By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I’ve done my share of waiting. Gratefully, some of it I’ve done with my friend and literary agent Jospeh Durepos.
A few years ago, Joe—initially just a friend of a friend of a friend—took a chance on me, an unknown rookie author. Since then, he’s been my comrade in arms on several book projects and he convinced Paraclete Press to publish my Monastery Mornings memoir in 2021.
The publishing process involves a lot of waiting and hoping. Joe and I worked and waited to finish Monastery Mornings, to hear back from publishers, to get the book ready for publication, to learn the public reaction, etc.
During that process, I realized that Joe is a wonderful waiting companion. So, who/what better to guide me through Advent—and even a new year of spirituality in 2024—than Joe and his own new book?
Joe recently published 2024: A Book of Grace-Filled Days. The lovely new book is a treasure trove of day-by-day reflections and prayers to help all of us build and nurture our faith. It starts with reflections for each day of Advent 2023.
As one of his professional biographies said so well, “Joseph Durepos has lived a life in love with books.” Joe’s vocation of helping-books-feed-the-soul started with a part-time job in a Santa Fe bookstore while he attended college in the 1970s.
He worked for Random House as a publisher’s sales representative and as a bookseller at a vibrant independent bookstore in the Chicago area. Along the way, he considered becoming a monk and launched a life-long spiritual journey too.
In 1996, Joe started an independent, boutique literary agency. He worked on a number of titles in the religion, spirituality, inspiration, and self-help markets, that now have achieved “classic” status.
Joe then went to work at Loyola Press beginning in 2002 as executive editor. He and his Loyola team acquired and developed books by notable authors like Pope Francis, Fr. James Martin, and Fr. Richard Rohr.
Joe’s book projects have won widespread national acclaim. His works include New York Times Best Sellers and Amazon’s Hot 100 Sellers, and have won Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of the Year award twice.
Joe retired in late 2018 and was inducted into the Association of Catholic Publishers Hall of Fame a year later. Today, he owns and operates Durepos Literary and continues to support authors like me as a coach, consultant, and independent literary agent.
He writes books too, like his recent 2024: A Book of Grace-Filled Days. Each page combines readings from the scripture of the day with Joe’s insightful reflections, offering the reader a few minutes of solace for quiet prayer and meditation.
When I got my copy recently, I dived into the section on Advent. Immediately, I discovered several gems.
Right off the bat, for the first day of Advent (Sunday, December 3), Joe contemplates the admonition from Mark 13:33 (“Be watchful! You do not know when the time will come.”) Instead of interpreting these words of Jesus as a rebuke, Joe reads them as a valuable tip from an insider, telling us to be watchful so that we “don’t miss the arrival of something wonderful.”
December 18 features the passage from Matthew 1:19-20 in which St. Joseph doubts his relationship with Mary the mother of Jesus, but God encourages him to go forward. Joe admires “Joseph’s complete and utter trust in a mystery so profound he could not begin to understand it.”
On December 21, Joe explains Psalm 33 (“Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield.”) Joe notes, “We learn over time that being happy is not the absence of trouble; it’s the strength to persevere when trouble comes, because it will.”
And for Christmas Eve, Joe presents this profound reflection: “[W]e pause and notice that a certain calm settles upon us after the crush of getting ready for Christmas Day….[T]here is that moment of quiet certainty that something momentous, something miraculous, however improbable, is about to occur.”
One of my Utah Trappist monk friends, Fr. Charles Cummings, eloquently described the art of waiting in his book Monastic Practices. He wrote, “The ability to wait is characteristic of those who have learned to slow down and live in the fullness of the present moment.”
Father Charles would have loved Joe’s new book, for it is a great gift that will help me do the same thing this Advent—slow down and live in the fullness of the present moment. It will be like waiting with a good friend.
Indeed, Joe’s 2024: A Book of Grace-Filled Days is as advertised…an accessible and insightful way to deepen our connection to God’s loving presence and fill each day of 2024 with a touch of grace.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
