May 2022: New Resources
New Resources For Children
Our Lord’s Prayer
A Prayer Guide for Children
Elizabeth Mills
Veritas Publications, 2021
ISBN 9781800970090
pp. 32 • €4.99/stg£4.50
The disciples who lived daily with Jesus and whom we might therefore imagine needed little advice on prayer, nonetheless, found themselves asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. They had been praying with their Jewish community throughout their lives as grown men and yet in Jesus’ presence they found themselves to be children once more when it came to understanding what it means to pray. By evoking this humble request and stimulating their thirst for God the Lord’s work was bearing early fruit and vindicated his choice of the twelve. The prayer that Jesus then taught his disciples provides the basis for Elizabeth Mills tender presentation of the prayer for children and leads them to consider what God is saying through each line of the prayer and how that applies to our daily lives. The beauty of this little prayer guide for little ones is that we will never be too old to benefit from its message of love and reassurance.
Reviewer: Paul Clayton-Lea
Starchaser
Jacintha Mullins
Veritas Publications, 2021
ISBN 9781800970047
pp. 156 • €12.99/stg£11.70
This beautifully illustrated and sensitively presented publication emerged from a primary school for the Deaf in Limerick where the author and the school community suffered the loss of young members of the school body. In the aftermath of such tragedies children often hide their sadness and confusion in case they cause further pain to adults they love who are suffering more obviously. This gentle aid to comfort children and young people who have lost a loved one provides a visual and child friendly way of explaining what has happened. Initially composed by the author as an in-house publication and then revisited and revised over a seven-year period this special resource has now thankfully become available to the wider public. It is a non-intrusive yet powerful tool with which to help mend young grief. Part of the royalty proceeds go to the Children’s Grief Centre in Limerick.
Reviewer: Paul Clayton-Lea
New Resources
COME DRINK AT THE FOUNT
Introducing the Carmelite Authors
Edmond Cullinan TOC
Veritas Publications, 2021
ISBN 9781800970106
pp. 129 • €12.99/stg£11.70
Fr Cullinan’s study is a most useful reminder to those of us who have long neglected reading the lives of the saints and who remember doing so in seminary or later. It has been noted that many saints, including Edith Stein, who is featured, became saints or were motivated to conversion through reading the lives of the saints. Saints too became authors of other saints’ lives and contributed to the deposit of spiritual richness from which we carve out our own pathway. More contemporary practices like Lectio Divina and the Focolare movement and its founder Chiara Lubich are woven into spiritual sketches and extracts from Saint Teresa of Avila; Saint John of the Cross; Saint Therese of Lisieux; Saint Edith Stein and the lesser known Brother Laurence of the Resurrection.
The biographical details of each saint are recounted. Human interest always draws one in and provides a context for the thoughts and practices of those who are separated from us by centuries and cultural changes. The personality, the practical nature and the humorous asides of Saint Teresa of Avila shine through. The book is immensely readable and practical, with a series of extracts for Lectio Divina and a very reader-friendly format and font. In re-acquainting many of us with the lives of the saints and the Carmelite authors in particular, Fr Cullinan has led us to the water and has encouraged us to drink deeply from the wells.
Reviewer: Michael Murtagh
IN HIS MASTER’S FOOTSTEPS
The Way of the Cross in the Company of St Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop and Martyr
Benedict Fee
St Paul’s Publishing, 2021
ISBN 9781911178460 • pp. 45
In his introduction to this unique series of reflections structured around the Stations of the Cross and carefully crafted from the literary legacy of St Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop Eamon Martin points to the wealth of letters left by his martyred predecessor that has allowed posterity to encounter a living personality from another age. The author fuses excerpts from the saint’s letters to the traditional Stations format with the use of prayer, scripture reading and reflection adding a concluding Pause for Thought at each station to encourage a deeper sense of personal reflection in the light of the saint’s letter and particular station. The 45-page publication is illustrated throughout with photographs of the new statue of St Oliver in the Ecce Homo pose unveiled in 2019 in St Patrick’s cathedral Armagh, created by Dublin-born artist Dony MacManus. In the postscript to the reflections the author also includes brief sketches of modern, martyrs and witnesses with local connections including Columban priest Fr Tony Collier from Cruicetown in Clogherhead parish Co Louth killed in Korea by advancing communist troops in 1950, Servite Fr Malachy Skelton from Dungannon, Co Tyrone killed in South Africa in 1997 and Derry city’s Sr Clare Crockett of the Servants of the Mother who with 687 other souls perished in an earthquake in Ecuador in 2016 as she tried to save her class of schoolchildren.
Fr Benedict’s reflections lead inexorably to an invitation to all those who follow Christ today to respond to their baptismal call with the same generosity as these great witnesses to the Gospel.
Available in Veritas, St Oliver’s shrine in Drogheda and Armagh Cathedral bookshop.
Reviewer: Paul Clayton-Lea
STOLEN MOMENTS
John Quinn
Veritas Publications, 2021
ISBN 9781800970021
pp. 237 • €16.99/stg£15.30
In ‘Stolen Moments’ former RTE broadcaster and prolific author John Quinn has followed on from the success of his collection ‘Moments’ (2011) with a second volume of brief memories, thoughts and reflections from the contemplation of a spider’s web on the wing mirror of his car which survived a fierce overnight storm to the potential for embarrassment or pride of a child in the presence of a slurry trailer outside a village school as parents collected their children at the end of the school day. The all too short ‘moments’ – nearly a hundred altogether – provide a vivid and as with the slurry trailer, a sometimes-pungent sense of life’s daily insights and revelations which so frequently arise from seemingly mundane and everyday experiences. One poignant encounter the author relates concerns the hug he received from a homeless man whom the author had told of his beloved wife’s Olive’s death six weeks earlier; ‘The seed in your heart shall blossom,’ the man whispered to him and so it has proved to be. The present fine volume is evidence of the continuing fecundity and resilience of the author’s heart.
Reviewer: Paul Clayton-Lea