New Books
Francis and Jesus
Franciscan Media, 978-0-86716-995-9, 2013
Paperback from Franciscan Media
Paperback from Amazon
""You are about to be led on a wonderful journey with both Jesus and Francis, by Fr. Murray Bodo, who has earned the right to speak about both of them."—From the foreword by Richard Rohr
In this dramatic telling of the story of Francis's close connection and relationship with Jesus, we see a multi-dimensional Francis—the ultimate disciple of Jesus. Bodo traces Francis's life as the saint worked to more perfectly reflect Jesus every day. You'll learn about Francis the sufferer, the itinerant, the misunderstood while also following his development as a prayer, teacher, and lover and protector of the poor. Francis shows us how to imitate Christ in every age, in every walk of life.
Read a full review of the book by Sr. Janet Fearns, FMDM.
Books in Print
Something Like Jasmine
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-1-61956-023-9, 2012
Includes a CD of poems read by the author
Paperback from Tau
Paperback from Amazon
"One of the most moving and thought provoking collections of poetry that I have read for a long time. Murray Bodo has that rare gift of understanding, only too well, the joys and sorrows of our everyday lives. As I read, I began to live with the poet as he himself lives his poetry."—Anne Beresford, poet and author of Collected Poems (1967-2006).
"Murray Bodo's sinewy and original poems in Something Like Jasmine are sharply focused, truthful and - most strikingly - brave. They are not ashamed to speak in the voice of the child who shot songbirds by mistake or the adult who now delights in animals as companions. And they do not shy away from speaking frankly of death and loss. Throughout this fine and varied collection, Bodo's Christian faith is evident - sometimes shining as brightly and unexpectedly as a high-flying jet in the sun that suggests the arms outstretched that mark Good Friday; but elsewhere as gently persistent as the scent of jasmine."—Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poet and poetry editor of the online cultural magazine, London Poetry Grip.
"The clear, luminous, consoling poems of Father Murray Bodo's Something Like Jasmine "brave a soothing hand/like this on your troubled shoulder." Buoyed by kindest saints and the natural world of gulls and sycamores, by encounters with a sparrow and a street singer, he does not remain cloistered but sets his poetry en plein air, like an Impressionist painter, and empathizes with the struggles of real people. After the moving, richly evocative "Suite in Memory of Herbert Lomas," the collection culminates in the poet's awareness that "Those who've died clng to him like/Fragrant night-blooming jasmine." What's divine comes through in the vivid earthiness of Murray Bodo's generous imagination."—John Drury, poet and teacher, author of the Refugee Camp and The Poetry Dictionary
Read a review of Something Like Jasmine on the Image blog.
The Way of St. Francis: The Challenge of Franciscan Spirituality for Everyone
Franciscan Media, ISBN 978-0867162448, 1995
Paperback
Audiobook
Kindle edition
The Way of St. Francis challenges the reader with a renewed understanding of the saint: a Francis who shows us a way of life both stimulating and troubling, who asks us to look again at the possibilities within us and around us, and to whom we turn repeatedly in interpreting our own human experience of God. The Franciscan way helps, transforms and renews us. The book is composed of chapters on ways of letting go, of achieving poverty, simplicity and nonviolence.
The Road to Mount Subasio
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-1-935257-89-9, 2011
Paperback
Kindle edition
A revised reprint of one of The Place We Call Home. Join Fr. Murray on this incredible journey from his home in New Mexico to the Mount Subasio, the place that St. Francis and his early followers retreated to above the city of Assisi.
Francis: The Journey and the Dream
St. Anthony Messenger Press
ISBN 978-1-61636-064-1, 40th anniv. edition, 2011
Hardcover
Paperback
Audiobook
Kindle edition
This is my first book, written in 1972. It has sold over 200,000 copies and to date has been translated into ten languages. The book is now available from St. Anthony Messenger Press in a handsome hardback 40th Anniversary Edition which includes a new Preface, a Foreword by John Michael Talbot, new material in the text, a bibliography, an author's interview, and a reader's guide.
Click here to read an interview in the Franciscan Newsletter about the 40th Anniversary of the book.
Click here to read about the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the book.
A Retreat with Francis and Clare
(with Susan Saint Sing, Ph.D., www.susansantsing.com)
Read about Susan's new book, Play Matters
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-193525731-8, 2010
Paperback
Your directors for this retreat are Francis and Clare of Assisi, contemporaries who were determined to follow the Christ who spoke to them from the cross of San Damiano and to rebuild the Church by living the gospel of Jesus. You will walk in the footsteps of Francis and Clare through Assisi and the Umbrian countryside, focusing on pilgrimage and retreat, the going forth and the going within of the soul's journey.
Clare, A Light in the Garden
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-193525732-5, 2010
Paperback
Clare's life with God lies deep within, and no one knows that story but God. But I do know that someone with Clare's capacity for human love and fidelity must surely penetrate the heavens when that love is directed to the All-Good God. I believe our love for one another is the only reliable measure of our love fro God. Clare's pure love for Francis and his Dream is for me the perfect analogue of her love for God -- from the Foreword
Brother Juniper: God's Holy Fool
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-1935257-10-3, 2009
Paperback
The story of Brother Juniper, an early companion of St. Francis. Based upon a 14th century story, Fr. Murray's tale is told by Brother Juniper as he reminisces and mourns the death of his friend and soul-mate, Brother Tendalbene.
Visions and Revisions: Poems Celebrating 800 years of the Franciscan Way of Life
Tau Publishing, ISBN 978-935257-09-7, 2009
Paperback
Taking his title from T.S. Eliot's "Prufrock," Murray Bodo constructs his "RSVP" to the invitation all Franciscans share this year to celebrate the eighth centenary of the Order's origins. This poetic response begins in Part 1 with wonderful word-frescoes depicting scenes from the lives of Francis and Clare and evoking something of the mystical aura enshrined in legends and works of art. The following three sections of this work move us from medieval memorials to modern incarnations of this Franciscan life which is never removed from primordial human reality. At times poignant, at others probing, Bodo allows us an intimate glimpse into the world of a twenty-first century experience of the ways of Francis and Clare. Language that is stripped and utterly focused, like the lives of its subjects, dominates this work. We cannot forget, caught in his web of words, that the modifier "Franciscan" is best paired with the subject man/woman - at once at home in the world and on pilgrimage to its uttermost horizons.
-- Margaret Carney, OSF, President, St. Bonaventure University
Wounded Angels (Poems)
Blissfool Press (UK), ISBN 978-0956237200, 2009.
Paperback, Eighth Day Books (USA)
These poems are aware of how, simply by living, we hurt our fellow creatures... how, by living in the collaterally murderous mammon-driven consumerism we've inherited and continue to create, we're complicit in it. This is the hurt centre of the book, but it makes possible the strength. The book opens with dreams -- the happy dreams of boys, and the backward dreams of old men, remembering. There are adventures with Navajo Indians, memories of father fly fishing, literally and imaginatively. There's a whole lifetime in this book -- really several lifetimes; and Beauty, one of the three great Platonic attributes of God, along with goodness and truth.-- Herbert Lomas, English poet, translator, and critic
Murray Bodo’s latest collection takes its title from the Hugo Simberg painting “The Wounded Angel”. This picture (reproduced on the book’s cover) shows two boys carrying a stretcher on which sits an angel with bandaged head and damaged wings. Bodo calls his book Wounded Angels, using the plural probably because he wants to explore the everyday hurts all his readers have experienced – and probably inflicted. It is also fitting that children appear in the picture, because Bodo uses part of the book to reflect on his own childhood.
Murray Bodo is a Franciscan priest and also a professor of English in Cincinnati. His poetry may not have been very well known in the UK before Blissfool Books launched Wounded Angels but in fact he has many publications in the USA including a best-selling book on St Francis. His Christian faith clearly informs his poetry; but it is important to say that the poems do not insist on the reader sharing his faith. He writes with compassion, humour and humanity about everyday life and experience.-- Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, London Grip
Read the rest of the review.
From Paulist Press:
The Threefold Way of St. Francis
From St. Anthony Messenger Press:
Francis, the Journey and the Dream
Song of the Sparrow: New Meditations and Poems to Pray by
The Way of St. Francis
Landscape of Prayer
The Earth Moves at Midnight (Poems)
Mystics: Ten Who Show Us the Ways of God
The Simple Way: Meditations on the Words of St. Francis
