Courtney McGrailThe God of Mercy, The God of the Gospels
by Peter McVerry SJ
(Veritas, €9.99)
Fr McVerry will need no introduction to any reader. This book was written to celebrate 2016, not in the revolutionary sense, but as the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. But in its own it is a revolutionary text. Mercy may well be interpreted as individuals seeking the mercy of God for their shortcomings. Fr McVerry, drawing on the substance of the four gospels and their presentation of Jesus, sees the scriptures of the New Testament calling a different expression of mercy, a sense of true compassion towards others: the damaged, the homeless, the distraught and, let us not forget, the angry.
The model we should follow, he suggests, is the compassion which Jesus shows throughout the Gospels. In keeping with his own life, Fr Peter suggests that compassion can be expressed not only in acts of kindness, but also in positive action, often political action, to change the state of things or the state of society. But the author’s real appeal, like that of the gospels, is to each individual. A small book, but one filled with human warmth and the insight that comes of years of campaigning.
With Thee Tender is the Night
by John O’Brien OFM
(CreateSpace, £10.00)
The title of Fr O’Brien’s new book is a play on Keats’ lines in An Ode to the Nightingale. Night time, those long hours of darkness can be for many people, alone in themselves, a time of pain. But the author explores the idea of the pain that God feels at the rejection of his love, and the contrary, the joy that God and the individual can feel when love is returned or reconciled.
He ranges widely in his allusions from Von Balthazar to Vincent Van Gogh, one of whose paintings decorates the cover. But this is not intended as an intellectual exercise in any way, but says the author ‘a form of mediation that allows us to be healed of the hurts that dim our vision and we pray that the love of God be poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us’.
What is perhaps most damaging is anger, even that anger than many feel about the condition of the world. All that can only be changed by leaving anger aside and connecting with others in a positive way.
Pilgrim Who is Calling You? The Way of St James
by Owen Quinn
(Published by the author; contact quinnofglasgow@live.co.uk)
Owen Quinn had a long and successful career in international business. In retirement, though he was no kind of walker at all, he decided to set out on the Camino of St James. This was a gruelling experience, but also a life-changing one, as he explains in the book. It was not just the extraordinary landscapes and cultures of northern Spain; it was the pilgrims themselves, who represented all kind of cultures and nations, and types of human beings that became important to him.
He explains that his book is an attempt by an amateur scribbler (his words) to explain to those who will never be able to undertake the Camino just what the experience is like, or rather what it was like for him, a transcendent encounter of a very personal kind.