Events

Suffering, Despair, and Redemption

An Intellectual Retreat for Regent University and Virginia Tech

When:

November 21 - November 23, 2025 | 3:30 PM - 1:30 PM EST

Location:

Dominican House of Studies | Washington, DC

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Join other students of the Thomistic Institute for an Intellectual Retreat!

Students will have the opportunity to attend talks with top-notch theologians and scholars, pray the Liturgy of the Hours, attend Mass, spend time in personal prayer, and enjoy meals and times of fraternity with the Dominican friars and other students.

Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, meals and housing will be provided free for accepted applicants. Limited travel scholarships are available upon request.

Paul Gondreau is professor of theology at Providence College, where he has taught for 28 years. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, doing his dissertation on Christ's full humanity (Christ's human passions/emotions) under the renowned Thomist scholar Jean-Pierre Torrell. He specializes in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and has published widely in the areas of Christology (focusing on Christ’s full humanity and his maleness), Christian anthropology, the moral meaning and purpose of human sexuality and sexual difference, the biblical vision of Aquinas' theology, the theology of disability, the sacrament of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and the Catholic vision of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., (Ph.D. Notre Dame) is professor of patristics and ancient languages at the Pontifical Faculty of the Dominican House of Studies where he serves as the director of the doctoral program. He authored Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Power of Patristic Preaching: The Word in Our Flesh (Catholic University of America, 2023). He co-authored A Living Sacrifice: Guidance for Men Discerning Religious Life (Vianney Vocations, 2019). Editor-in-chief of the academic journal The Thomist, Hofer is editor or co-editor of several volumes including The Oxford Handbook of Deification, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons, and Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers. He enjoys speaking with students about their theological and spiritual questions.

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