Sister Marilyn Kerber, SNDdeN recommends Paschal Paradox: Reflections on a Life of Spiritual Evolution by Diarmuid O'Murchu. In this spiritual autobiography, Diarmuid O'Murchu explores the many paschal journeys in his personal life as well as in the life of the church and the world. Each chapter is structured around one or more personal anecdotes of his life (the personal) coupled with enlarged horizons of meaning that subsequently ensued (the transpersonal). The chapters include topics such as Engaging the Paschal Journey of Religious Life, Entangled with the Earth, and Death and Resurrection Amid COVID-19.
The author believes that "We need to come to our deeper nature, entrusted by a God of the heart, inviting us into the liberating but daunting challenge of loving unconditionally all that is entrusted to our care." He reminds us, along with Pope Francis, that, "We are part of nature." O'Murchu explains that the God-given reality of evolutionary creativity is too much for many of us to embrace. However, for those of us seeking the evolutionary thrust, the lure is for the future and not for the past. Resurrection is the expansive horizon beckoning us from every Calvary we face, as we learn to negotiate the mystical paradox on which all life flourishes.
Sister Therese DelGenio, SNDdeN and Sisters in Kenya have enjoyed Tobit’s Dog by Michael Richard Nicholas. This is a cleverly rewritten version of the Scripture story of Tobit, his son Tobias, and his famous traveling companion, the Archangel Raphael. The story is set in the rural South of the USA. The characters are not Jewish, but African Americans who suffer the prejudice and racism of other people against them.