Mother Teresa and Me!

Due to release soon and just featured on EWTN's Bookmark show this morning!

This is what Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Company is saying...

Mother Teresa and Me: Ten Years of Friendship

by Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle

A brush with fame blossomed into something far more spiritual, much longer lasting -- and infinitely more beautiful ...

Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle will never forget the first time she laid eyes on Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Hunched, frail, shorter than one of Donna's own children, the aging servant of the poorest of the poor cut an unassuming figure awaiting the start of Mass with Her Missionary of Charity sisters. They would speak briefly after the liturgy and then spend the next ten years intermittently sharing hopes, dreams, and prayers through the mail and in face-to-face conversations.

In Mother Teresa and Me, Donna-Marie invites you to step inside her deeply personal experiences with one of the greatest souls of modern times. Take her up on the offer and don't be surprised if you, too, find your heart blessed and your soul inspired by the diminutive nun who left an enormous impression on Donna-Marie -- and on the whole world.

Paperback, 192 pages,Retails for $14.95

You can get your autographed copy at my website: http://www.donnacooperoboyle.com/

Very excited about the release of my new book!

A Catholic Woman's Book of Prayers! I am excited to be getting around at various book signings and events with my new book published by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Company.

This prayer book speaks to ALL women - single, married, mothers, and consecrated Religious! It covers the joys and difficulties of being a Catholic woman in our world today. It encourages the reader to strive for a closer relationship with God and it filled with prayers, verses and is sprinkled with inspiration and profound words from our Church and the saints.

A Catholic Woman's Book of Prayers

New version of the video. Have a look!

My new book for Catholic Women is coming very soon!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Blessed Mother Teresa is coming up on 100 years old!

Catholics worldwide celebrate centennial of Mother Teresa

An article by Mary De Turris Poust in the Our Sunday Visitor Weekly



Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was in many ways a study in contrasts. The diminutive founder of the Missionaries of Charity was at once the epitome of humility and yet a towering figure in the world at large. She was the definition of compassion toward others while taking on tremendous sufferings and sacrifices. She struggled with darkness in her own prayer life but remained a beacon of light to others. She promoted a spirituality that was on its surface so simple but at its core so profound.

It would be easy to get caught up in the awesomeness of Mother Teresa and think that what she preached was beyond anything that “regular” people could practice. But the real message of this “saint of the gutter,” whose 100 th birthday will be celebrated with much fanfare and some controversy around the world on Aug. 26, was that we are all called to be saints, and we can begin right where we are at this moment.

Small things with love

“Holiness is not the luxury of the few, it is a simple duty for each one of us,” she once said, emphasizing that peace and love and compassion must begin first at home, among the people closest to us.

Her writings on how to love God, serve others and live out the spirituality she taught are compiled in a new book, “Where There Is God, There Is Love” (Random House, $24), edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator of Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization and director of the Mother Teresa Center, which has offices in California, Mexico, India and Italy...

Please see the entire article here. I am honored to be included.

More news coming up about Mother Teresa's birthday, the new postage stamp and my humble involvement, by God's grace. Pray for me please. I'm praying for you!

God bless and hugs,

Donna-Marie
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s simple yet profound spirituality, which calls us all to holiness, still resonates today, a century after her birth

My announcement - my new upcoming book!

Updated now with book cover image...

I am very excited to tell you that I have written a prayer book for women that will be released this fall by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Company! This new book will be for ALL Catholic and Christian women. It's for single, married, mothers and Religious! It will be called A Catholic Woman's Book of Prayers. My other prayer book Catholic Prayer Book for Mothers went right on the Catholic best-sellers list when it was released. It has been a bestseller since it has been published and has had several re-prints already! It showed me that Catholic and Christian mothers really want this kind of inspirational prayer book. Many women from all around the world have told me that they refer to it often for inspiration and help throughout their busy days in raising their families. Many have given this book as a gift to spread the inspiration to their friends and family.

I have felt that we should have a prayer book such as the one I just described, but for ALL women in every stage of a woman's journey. So, with that inspiration, I have taken up the task to write this book and am excited to tell you that it will be released early fall of this year! I have woven thoughts and inspiration from my dear friend, Blessed Mother Teresa within the pages so that we can learn from her timeless wisdom. I've also included wisdom from other saints and saintly people to give women the lift and affirmation they need. I have quoted our late dear Holy Father Pope John Paul II quite a bit because he has always been a hero for women. I have found when giving my talks, retreats, and presentations, that women are often brought to tears when I remind them of their God-given dignity as women and when I quote from Pope John Paul II. Women need this so much in our day and age and I feel so blessed to be able to provide it to women by God's grace and the wonderful efforts of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Company.

The book will look very lovely. I got a glimpse of the cover image work-in-progress. It will be a hard cover book and in a compact size (but longer than Catholic Prayer Book for Mothers) to easily stash in a purse, briefcase, or diaper bag and is brimming with many prayers, refections, verses, and aspirations. Most of the prayers are original. Traditional prayers are sprinkled throughout as well.

As soon as I get a copy of the cover image I will post it here for you to see as well as details about ordering, book signing events and more.

So, what do you think?!

Interview with Our Sunday Visitor: front page

[If you look closely at this small image of the front page of the OSV newsweekly, you will see my book cover of Mother Teresa and Me: Ten Years of Friendship. The interview follows here]

Interview with Our Sunday Visitor:

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Mother Teresa: A saintly friend

An author’s relationship with Blessed Mother Teresa taught her much about sanctity of everyday life.

Meeting Mother Teresa is something most Catholics would have considered an incredible honor and a blessing. But Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle, a U.S. author, blogger and retreat director, through a turn of providence spent years in friendship and spiritual direction with her.

In her new book, “Mother Teresa and Me: Ten Years of Friendship” (Circle Press, $14.95), Cooper O’Boyle offers a close-up look at Mother Teresa, her work, and a side of her that few people knew.

Cooper O’Boyle, author of “Catholic Prayer Book for Mothers” (OSV, $6.95) and “Grace Café: Serving Up Recipes for Faithful Mothering” (Circle, $14.95), recently spoke with OSV about her friendship with Blessed Teresa, which was built on one phone call, a dozen meetings and 22 letters from the saint of Calcutta.

Our Sunday Visitor: I love the scene in your book where you’re not expecting to meet Mother Teresa, and then there she is with you at Mass. I think you capture how any one of us might feel if we realized a living saint was in such close proximity. But what happens later is almost too good to be true. What was it like?

Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle: She walked right past me, and I almost couldn’t believe it. The feeling was a combination of almost disbelief, a peace that filled my soul and ecstatic joy. I could never have imagined that we would have any exchanges with Mother Teresa in any way. First was the beautiful warm hug that she gave [my daughter] Chaldea, and then, after Mass, she came directly to me and asked me about my littlest one, Jessica. I was astounded and at the same time overcome with incredible peace to have her so near. I had no doubt that she was a saint.

OSV: How did you go from that moment in Washington to a correspondence and then friendship?

Cooper O’Boyle: After we left the convent and headed home to Connecticut, I pondered all of the blessings. I wanted to write Mother Teresa a letter of thanks, but I didn’t want to take up her time. So, I contacted the mother superior when I got home to ask her. She told me to go ahead, and I took that as God’s message to me. That’s how the correspondence started.

OSV: Another one of my favorite scenes is when you are in Harlem (in New York) preparing a meal for the homeless. I love the moment when you are peeling a bruised pear, keeping the good parts, and a Missionary of Charity hands you back the piece you had discarded, signaling there was more that you could salvage. That scene seems like it took you out of your comfort zone. How did the relationship affect your day-to-day life? How did it change you?

Cooper O’Boyle: Yes, I love that moment too. It was so profound, yet so simple. I realized how much the sisters relied on Divine Providence for everything and would never waste even a crumb or a portion of anything. My relationship with Mother Teresa impacted my daily life in that I was striving to live the Gospel message as she did — but in my own walk of life. I became a lay Missionary of Charity and encouraged others to do so as well. I was striving for a deeper holiness still. How did my relationship with Mother Teresa change me? I think by calling me to an even deeper relationship with God. By keeping me on task, if you will.

OSV: Most of us think of Mother Teresa with a sense of awe. To imagine her taking the time to talk with and write to a mom here in the United States tells us a lot about her.

Cooper O’Boyle: She believed totally in the one by one by one, which is how I try to live my life. Each person that you encounter, everything that happens, there are no coincidences. Whoever God has put you with, that’s where you work out your salvation. He sanctifies those moments of interaction and exchanges, depending on how we respond. Do we respond in love? Through prayer and love. I feel that that’s where the sanctification happens.

Mother Teresa, she dealt with each person as they came. These people that God put into her life, she treated as Jesus in the distressing disguises of the poorest of the poor. She loved each one as Jesus, and that’s where all the amazing transformations happen.

OSV: What is the greatest lesson you learned from her?

Cooper O’Boyle: That’s hard to put into words. But I think the most important ones are to love, to respond in love and to treat everyone as Jesus. The greatest lesson is to love.

[Mary DeTurris-Poust writes from New York.]