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St. Patrick's Everlasting Book Shelf is a list of books recommended for reading. The books listed below are meant to enhance your understanding of your faith and hopefully provide insight into your faith journey.

When you have finished reading a selection you may want to ponder the questions provided below.

It is the greatest story NEVER told. It is the story of a boy who met Jesus and dared to ask Him the questions that have consumed mankind since the dawn of time. Segatashya was a penniless, illiterate pagan. One summer day, when he was 15, Jesus paid him a visit. Jesus asked if he would be willing to go on a mission to remind mankind how to live a life that leads to heaven. Segatashya agreed on one condition, Jesus would have to answer all of his questions. Jesus agreed and Segatashya set off on one of the most miraculous journeys in modern history. Investigated by the Catholic Church, Those who examined Segatashya agreed they were witnessing a miracle.

At 90, John, still alive is committed to spreading the Good News of Jesus. He is called by God to write a Gospel in order to set the record straight, as others were saying that Jesus was not the Son of God. Recalling times with Jesus, John brings to life the miracles & messages of the man who would change the history of the world. With historical research, this book brings a deeper understanding to John’s Gospel.

Mark’s story is a thrilling account that vividly depicts the last day before Jesus’ crucifixion & the danger that early believers faced as they boldly proclaimed Jesus as Christ the Lord. Their bravery laid the foundation for the early Church, and their passion for The Word reverberates throughout the world today.

Luke’s story tells of the Gospel writer whose belief was built of the power of faith alone. Luke, who hadn’t met Jesus, is skeptical of His miracles until events in his own life, irreversibly change him. Pledging himself to Christ, he begins a Gospel based on the conversion stories of believers and interviews of those who knew Him best, the disciples who spent three years with Jesus, and most important, His mother, Mary. The result would be a Scripture rich in the miraculous stories of the Lord’s Divinity, that would speak to the heart of Christians all over the world.

This story in the Jesus Chronicles depicts the life of the most unlikely apostle—a sinner turned saint—and his life with the Lord. With Matthew, readers walk along side Jesus as He gives the Sermon on the Mount, performs miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, contemplates His fate at the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane, is crucified, and most important resurrected. Thrilling and uplifting, Matthew’s Story shows how the true Messiah changed the life of one man, and forever altered the course of history.

With the coming of the New Roman Missal it is interesting to review or learn of the evolution of the Roman Rite. This rite has evolved over centuries in diverse contexts and has endured to this day precisely due to its capacity to adapt and be shaped by the distinct cultures where it is celebrated. As we prepare to receive the English translation of the Missal, this book can be an instrument of catechesis in helping Catholics grasp the reasons for the new translations.

A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman by Lisa Shannon

This is a hard read. The atrocities against women in the Congo are overwhelming. But it brings to light an astonishing journey of one woman and her determination to make a difference in the lives of so many tortured and helpless women. You cannot read this book and not be changed by it.

This book tells of the 1942 round ups and deportations in Parish, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held in the Velodrome d’ Hiver, then transported to Auschwitz. An American magazine writer, living in Paris, is assigned to write about the round-ups. She discovers that her apartment was once the home of a dispossessed Jewish family and resolves to find out what happened to the family and its one survivor. This is a shocking, profoundly moving and morally challenging story.

This book is set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement. It brings new resonance to the moral issues involved. The author spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide. It tells the story of black maids, raising white children, yet not trusted to polish the silver nor allowed to share the bathroom.

Our Lady of Kibeho: Mary Speaks to the World From the Heart of Africa by Immaculee Ilibagiza

13 years before the Rwandan genocide, The Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ appeared to 8 young people in the village of Kibeho. Through these visionaries, Mary and Jesus warned of the looming holocaust which could be averted if the Rwandans opened their hearts to God and embraced His Love. This book available at www.Amazon.com.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family, when the death of Rwanda's Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis in the country. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor's tiny bathroom with seven other starving women for 91 cramped, terrifying days. This searing firsthand account of Ilibagiza's experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. Her account of the miracles that protected her is simple and vivid. Her Catholic faith shines through, but the book will speak on a deep level to any person of faith. Ilibagiza's remarkable path to forgiving the perpetrators and releasing her anger is a beacon to others who have suffered injustice. She brings the battlefield between good and evil out of the genocide around her and into her own heart, mind and soul. This book is a precious addition to the literature that tries to make sense of humankind's seemingly bottomless depravity and counterbalancing hope in an all-powerful, loving God. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern Day Slave And an International Art Dealer And The Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall

Same Kind of Different as Me, a book that is factual but could just as easily be fiction, tells the unlikely story of the unlikeliest of friends--Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Told in two voices, the book alternates between telling the story from the perspective of Ron and Denver.
At first unable to crack Denver's stony personality, Hall eventually prevails and strikes up a friendship with a man worlds apart. They become fast friends who endure a tragedy together and who soon grow in their love, respect and admiration of each other. Each man teaches the other about life and faith. Somehow the story of the relationship between these two men is fascinating and inspiring. It offers a glimpse into two worlds that are nearly opposite and shows what happens when these worlds come into contact with each other. I can still hardly believe this was not a novel.

While the book showcases a fun sense of humor, there is also plenty of heart.
This book challenges those of us who consider ourselves Christian - that we usually aren't as real as we say and certainly rarely have actions that are as revolutionary as Jesus paved the way for.

"Clear some space on your bookshelf for Mitch Albom's, Have a Little Faith, the story of a faith journey that could become a classic. Those who were born into faith, have lost faith, or are still searching will all be engaged and challenged by this powerful story of "finding faith" in relationships with others and with something greater than ourselves. Never satisfied with easy answers or soft platitudes, Mitch explores some of life's greatest mysteries and unanswered questions with great honesty, depth and self reflection. "
--Jim Wallis, CEO and Founder of Sojourners and author of The Great Awakening

From Publishers Weekly
Carthusians are contemplative monastics who live in community but spend most of their days alone in their private dwellings. With a lifestyle similar to that of their 11th-century French founder, they wear hair shirts, practice self-flagellation and eat just one meal a day from mid-September to Easter (though some monasteries reluctantly have begun allowing such luxuries as electricity, hot water and flush toilets). Maguire, a Renaissance scholar married to an ex-Carthusian, examines this living museum of a bygone age by following the lives of five young men who entered St. Hugh's Charterhouse in England between July 1960 and March 1961. As they work, pray and live in solitude, they discover not only God but also themselves. They do not, however, learn much about the rapid changes taking place beyond their walls, and the men who leave the monastery in 1965 find themselves in a strange new world. Through painstaking research including countless phone conversations, 5,000 pages of e-mails and a reunion of the five men in France, Maguire creates a personal, sympathetic and amazingly detailed description of an ancient order and its contemporary adherents, traveling "toward inner space within the confines of their solitary cells." (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Maguire has produced a vivid, gripping and deeply touching picture of a world that is now lost. For an outsider to enter such a closed society and to capture its essence is an astonishing achievement: this is a work of history, but it has all the best qualities of a psychological novel." Diarmiud MacCullogh "It is fascinating to enter, if only for a few hours, into this way of life, where extreme devotion forms at last a bit of a bulwark against humanity's digressions." Los Angeles Times"

When Anne Rice stopped crafting stories about vampires and began writing about Jesus, many of her fans were shocked. This autobiographical spiritual memoir provides an account of how the author rediscovered and fully embraced her Catholic faith after decades as a self-proclaimed atheist. Rice begins with her childhood in New Orleans, when she seriously considered entering a convent. As she grows into a young adult she delves into concerns about faith, God and the Catholic Church that lead her away from religion. The author finally reclaims her Catholic faith in the late 1990s, describing it as a movement toward total surrender to God. She writes beautifully about how through clouds of doubt and pain she finds clarity, realizing how much she loved God and desired to surrender her being, including her writing talent, to God. Covering such a large sequence of time and life events is not easy, and some of the author's transitions are a bit jarring. Fans of Rice's earlier works will enjoy discovering more about her life and fascinating journey of faith. (Oct. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Starred Review. In the New Testament, the miracle at the wedding at Cana-where Jesus turned water into wine-marks the commencement of his tumultuous three-year ministry. In Rice's beautifully observed novel, a sequel to 2005's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, however, the wedding miracle is in fact the culmination of an intimate family saga of love, sorrow and misunderstanding. As the novel opens, Yeshua (Jesus) struggles with a sense of restlessness of purpose and a deep love for a comely kinswoman. Waves of isolation sweep over him as he comes to understand that serving the Lord's will takes precedence over the desires of his own heart. Whereas the first novel in this series hewed so closely to Scripture and to the author's meticulous research as to be somewhat arid as fiction, this book, imagining the "lost" young adulthood of Jesus, offers wise and haunting speculation where the Bible is silent. And the final chapters, which pick up the story with the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' baptism, temptation and early miracles, manage to be soulfully insightful even while faithfully tracking the Gospels. Rice undertakes a delicate balance: if it is possible to create a character that is simultaneously fully human and fully divine, as ancient Christian creeds assert, then Rice succeeds. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rice departs from her usual subject matter to pen this curious portrait of a seven-year-old Jesus, who departs Egypt with his family to return home to Nazareth. Rice's painstaking historical research is obvious throughout, whether she's showing the differences among first-century Jewish groups (Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees all play a part), imagining a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem or depicting the regular but violent rebellions by Jews chafing under Roman rule. The book succeeds in capturing Jesus' profound Jewishness, with some of the best scenes reflecting his Torah education and immersion in the oral traditions of the Hebrew Bible. As fiction, though, the book's first half is slow going. Since it is told from Jesus' perspective, the childlike language can be simplistic, though as readers persevere they will discover the riches of the sparse prose Rice adopts. The emotional heart of the story—Jesus' gradual discovery of the miraculous birth his parents have never discussed with him—picks up steam as well, as he begins to understand why he can heal the sick and raise the dead. Rice provides a moving afterword, in which she describes her recent return to the Catholic faith and evaluates, often in an amusingly strident fashion, the state of biblical studies today. (Nov. 7) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I'm an old man now. And an old man is entitled to savor his memories and reflections. I live now in hope of a life yet to come when I will once again see the Teacher. So begins the memoir of the Shoemaker of Capernaum, a sharp-eyed, pious craftsman whose most cherished memories are those of Jesus, the captivating teacher who profoundly affected everyone who met him. Jesus changed the shoemaker’s life—and the shoemaker kept a journal of what he saw and heard in the midst of Jesus’ circle of friends and followers. At the end of his life he puts his notes in order. I can feel him here still. He is telling us about the steadfastness of his Father’s love. He is challenging us to attend to the widow and the poor and the orphan and the sick. He is reminding us of a kingdom that we are destined to inherit as his brothers and sisters. And he is embracing us still with those deep eyes and that resonant voice. Brent’s remarkable “fable” is born of the author’s own deep desire to encounter Jesus for himself. His imagined first-century world on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is a colorful place where an extraordinary teacher brings love, joy, and meaning to the ordinary people who are irresistibly drawn to him. The Shoemaker’s Gospel takes readers on an inspiring journey where they ask and answer: Who is Jesus? What does he mean for me?

In the Gospel of John, Jesus promised that even the most ordinary believer could work the mightiest miracles: "Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing." In Mystics and Miracles, author Bert Ghezzi chose saints that are close to his heart and describes their lives and miracles. He kept saying over and over that these saints were just ordinary people who did extraordinary things and it gives him the hope that he too has the capacity to become a saint. I felt just the opposite. I felt that their prayer life and devotion to Jesus were so exemplary that there is no way I could even hope to attain the same graces that these saints did. With that said, I did enjoy reading about the Saints. I would, however, have liked it if he had chosen some of the more obscure Saints so that I could have learned about other saints. The Saints that Ghezzi chose were well known saints that we are all mostly familiar with. The book was a good read. Even though unlike Ghezzi I was not inspired to become a saint, I did experience awe at what common people are able to accomplish through Jesus when they devote their lives to Him. It is something you always know but it is never untimely to be reminded again and again. Marietta