Courtney McGrailThe Passion and the Cross: Daily Reading for Lent
by Ronald Rolheiser
(Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99)
The season before Christmas may seem an odd time to bring out a book for Lent, but publishers move in mysterious ways. This is the cheaper paperback edition of a book that appeared last year. The author is the popular writer and lecturer, whose columns appear weekly in The Irish Catholic (as well as nearly 70 other papers).
Our original review is quoted by the publishers and what we wrote then is worth repeating here: “All Rolheiser’s virtues as a writer of popular theology are displayed in this excellent, insightful and moving book. It is written with a refreshing lack of the kind of language that often clutters many spiritual books”.
So while shopping for Christmas books you may come upon a copy of this book. Christmas or not, it ought to be bought.
Our Lady’s Apron: A collection of articles on spiritual topics
by Fr Christopher Fox MHF
(Choice Publishing, €10.00; frchristopherfox@gmail.com)
Fr Fox is the author of a memoir of his life in Africa as a Mill Hill father. Now in retirement he has collected various pieces he has written over the years on spiritual themes.
These cover a wide range of topics, and so provide the sort of book which is ideal for occasional reading. But I was struck, what with the season we are entering on as the days get colder, by an article on ‘A Nativity Play with a Difference’.
The piece was written by an African, and it located the birth of Jesus, the trials of Mary and Joseph and the meaning of the gifts of the Magi in the context of the local culture. It was very moving, but also (which is most important) theologically sound. The rest of the pieces draw in the same way from the author’s experience of different cultures and almost forgotten aspects of our own – the allusion in the title is the once common apron worn by Irish country women, as an invaluable aide to their work.
Readers will profit from these pieces quite as much as did their original audiences.
To Know the Love of Christ: Weekday Reflections for the Liturgical Year 2016 /2017
by Martin Hogan
(Messenger Publications, €14.99)
Fr Hogan is a parish priest in Dublin, who used to lecture in New Testament studies in Mater Dei. However this book aimed at another kind of audience, the “faithful band who attend Mass every day, people of great faith and regular prayer”. Nowadays such daily Mass goers are a smaller group than they once were, what with the changing nature of work and that lack of a mass to go to early in the morning before the office or shop. But the daily massgoer is exposed to the selected readings in a way the weekly massgoer is not.
Hearing more from the Scriptures, they have more to reflect on. Each reflection is less than a page long but it is hoped by the author will encourage the priest to add his own remarks.