About Us
WHY WINE?
It is a Tuesday morning, homeschool hours, and my three kids are seated around the table with their Bibles open to the Gospel of John. We've reached the wedding at Cana, and one of them asks: “Why does it matter that Jesus made wine, of all things, His first miracle?”
I don't have an answer ready. Not one that does the moment justice. The lesson stalls while I go looking for it.
A few weeks later, it happens again, further into the Gospel. “Why did Jesus wait two extra days before going to Lazarus, if He loved him?” I fumble that one too.
By the third or fourth time — I've stopped counting exactly when — I realize the questions aren't going to stop. Neither should I.
So I started writing the answers down. Properly, this time.
At first, it was notes on my phone — a line typed during a lunch break, an answer half-finished in a parking lot before I lost it by dinner. Then, one evening in prayer, I felt moved — quietly, but unmistakably — to do something with them. Write it down properly. Don't let it disappear. So I did.
The notes became something closer to a lesson plan. The lesson plans became something closer to a curriculum. Somewhere in there, the work outgrew our homeschool room before I fully noticed it happening.
I stopped writing only for my own three kids and started writing for whoever else needed the same question answered.
"That is Augustine & Co. now: a Catholic Knowledge Library that grew out of one family's homeschool table — and what happens when you keep answering the questions instead of letting it go."
…
I'm JP. My wife and I homeschool our three kids, and I'm the one who teaches religion and Bible history at our table. I also spend my working week as the pastoral associate at our parish, helping other families sit with exactly these kinds of questions. I couldn't turn around and hand my own children a softer answer than I'd give someone else's.
That's why the work here holds itself to the same standard, wherever it gets done. Most of it happens in the hour after the kids are in bed — a phone note from the afternoon turned into something closer to a real answer, one question and one article at a time.
The questions haven't stopped. Every new Bible book, every saint profile, every question this site sets out to answer began as something one of my kids asked first — or something I wished I had answered better when they did.
It has just gotten a lot bigger since then.
Whether you found this site through a search or a late-night question about a verse you could not stop thinking about, there is a place for you at this table too.