It is easy to assume that well-known Catholic writers and broadcasters either have not experienced the sorrows and difficulties the rest of us are familiar with, or that they have surmounted them with ease.
Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle, a regular broadcaster for EWTN in the US, as well as a popular author of books on Catholic themes, is one such person.
It is only when reading her very affecting personal memoir, The Kiss of Jesus (Ignatius) that you realise such an assumption is an illusion. The book’s sub-title, “How Mother Teresa and the Saints Helped Me to Discover the Beauty of the Cross” indicates its contents – but one is hardly prepared for the long record of emotional and physical abuse the author herself suffered before emerging with a palpable spiritual strength that she has subsequently radiated to others in her apostolate.
