Author name: Molly Hostetler

Piero della Francesca was born in approximately 1415 and died on the very day Columbus landed in America, October 12, 1492. Better known in his time as a mathematician and geometer, he is now recognized as one of the greatest artists of the early Renaissance.

Hello from the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in Nairobi, Kenya. We serve the poorest of the poor in Kenya, and live just a five-minute walk away from a very poor area called Mathare.

A few weeks ago, we offered a Bible camp using the Journey Through Scripture study Genesis to Jesus.

Easter Sunday might be over, the Easter season lasts fifty days! Here are three books to read to have a joyful Easter season.

This day is traditionally known as Emmaus Day, due to the Gospel reading for Mass in the lectionary prior to Vatican II. The Gospel from Luke 24 of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus was proclaimed in the Mass. In our monastic world it also took on a character of some solemn relaxation including making long walks together. This is very fitting following the intense days of the Triduum.

In my experience of the Triduum at Saint Vincent Archabbey, a particularly powerful part of it has been the empty Tabernacle. Following the painful moment at midnight on Holy Thursday when Jesus is taken away from us and the Tabernacle is left empty, my attention is repeatedly drawn to the gold tabernacle with its open door.

When it looks like defeat for Our Lord, who is hanging on the Cross, in fact this is the victory. Because the Cross represents the supreme expression of divine mercy and love. The mystery of the Last Supper will be unveiled at the Cross because there we will see the Fourth Cup.

One of my favorite parts of Holy Thursday is the extended period of adoration after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at the altar of repose. That time is the commemoration of Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane where the Apostles join Him and He asks Peter, James and John to stay awake with Him one hour.

In contemporary society, most people have no awareness that the offering of sacrifice to God is a central act of the virtue of religion and thus a good and morally obligatory thing. Even Catholics who attend Mass are generally unaware that they are participating in an infinite offering to God or that that is the principal reason why there is a Sunday Mass obligation. The more society becomes secularized, the more the notion of sacrifice and its obligation becomes foreign and difficult to grasp. Clearly there is a great need for catechesis about the meaning, glory, and obligation of offering sacrifice to God.