Inspiring Lives

Joseph of Nazareth is a series of reflections on the life of St Joseph in the light of faith and based on revelation. At the end the reader’s love for and devotion to this great saint will have grown considerably. For Joseph, the last of the patriarchs, shows how any one of us can come to be a great saint.

In this book, Fr. Suarez, along with studying the life, character, thoughts and piety of our Lady, he compares our Lady’s moral and religious attitude to our own, focusing special attention on certain specific problems. His deep analysis of all the gospel text helps us to understand our Lady from both aspects: the supernatural and the human. In this way she appears to us in the right perspective, as a privileged person to whom much was given, but also from whom more was asked than from anyone else.

Unlike most standard lives of Mary, this book is grounded on a precise and scientific exegesis of the Sacred Scripture.
To this biblical background the author adds his knowledge of the practices, customs, and usages prevailing in the Palestine of that day.
The result is a moving, authentic life-story of the greatest woman who ever lived.

In Paul of Tarsus, Joseph Holzner weaves together the New Testament’s information about the life and mission of St. Paul into a unified and inspiring biography. With a novelist’s ability to take you into a scene and a historian’s rigorous concern for accuracy, he traces this noble Apostle’s life from his early years as a disciple of the celebrated rabbi Gamaliel through his zealous persecution of the Church as a Pharisee, through his miraculous conversion, his tireless efforts to spread the Gospel, and his martyr’s death in imperial Rome.

Two men face to face: Jesus, son of Mary, and Simon, son of John. Simon is a young fisherman; he has a boat. Jesus is a carpenter, young also. The friendship between these two men, their relationships and conversations, their characters and the influence of One over the other, are treated in this book in a most inspiring and original way. We really know Peter and how he loves, we see into his mind, we sympathise with him.

The Story of a Soul is the great best-seller. Once read, it cannot be forgotten. And the range of its appeal is tremendous: simple, ill-educated people and great scholars read it. It is a book which moves peasants and Popes. Men and women of every race and of every kind of intelligence and education succumb to its spell. It is a great book, an unforgettable book, and a book whose influence deepens and widens every year. In the words of Pius XI, St Therese ‘attained to the knowledge of supernatural things in such abundant measure that she was able to point out the sure way of salvation to others’, and it is in The Story of a Soul that she points out this sure way.”

Bishop Shanahan (1871 – 1943) of Southern Nigeria was the only non-Igbo to be afforded the honour of a Second Burial. His bones were disinterred and in 1955 were laid to rest in Onitsha cathedral in the heart of the land of the lgbos. 

Joseph Shanahan was born in Ireland. His life is one of the great success stories of missionary history. He was a truly charismatic figure, a man of exceptional courage and vision. He travelled the country on foot, by bicycle, by canoe. He walked boldly in areas where no white man had set foot before. He saw the importance of education and built up a huge network of schools. Today he is seen as a luminary of the Church and of the Spiritans, a wonderful model for all who are called to be missionaries.

A biography about Blessed Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri. Guadalupe was one of the first women in Opus Dei. She obtained a Chemistry degreein 1939 after the Spanish Civil War. She later met St. Josemaria and joined Opus Dei. 

Her Desire to love God was the driving force behind everything she did and overflowed through her love for others and her contagious cheerfulness.

This biography gives a glimpse of the most important aspects and characteristics of this pioneering woman.

Jeremy White was born in England on May 1938 into an Anglican family. He converted to the Catholic Faith in 1959, and in the same year, he went to Nairobi as a foundational teaching staff of Strathmore College. It was there that he understood that God was calling him to give himself in Opus Dei, seeking sanctity in the middle of the world and filling professional work with God’s light and love.
On October 1965, Jeremy arrived in Nigeria to start, with others, the apostolic work of Opus Dei. He obtained his Ph. D. at the University of Ibadan in 1970.
From the beginning of his arrival in Nigeria, he was actively involved in the direction of Opus Dei activities. He played a key role in the promotion of several educational and developmental social projects.