Showing results by narrator "Kevin O' Brien" in All Categories

Canadian bookseller Alex Graham is a middle-age widower whose quiet life is turned upside down when his college-age son disappears without any explanation or trace of where he has gone. With minimal resources, the father begins a long journey that takes him away from his safe and orderly world for the first time.

Island of the World is the story of a child born in 1933 into the turbulent world of the Balkans and tracing his life into the third millennium. The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior. As the novel begins, World War II is underway and the entire region of Yugoslavia is torn by conflicting factions: German and Italian occupying armies, and the rebel forces that resist them the fascist Ustashe, Serb nationalist Chetniks, and Communist Partisans.

Bernadette Soubirous was born in Lourdes, France in 1844. Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette eighteen times at the Grotto in Massabielle. When Bernadette was twenty-two years old, she entered the Sisters of Charity Religious Order in Nevers, France. To this day, Lourdes remains one of the greatest healing centers in the world.

Father Ed is the first biography of Father Edward Dowling, SJ, whose guidance transformed Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson’s life and deepened the spirituality of the twelve-step movement.

In this new revised edition of his groundbreaking work, Professor J. Budziszewski questions the modern assumption that moral truths are unknowable. With clear and logical arguments he rehabilitates the natural law tradition and restores confidence in a moral code based upon human nature. What We Can't Not Know explains the rational foundation of what we all really know to be right and wrong and shows how that foundation has been kicked out from under western society.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the golden age after World War II, the bold, often reckless Joe Fessio would suddenly enter the Society of Jesus at age twenty and, by divine providence, find himself studying under three of the greatest theological minds of the twentieth century—Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).

By the Rivers of Babylon presents the early life of the prophet Ezekiel, from his childhood to his service in the Temple to the Babylonian Captivity, where he was enslaved among the exiles along the River Chebar.

This book is the fruit of Fr. Dubay's many years of study and experience in spiritual direction and in it he synthesizes the teachings on prayer of the two great doctors of the Church on prayer--St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila--and the teaching of Sacred Scripture. But the teaching that Fr. Dubay synthesized is not collected from Teresa and John for contemplatives alone. It is meant for every Christian and is based on the Gospel imperative of personal prayer and the call to holiness.

In Saints Who Raised the Dead, the listener will find stories from the lives of St. Francis Xavier, St. Patrick, St. John Bosco, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Rose of Lima, Bl. Margaret of Castello, etc., and includes the raising of persons who had died, descriptions of heaven, hell, and purgatory by temporarily dead persons and an analysis of contemporary "after death" experiences. It's fascinating.

Michael O'Brien presents a thrilling apocalyptic novel about the condition of the Roman Catholic Church at the end of time. It explores the state of the modern world, and the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary religious scene, by taking his central character, Father Elijah Schäfer, a Carmelite priest, on a secret mission for the Vatican which embroils him in a series of crises and subterfuges affecting the ultimate destiny of the Church.

For more than half a century, the question of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has been widely dismissed in our culture. That wasn’t always the case. Some of the best minds of the last 25 centuries in Western civilization have grappled with this mystery. In Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith, best-selling author Paul Thigpen begins with a fascinating historical survey of the public conversation about ETI, tracing the thought of prominent Catholics and others. This is a thorough guide to navigating the conversation from a faithful Catholic perspective.

Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest "unpublishable book". As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a family that has been the target of assassination attempts by unknown powers. During his journey to Romania, the situation in which he finds himself becomes more sinister than it first seemed.

It is the dawn of the New Age. After six millennia of stagnation, humanity stands on the brink of its final great evolutionary step. But it is a step that has come at tremendous cost. Half the world's population is dead. The planet's survivors face a fundamental choice: follow Christopher Goodman, the Messiah of the New Age and clone of Jesus Christ, or cling to the very worldview and the God who has wrought this destruction.

Lovely short anecdotes from the lives of the saints, showing us in a warm, encouraging, and inspiring way the importance of prayer and the ease with which we can all derive great benefits therefrom, without yet being saints ourselves. Covers the meaning of the basic Catholic prayers; plus, the Mysteries of the Rosary and the wonders of the Mass. Written for all and all should listen to it.

Hell and how to avoid it are perennial topics of interest for believing Christians and others. With good reason. Entire libraries have been written on the subject. Most people, even those familiar with his classic, do not realize that Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, chock-full as it is of history and politics, is a masterpiece of spiritual writing. The most famous of his three volumes is the Inferno, an account of Dante's journey through the underworld, where he sees the horror of sin firsthand.

There’s so much noise. Everything can seem like a distraction. Distraction, in fact, seems like it is our oxygen. When was the last time you saw people talking on an elevator? We seem to plug in everywhere. We don’t even look up from our earphones and screens, never mind find time for silence. Our hearts need quiet. How are we ever going to pray otherwise? How could we ever possibly know God’s love and will—and the truth about ourselves and the world—without resting in him?

Pope Benedict XVI will go down in Church history as one of the greatest popes. In this heartfelt defense of Pope Benedict’s words and works, a tribute to his life and legacy and an homage to his sanity and sanctity, Joseph Pearce’s biography provides an unforgettable encounter with this great historical figure.

Times change, but human nature does not. Neither do the daily struggles that all Christians experience in their walk with the Lord. Today as two thousand years ago we fight anger, pride, lust, spiritual sloth. Now as then we strive to be more diligent in prayer, more faithful to the commandments, more patient and charitable toward others. And in our time, no less than in the earliest centuries of Christianity, we need wise guidance to direct us on the road to holiness.

The Messiah of the New Age. His coming is prophesied by more than a dozen major religions. Cloned from live cells of Jesus Christ found on the Shroud of Turin, Christopher Goodman was born into the most turbulent time in human history. Already two nuclear holocausts have shaken the planet - the first destroying much of the Russian Republic, and the second killing nearly a billion people in China, India, and Pakistan. Unknown to the world's inhabitants, an even greater threat is waiting just beyond Earth's horizon - that may annihilate the entire human race.

In Communism and the Conscience of the West, Sheen explains the problems with society stemming from socialism and communism, which continue to infect universities and political discourse today. This timeless book exposes communism’s defects, its attitude toward the family, the decline of historical liberalism, and the rise of the antireligious spirit that pervades our world.