Today is Easter Sunday, and Father James Martin — the peripatetic and telegenic Jesuit priest — will be celebrating Mass with his sister and mother in North Jersey. It’s been a fraught year for Catholics, and Father Jim, as he’s known to fans of “The Colbert Report,” says the new pope is facing serious challenges: how to address the sexual-abuse crisis and overcome the mismanagement of the Vatican, among them. Mostly, though, he says, “You need a holy man who can preach the gospel in and out of season, to all cultures.” Here, from the author of “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything,” “Between Heaven and Mirth” and the new e-book, “Together on Retreat: Meeting Jesus in Prayer,” are four of his favorite spiritual reads for folks of all faiths.
The Cloister Walk
by Kathleen Norris
Presbyterian by birth, this introverted poet and writer decides to become an “oblate,” or associate member, of a Benedictine monastery. Along the way she learns a great deal about love, her own marriage, mortality and even the unseen joys of a celibate life in an all-male community. This is one of the best books ever written about the spiritual life.
On a Farther Shore
by William Souder
When I was a boy in the ’60s, I was given “The Sea Around Us,” an adaptation of Rachel Carson’s most popular works. It enchanted me. Souder reveals a complicated woman with a complicated personal life who, it could be argued, midwifed the modern environmental movement. We are in her debt.
A Clearing in the Distance
by Witold Rybczynski
Frederick Law Olmsted, the originator, with Calvert Vaux, of Central Park, turns out to have had a colorful and varied career: farmer, journalist, sociologist and, finally, inventor of “landscape architecture,” he was also fiercely ambitious. This introduces us to the man who surrounded us with so much beauty.
Mariette in Ecstasy
by Ron Hansen
These days I read more nonfiction than fiction, but I return to this novel every few years. Hansen, the author of books on Jesse James, the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and (yes!) Hitler’s niece, tells the story of a young Catholic sister in a monastery in upstate New York in the early 1900s. It’s one of the most moving books on religious life you’ll ever find.