Reflections for a season of pain and great joy

A selection of books for Easter by the Books Editor

This year, as Eastertide approaches, our society is faced with the uncertain outcome of what would once have been seen as a plague. These days we try in a way to tame it by calling it a “pandemic”: giving it a scientific name is very close to controlling it.

But nothing could underline more the uncertainty of modern life. That for all the vaunted advances of our day – albeit that they have left many people uncared for and displaced the world over – life has such dangers in store for us all that a dimension of faith and spirituality becomes an even more essential resource.

Easter, the central event of the Christian year, is one of the times when books appear which try to focus the mind and spirit on the meaning of faith and spirituality in a special way.

Here is a selection of some recent titles.

Return to Me with All Your Heart: Daily Reflections for Lent

by Gerard Gallagher

(Veritas, €7.99)

Gerard Gallagher, the author of several earlier books aimed at aiding the Faithful, especially young people, to get more from their religious devotion. This little book is what he calls “a thought-provoking selection of scriptural readings and reflections designed to accompany the reader through the season of Lent”.

In seven chapters it moves week by week towards the climax of Easter Week. It is arranged in a simple but effective way each day opening with a reading not always from the scriptures, followed by a section to read, to reflect on, and then to respond to.

This may all be familiar. But consider: there is a sense in which the season of Lent is essentially something that should last through the year, and these books which we have all read many over the years, are not to be put away after Easter Monday. They can still be dipped into through the course of the year. Then they will continue to provide a stimulus to reflection, and it is reflection that leads eventually to a deepening of a sense of faith and spirit. This is essential in times like these.

Among the many stimulating ideas embedded in this book, here is one which is very striking, or so this reviewer thinks: “Consider planning a family meal, just to celebrate family and faith.” What an attractive idea many may find there, an idea of value for all the year round.

Hearers of the Word: Praying and exploring the Readings Lent and Holy Week: Year A

by Kieran J. O’Mahony

(Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £12.95)

Keiran O’Mahony, is an Augustinian who works as

co-ordinator of biblical studies, is a noted Biblical scholar. So, by contrast, this Lenten book takes a more analytic approach than the Gallagher book. But this in a sense provides more food for thought, more stimuli to applying what we read to the way we live.

This sense of religion as a matter of a temporal culture, which will change over time”

He adds a dimension too in that that he draws out what the Easter actions of Jesus meant for the Jewish community of his time — this is a matter on which may people are vague – but also, and just as essential what they mean “for Christians of all times to come”.

This sense of religion as a matter of a temporal culture, which will change over time, with truths that have an eternal verity makes this a book which will again last the year for readers. Christian rituals, especially at Eastertide, are intended to dramatise the facts of religion, but those facts have still to be internalised and understood in relation to the way we now see the cosmos and the way we live today.

Vulnerable and Free: An encouragement for those sharing the life of Jesus

by Fr Paul Farren, foreword by Timothy Shriver

(Paraclete Press, £7.90/ $US12.99)

Paul Farren is a priest of the Diocese of Derry. It goes almost without saying that he has in his time seen a lot of life and death. He is already the author, with the Rev. Robert Miller, a Protestant minister, of an important little book, Forgiveness Remembers (2017), which suggests that rather than “forgive and simply forget”, we should in fact recall the terrible events of the past, yet while still remembering, still find forgiveness in our hearts.

In this new little book he deals with a topic that comes right home to the theme of Easter week.

The subject is personal humiliation, this is what in a supreme way Jesus faced on the Cross, the deliberate humiliation by the powers that that be of an individual. But in writing of how we can face the lesser humiliations in everyday life, Fr Farren celebrates these moments of personal vulnerability, encouraging us to walk through them in the company of Jesus.

Thus they are turned from unwelcome events, into an opening to a way forward, refocusing the message that after Good Friday there will be an Easter moment.