Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle said that mothers, especially, are called to recognize the beauty and importance in how they raise their family. She said mothers are constantly facing challenges on how to monitor what is coming into their household. Mothers have to keep track of the kind of media that kids are exposed to and make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of the family’s call to holiness. It can be a tough job but it’s also a beautiful mission, she said.
“I feel that we work in our salvation within the nitty gritty of our daily lives,” said O’Boyle. “There’s so many things that happen even in the course of one day in a household that sometimes a mom could miss opportunities for grace and maybe her grace is kind of lost in the kitchen sink.”
O’Boyle, affectionately known as Momma Donna, is host of EWTN’s Everyday Blessings for Catholic Moms and Catholic Mom’s Café. She is also an award-winning author of more than 20 books and an international speaker on Catholic womanhood.
On March 19, she will be speaking to the Catholic women in Toronto for the first time at the seventh annual Dynamic Women of Faith conference.
O’Boyle said the number one message she tells mothers is they must be affirmed in their vocation. Mothers often get lost in the business of their day and forget the key to their holiness can be found in the mundane tasks they do for their family and themselves.
“It might seem monotonous at times in the household, but offer that feeling of monotony and let Him sanctify it and make it holy,” she said. “Because that’s what happens in the home when the mom opens her heart and asks our Lord to work through her. Miracles actually happen within the family and little saints are raised.”
This year, O’Boyle will be joined by Anne Jamieson, director of Hamilton’s catechesis office, religion and philosophy teacher Dr. Douglas McManaman, Sr. Maria Kateri of the Sisters of Life and conference founder Dorothy Pilarski.
O’Boyle will also be making an appearance on March 18 at Calling All Girls, the conference’s event for high school and university-age girls. She will be signing copies of her latest book and memoir, The Kiss of Jesus: How Mother Teresa and the Saints Helped Me to Discover the Beauty of the Cross.
The Dynamic Women of Faith conference began in 2010 when Pilarski’s mothers’ group expanded an event for Catholic mothers across the Greater Toronto Area.
Dynamic Women of Faith, in partnership with the Archdiocese of Toronto, helped develop about 20 mothers’ group ministries in local parishes.
This year’s conference will take place at John Paul II Polish Cultural Centre in Mississauga, Ont. For more details, visit www.dynamicwomenfaith.com.