Peter CostelloGiving Life Away: Memories
by James O’Halloran SDB
(Little Book Company, 11 Hillbrook Crescent, Perystown, Dublin 12; ISBN 9781906077174 ; no price stated)
In recent years our knowledge of what the priestly vocation has meant in modern Ireland has been enhanced by a series of autobiographies of priests with very varied experiences.
The latest to hand is by Fr Jim O’Halloran. He is a native of Callan, a Kilkenny town with its own small niche in the controversies of Irish religious life. But over the years as a Salesian educator he has travelled far, to Europe, South Africa and Latin America.
His vocation as a Salesian was informed by his early education, but he has also learned a great deal through later experiences too.
Today, he is still involved with the work of the Don Bosco Care centre in Dublin, and he has become a prophet of the small Christian community movement, in which many see the future development of the Church. Like others before he sees the future of all aspects of our lives depend on the work of small groups – what Burke called our small platoons.
This is an unassuming book, on a very human scale, but one which readers will find informative, and in the end, inspiring.