The final ‘Conversations at the Center,’ for this semester in Brighton, continued to address this year’s theme of evangelization by focusing specifically on the topic of “Can Artists Evangelize… or Even Communicate?”
For this session, the Center was delighted to host Fr. Richard Lamoureux, A.A. to make the connection between art and evangelization. As an Assumptionist religious, Fr. Richard is a teacher and lecturer in art history at Assumption College and beyond.
In his presentation, Fr. Richard used slides of paintings, architecture and sculptures to illustrate examples of how artists may intentionally convey a message and /or feeling by colors, shape, materials, forms or light and their possible effects on the viewer. In some cases their effects are more obvious or often their impact is unconscious. Communication is only one of the functions of art. Other pieces of art are simply an expression of the artist only.
WORCESTER – He’s 100 years old, and right with the times. And the Lord. And his people. You get that sense talking with Father Oliver Blanchette, an Augustinian of the Assumption, and those who know him. An estimated 200 people celebrated his actual birthday with him March 12, 2016, at a Mass and brunch at Assumption College.
He lives near the college with other retired and elder Assumptionists, though he’s not the retiring type. His reach has extended beyond his congregation to the diocese, civic life, and across the world. “I can hardly say, as did Jeremiah, that I am too young to speak,” Father Blanchette quipped, in prepared remarks for his birthday Mass. “Yet, I may hasten, before it’s too late, to thank God for creating and loving me as my Father all these years, and giving me his Son Jesus as my Savior and friend.” Father Blanchette also expressed thanks for his life as an Assumptionist, and for family and friends. Gratitude is a trademark of his, according to Lena Langlois, of St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish in Sturbridge, which Assumptionists staff.
When Father Vincent Machozi – a priest who served at Everett’s Immaculate Conception Church – asked those who had come to kill him on Palm Sunday in his Parish, “Why are you killing me?” it was a very simple answer.
Those who killed him killed for the same reason they had killed hundreds of others before him, people Machozi had tirelessly defended while in Everett, and later, while serving as a teaching priest in the Congo.
Father Machozi was killed for some rare rocks – rare Earth minerals to be exact.
Those items are things that most reading this article have in their pockets – likely in their cell phone or computer device, as they are the minerals used in making computer chips. Huge deposits sat underneath the village where Father Vincent served, and warring factions in the Congo wanted access to.
To do so, they killed people, lots of people in what has been called the ‘Blood Minerals’ conflict, and Father Vincent had dedicated his life to spreading the word about the slaughter through his graphically honest blog on the Internet.
