Gospel Conversations is a collection of imaginary exchanges between various characters from the New Testament. The aim of the book is to enable the reader to engage more fully with the people who were influential in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These include John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Mary’s parents, Peter, John and Mary Magdalene.
To cope fully with death, we need to open the mind and heart through meditation to a deeper way of living. Donagh O'Shea offers stories and reflections that invite readers to prepare for death one day at a time.
Asking the Father tries to come to grips with some of the questions and difficulties which can arise for critically minded believers when they stop to ask what they are doing when they ask God for favours.
Take Nothing for the Journey is a record of three months spent living in a tent in different parts of Ireland, all places that held significance for Donagh O'Shea. After 10 busy years working in a retreat centre, he needed to get away from maps of the spiritual journey, for maps can never be substitutes for the real journey, the journey to God.
A book to be experienced rather than just read. There is a lesson in every line and the attentive reader will come away not only enlightened, but ultimately transformed.
Go Down to the Potter's House is the story of the first 'Potter' retreat/ workshops developed by Donagh O'Shea some 30 years ago.
These workshops combine meditation and simple meditative work with clay. The aim is to help overcome the effects of centuries of introspection and individualism and to discover in ourselves and in the Gospel a straightforward simplicity.
The conversations in this book reveal some of the anger, the sadness, the disaffection of ordinary people in today's Church, as well as their enduring search for hope and meaning.
The decision of Pope John Paul II to insert five new mysteries, the mysteries, makes the Rosary a prayer even more centred than before on Christ as revealed in the Scripture. The aim of The Mysteries of Light is to enable people to read aright the texts for these mysteries and thus to be able to pray them more fruitfully.
The Way of the Cross offers reflections on the fourteen traditional stopping-places or stations which mark out a path by which Christians may walk in the footsteps of Jesus, identifying themselves spiritually with him.
Included in part two is a resource for more leisurely reflection on each station providing scriptural texts, and it brings us into the company of saints and mystics who have travelled this path before us.
The Certainty of Being Loved traces the spiritual journey of Pierre Claverie op, born in 1938 in Algiers, the fourth generation of a family of European settlers.
Pierre joined the Dominicans in France and his conversion experience enabled him to cross the boundaries of difference and deepen his Christian commitment. It would eventually lead him to offer his life as a ransom for peace and reconciliation between Christians and Muslims.
"The Algerian martyr Blessed Pierre Claverie is one of the great witnesses of our time, deserving of a place next to Oscar Romero or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, yet is little known so far in the wider Church." - Austin Ivereigh
A Hundred Roads to Here is a book for struggling meditators.
The wish to meditate may be strong and persistent, but there are many impediments. Every meditator knows them. They present themselves in random ways, and this book is for dipping into at random. Though they are numbered, the sections are in no particular order. They are not points to ponder during meditation, because meditation is inner silence. They were written in response to requests from individuals and groups for brief inputs at the beginning of their meditation sessions; they are not meant to lead to further reflection, but to silence, and to the meditative state which is never more than a breath away.
'Any book that takes us back to the practice of Jesus is to be welcomed. Do This In Memory Of Me focuses on the role that meals played in the ministry of Jesus. He scandalised the pious by welcoming sinners and eating with them. It is the same Jesus that we encounter in the Eucharist. Therefore, the Eucharist must be a place where sinners experience acceptance, healing and forgiveness. When Jesus says, "Do this in memory of me", he is saying that we, too, must welcome sinners and eat with them. Therein lies a great challenge. Simson deserves our gratitude for spelling it out so clearly.'- Flor McCarthy SDB, author of New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies
