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Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 in a small village near Ávila in what is now Spain to Gonzalo de Yepes, an impoverished noblewoman and Catalina Alvarez, a humble silk worker. Gonzalo was disinherited by his family for marrying (at least in the mind of his family) beneath his station in life. Gonzalo also died when John was young. That made life increasingly difficult for Catalina and her two sons Juan and Francisco. When John was nine, the family moved to Medina del Campo, near Valladolid. A few years later John studied at a recently founded Jesuit College at Medina del Campo. When he finished the course of studies, he felt a call to religious life and entered the Carmelites in 1563 where he received as a religious name Juan de Santo Matía.

Peter Kanis—Canisius is the Latin form of his surname—was born on May 8, 1521, in Nijmegen, Holland. His father was the burgomeister, or chief magistrate or executive of the town. While he was a student at the University of Cologne, he would regularly visit the Carthusian monks in that city, and he would associate with other devout men who cultivated the spirituality of the so-called devotio moderna (modern devotion). This was a movement of religious reform calling for apostolic renewal through the rediscovery of pious practices such as humility, obedience, simplicity of life that had begun in the late fourteenth century and came to an end during the Protestant Reformation.

Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905 and died on October 5, 1938. She was born in what is now west-central Poland. After working as a housekeeper in three cities, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925 where she received the name Sister Maria Faustina.

Happy Easter to all who are at Mass on this most glorious Easter day. I want to give a special word of welcome to our visitors who are joining us for Mass today. I hope that you feel very welcome, for indeed you are! I am going to pause this week from my current series of writing about the Doctors of the Church. I will continue the series next week. I want to focus on this very great day in our liturgical calendar. Often on Easter when I greet people after the Masses, people stop and ask me questions. Let me mention some questions that I have been asked over the years on Easter Sunday and then answer the questions.