You have done everything they told you to, and God still feels far away.

You pray, you show up, and still something inside you stays quietly hungry. Maybe you have chased one powerful service after another, one promised breakthrough after the next, and come home emptier than before. Or maybe the noise of life has slowly worn you down, until you stopped expecting God to show up at all.

You are not losing your faith. You are starving in the middle of a feast.

In The Deeper Hunger, Fr Mark Odion names the ache that millions of believers carry in secret, and then he does the rare thing. He shows you the way out.

Drawing on twenty-five years as a priest, lived between the fervent churches of Nigeria and the tired, half-empty churches of Britain, he uncovers a treasure the Church has guarded for five hundred years: the Ignatian art of the discernment of spirits, born of St Ignatius of Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises. This is the quiet skill of finding God in all things, and of learning to hear His voice beneath the noise of your own heart. It is the kind of wisdom once locked away in retreat houses and spiritual direction, now placed gently in your hands.

It is warm and honest, full of real stories you will recognise as your own. And it is intensely practical.

Inside, you will learn how to:

• hear God's voice in an ordinary day, without waiting for a sign
• pray the daily examen, the simple five-minute habit that quietly changes everything
• discern God's will when you face a decision and cannot see the way
• pray with Scripture until it stops being words on a page and begins to speak
• find God in everyday life, in your work and at your kitchen table
• stay close to Him through spiritual dryness, when God feels absent and prayer goes cold
• carry this gift to the people you love

If you are weary of spectacle and hungry for something real, this is your book. Whether your faith is loud or barely a flicker, Catholic or simply searching, The Deeper Hunger will meet you exactly where you are and lead you into a deeper, steadier friendship with God. It is a companion for prayer and a path of Catholic spiritual growth for anyone who longs to know God, and not only to know about Him.

If you have ever struggled with spiritual desolation, or sat through the dark night of the soul wondering why prayer swings between consolation and desolation, you will find honest and tested guidance here. The Deeper Hunger reaches past technique into the real work of contemplative prayer and Christian discernment, a path of spiritual formation at home in the Catholic devotional tradition yet open to every believer. It is a book to read slowly and pray your way through.

The food you have been reaching for has been on the table all along.

Turn the first page, and learn at last to taste it.

With a Foreword by Fr Charles Egbon, MSP.

"An insightful, compassionate, and quietly challenging work that invites readers to reconsider where and how they look for God."
- Dr Richard Byrne, Harper Adams University

"It breathes hope and possibility that the aching hunger of our hearts can only be satisfied in the bosom of God's love."
- Fr Ebito Akekpe, MSP

"I would recommend this book to anybody, at any stage in their journey of faith."
- Professor Philip Booth, St Mary's University, Twickenham