy in living and serving together as Bethany sisters from two different Christian traditions and cultures, but who share the call to live single for the Lord and the call to Christian unity. Growing up a charismatic Christian from a Lutheran missionary background, I, Christiane, always experienced […]

John 15: 16b “Go and bear fruit, fruit that will last” Jesus the vine, calls us, the branches, to bear fruit, fruit that will last.  If we are connected to Him, and stay connected, then we will receive God’s life-giving sap, the Holy Spirit, and we will bear fruit.  There are many different aspects of that fruit.  However, […]

In his classic book “Orthodoxy”, G.K. Chesterton draws up the delightful sketch of an English yachtsman who, after a miscalculation, makes landfall on the English coast, believing it to be some uncharted island in the Southern sea. Filled with all the enthusiasm of an age of exploration, he strives to examine the wild inhabitants and their barbaric […]

Jesus calls us to love God and our neighbor.  In my Christian journey I have always found it easy to love those who are like me, whether it be it in personality or things we have in common. I find it more challenging to love those who are different from me. Ecumenism in community presents an […]

John 15: 1-3 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you.” In today’s […]

I am a Catholic Christian who belongs to Árbol de Vida, an ecumenical community in San José, Costa Rica. Since its beginning as a small group of Evangelical and Catholic university students, Árbol de Vida has for 43 years maintained both its interchurch membership, as well as its commitment to ecumenism in the Sword of […]

John 15: 15 “I do not call you servants any longer … but I have called you friends” To be called a friend of God is to be like Abraham (2 Chronicles 20:7) or Moses (Exodus 33:11) who were called friends of God.   The main image of our relationship with God in the Old Testament was as […]

When I was eight years old we lived in a rural French village. The public school we went to still had (Catholic) religion class, and I distinctly remember in the first class it was announced that a few of us (myself included) would be going to the computer room during the time. In some cases […]