2025 Online Easter Retreat: Offering Hope and Joy In The Paschal Event
This is the Jubilee Year of Hope and this series of reflections aim to uplift our journey through the Easter Triduum with a focus on the Hope that Gospel passages of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil offer us, and finishes with a call to be a herald of joy with the message of Easter Sunday. In in a world and culture that is crying out for hope and meaning, perhaps the time has come for us as Christians once again, to be a little more courageous in our proclamation of the foundation of Christian Hope.
This Holy Week, the Priory Institute is pleased to offer a four-day online retreat reflecting on the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday. There is no charge to register for this retreat.
The retreat consists of four short video reflections..
The reflections will be made available on our learning platform on the morning of each day beginning on Holy Thursday.
Holy Thursday: Hope in Servant Leadership
Good Friday: Hope In Suffering
Holy Saturday: Something New
Easter Sunday: “Christ My Hope Has Risen”
The Priory Institute's online Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday retreat for 2025 is introduced by Fr. Bill O’Shaughnessy
Born in 1987, Fr. Bill O’Shaughnessy is from the Parish of Castledermot in South Kildare. He attended primary school in Kilkea before progressing to secondary school at Knockbeg College in Carlow.
In 2006, he entered St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Theology and History. In 2009, he began a Master’s program in Systematic Theology under Rev. Brendan Leahy, completing his thesis in 2011, titled "Washed White in the Lamb’s Blood: The 1879 Apparition at Knock and the Renewal of the Catholic Church in Ireland."
After earning his Master’s in Dogmatic Theology, Fr. Bill entered the seminary in August 2011, obtaining a Higher Diploma in Philosophy before moving to the Irish College in Rome in 2012 to continue his seminary training. Over the next three years, he studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Theology in 2014. In his final two years in Rome, he completed a Licentiate in Dogmatic Theology, specializing in the Christology of the Early Church Fathers. In 2016, he wrote a thesis on "The Incarnational Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria."
He was ordained a deacon in 2016 at the Basilica of San Marco in Rome by Bishop Donal McKeown. He then returned to Dublin, serving as a deacon at St. Matthew’s Church in Ballyfermot until his ordination to the priesthood in November 2017 at the Pro-Cathedral by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
Fr. Bill was subsequently appointed to the parishes of Springfield, Brookfield, and Jobstown in Tallaght. In 2022, he became the Moderator of these parishes and was also elected Vicar Forane for the Tallaght Deanery. Additionally, in 2021, Archbishop Dermot Farrell appointed him Assistant Vocations Director for the Dublin Diocese.
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