Embracing your motherhood!

Coming soon! I will be posting some beautiful sentiments from mothers about why they embrace their motherhood! You too can express your sentiments in the comment box below and be entered into a drawing to win a copy of my upcoming book, Embracing Motherhood! Hurry though, contest ends soon!

God bless you as you journey through Advent!

Donna-Marie

What are you doing?

What are you doing with your families this Advent season? Are you reviving old traditions or starting new ones? Please share your ideas with others here by leaving a comment.

You can go over to my View From the Domestic Church blog for an Advent Reflection.

God bless you!

Donna-Marie

As we begin the Advent Season

Go on over to View From the Domestic Church to read a reflection I wrote about this beautiful season of Advent.

God bless you!

Donna-Marie

How's your Advent season going?

How is your Advent season going? Have you tried to cut back on some activities to pause and pray and spend time with your family and loved ones? This holy time seems to speed by, doesn't it? We are already into the third week of Advent. which is hard to believe. What kinds of things are you doing with your family to make this season sprcial? Are you forming new traditions or reviving some old ones? Please feel to share in the comment section. I'll be doing some LIVE radio tomorrow and Monday (schedule here) about this season and about my new book just released: Mother Teresa and Me: Ten Years of Friendship, so please feel free to let me know what kinds of things you'd like to hear about.

Talk to you soon!
God bless you!

Donna-Marie

Advent is coming up!

Go take a look at Mary De Turris Poust's ideas for Advent for families and classrooms here.

Do you know where your Advent wreath candles are? Or where to get some? It's coming up fast! I've even purchased candles at a Hallmark store in the past.

God bless!

Donna-Marie

Overnight Christmas bread coming up...

Sorry, Everyone. I've been busy, sick, praying, writing my book, and also trying to be quiet as much as possible during this holy season. I will try to get to posting that wonderful and famous overnight Christmas bread recipe really soon. If you're going out food shopping, pick up one or two baguettes (long) and eggs, milk, and some frozen blueberries. I'll give you the recipe soon. In the mean time you can go into my archives here at "Embracing Motherhood" to get it.

I hope your Advent is going well. There are so many people to pray for at this holy time of year. Please pray for someone I know whose unborn baby due to be born in a month or so has all of his or her organs outside the body. Please also pray for a mother I know who has stage 4 lung cancer and has very young children.

Thanks for your prayers for these people. God bless your Advent season. Can you believe that Christmas is in a few days? I can't! I'll try to post some snow pictures soon too. We got a lot of snow the past couple of days here in the woods of Connecticut.

Prince of Peace Award

Thank you Marie and Ginny from View from the Pews for this award!

God bless you and happy Advent!

Donna-Marie

An interactive Advent Calendar

NOW WITH FIXED LINK!
Here's something really cool that Lisa Hendey at Catholic Mom.Com just announced on her video clip. It's a interactive Advent calendar. Click on to go to the calendar. You won't be able to click on the picture here above.
Enjoy and happy Advent!!

Donna-Marie

Fr. Tom's homily for the first Sunday of Advent

Wake up!

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, November 30, 2008:

“Be watchful! Be alert! Stay awake! You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming…May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.”

Here is a quiz for you. Let’s say you are asleep and dreaming. In your dream, a big lion is chasing you. You try to run away from the lion, only to see a tiger coming right at you. You keep running in a new direction, but no matter where you turn, you find a ferocious animal coming after you. How can you escape? The answer is simple: Wake up.

By waking up you enter a whole new world of reality, different from that of the dream world. What was a huge problem in the dream world becomes a non-issue in the waking world. Dream world concerns lose their importance and new concerns take their place. For example, you discover that your problem is no longer how to escape from wild beasts but how to beat the morning rush and arrive early for work.

As we enter the season of Advent today, we can relate to the change that occurs between a dream state and consciousness. Advent hopes to wake us from or spiritual slumber; to effect a change so that we move from a state of being spiritually asleep to that of being spiritually awake, when the soul is awake and alert not to worldly realities, but to spiritual realities.

In today’s gospel Jesus admonishes and encourages... (Continued here)

Advent begins tomorrow!

Can you believe that Advent begins tomorrow (with the vigil tonight)? I'm planning to go up in the attic to find my Christmas decorations so that I can find my Advent wreath! I go through the same thing every year... trying to figure out which box or bin I put the Advent wreath and candles in. You would think I would mark the box or bin. That would be the sensible thing to do, after all. I always mean to do that. Maybe I will be surprised and find a box labeled "Advent wreath!"

A Ray of Hope

If we didn’t have hope, what would we do? Without hope many would despair. We don’t have to look very far to realize that so many live without much hope. When I think of hope, I recall the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love which we ask for on our first three Hail Mary beads of our rosaries. Hope becomes ours for the asking. Amazing! We have to remember to ask.

St. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.” Hope makes me also think about trust and surrender, which go hand and hand with our belief and love of God. When we have hope in our hearts we will be putting our trust in Our Lord and will be able to put one foot in front of the other each day, serving Our Lord in the people He surrounds us with. To do this, we surrender our lives to God through prayer so that we grow closer to Him and deeper in holiness.

As we light our first Advent candle very soon, a flickering flame will represent hope. Let us pray that we can focus on preparing our hearts to open wider for Our Lord this Advent season. Let’s hope that we can do our best to turn to prayer at every opportunity during a great season of hope and promise.

Perhaps the craziness of the advertising frenzy that flashes around us is too distracting, and we feel that we cannot find peace to pray during a season that is meant to be quiet so that we can prepare our hearts for the Christ Child. The Liturgy of Advent emphasizes quiet, penance, prayer, but also hope, light, joy, and surrender. Let’s strive to find those things. Let’s delve deeper than the surface and also realize that God is in control of everything. We can find quiet even amid the hustle and bustle, by lifting our hearts to God with a great hope and faith that He hears us – that He knows our hearts – that He loves us more than we can imagine!

An awful lot can be accomplished if we allow God to work through us to sanctify our actions and prayers when we offer it all to Him in full surrender. Our Lord calls us to surrender our lives to Him – everything! Surrendering can be as simple as accepting our circumstances, whether it be our living conditions, our state in life, both little and big annoyances, sickness and suffering, being misunderstood, being criticized and belittled for our Christianity. God’s hand is mystically in it all. He knows what‘s going on.

Will we surrender to Him and allow Him to work through us and around us? He wants us to surrender our wills to Him and respond in love to all who are in our midst. Yes, even to love the one who has just stolen “your” parking space or the one who is constantly criticizing you. It’s not always going to be easy. Jesus never said it would be. However, they all need our love; a healing love that will give others hope.

Mother Teresa had said that “Calcutta is all over the world for those who have eyes to see.” Let’s open our eyes so we can minister to the needs of the people that because of God’s divine providence are near us in some way – our family, co-workers, friends and parishioners. Is there someone who needs our love?

When we learn to surrender our lives over to Our Lord, we will have lasting and true peace, and joy of heart. This joy and peace will radiate as a healing balm to others around us; offering them hope for their journeys. Let’s be that ray of hope by giving our hearts to God and allowing Him to work through us during this upcoming wonderful hopeful season of Advent and beyond!

(My article on hope just appeared at Barry Michael's Festival of Hope Yesterday. You can see my post below regarding the festival and winners of my books)

Happy Thanksgiving and book give-away!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy the day. Try not to strive for perfection, rather, BE with your loved ones and try not to DO so much! It's difficult, I know. However, you'll regret late in the day that you didn't stop to enjoy a game with the kids or a walk with the family because you were too busy trying to make everything PERFECT! There's no such thing as perfection on Thanksgiving day! It will all come out wonderful...take a breath...say a prayer and BE TOGETHER!!

Oh, and by the way, go on over to Barry Michael's special Festival of Hope when you have a moment to read my piece on HOPE and where he is giving out copies of my two new books, Grace Cafe and The Domestic Church. If you leave a comment, you'll be put in his drawing!

Check out Barry's Festival of Hope and introduction of my piece by clicking here

And the article I wrote on HOPE by clicking here.

This is from Barry's blog about his cool contest and giving away my books TODAY...

"Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle’s two newest books are Grace Cafe: Serving Up Recipes for Faithful Mothering and The Domestic Church: Room by Room. And they’re both going to one fortunate visitor this Thanksgiving Day. But feel free not to enter to win them, because we’d love to keep them in this house. I’m kidding, come get them, you’ll be glad you did. (Or one visitor will, anyway.)

To enter, leave a comment in this comment box of this post, naming one thing for which you are thankful today (of course!). As usual, you’ll have to include your e-mail address so that I can contact you if you win, but it will not be viewable publicly. The winner will not be chosen randomly this time; rather, my kids will pick the response they like best."

So, go over to Barry's blog (link above) and leave a thankful comment!



God bless your day!

Hugs,

Donna-Marie

This is so GOOD!! I love it!!!

HT to Genevieve

Prayer for the morning...

"The promised One shall come and rule over us in peace: come, let us adore him!

Glory to the Father...Alleluia!"

Today, on December 18th, we also think about dear St. Joseph and how the Angel came to him in his sleep bringing him a beautiful message of hope and consolation - that Mary, his beloved has conceived by the Holy Spirit and will give birth to the Son of God.

***

God bless your day today surely filled to the brim with busyness! Pause and reflect, though, on Jesus coming to us. Let's prepare our hearts no matter how busy we are. Stop for a moment to pray and thank God for His many blessings!

I will be back later with a few things to share!

God bless you and keep you!

Hugs,

JOY enters our hearts...

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI told us that JOY enters hearts of those who seek to minister to the poor. This Advent season, are we focusing on the BIRTH OF CHRIST? Are we getting caught up in the busyness of running around and trying to have everything (superficially) perfect? Are we giving our hearts to the poor?

I'll be back a little later on to post about the radio show this morning with Teresa Tomeo on "Catholic Connection," as well as speak about some family Advent and Christmas ideas.

God bless you!

I'll be back later...

I'll be back later on today to share a little story about Jesus in the Post Office, perhaps share a photo or two with you from our little snowstorm yesterday, as well as to give you details about my Christmas radio show on Monday at 9:15 Eastern Standard Time with Teresa Tomeo for our "Mom's Corner" segment. I am running out to Christmas shop! I just finished the book I was writing (Yippee!!) and have to get ready for Christmas now. We've only had our Advent wreath out so far and just started with our decorations yesterday! It's been busy around here. I've been doing a lot of talks and book signings and I've also have Lyme disease and haven't felt well. I hope that you are enjoying your Advent and your family at this BLESSED time of year!

God bless!
See you later!
Hugs,

Advent: A Pilgrimage Blessed by Hope

As we begin our new Liturgical year, lighting our first Advent candle, we embark on a pilgrimage once again towards the Christ Child, a pilgrimage blessed with hope. Advent is the perfect time to rediscover the beauty and depth of Christmas hope. We are so fortunate and truly blessed that the Holy Spirit has inspired our holy father, Pope Benedict XVI to gift us with his new encyclical, Spe Salvi, Saved by Hope, at this moment in time to a world that is for the most part without God — a world seemingly depleted of hope.

Catholics are given this time of preparation by our Church to prepare our hearts, our families and our homes. We can succumb to the hustling and bustling that our material-oriented culture would have us participate in. After all, the newest toys, gadgets, electronics, and fashions are exploding from the television set, radio, the Internet, store window displays, and sales pages of the newspaper, each store boasting of the absolute best sale ever. Children know exactly what they want for Christmas and where it can be gotten! It's a difficult task for parents to teach the true meaning of the Advent season in an era when Christians are even prohibited to some extent from publicly expressing their faith-filled sentiments of this holy season.

It's almost impossible to escape the chaos to find some peace with the craze of materialism enveloping us. However, we can decide to stay away from the commercialism and materialism as best as we can and use this holy season wisely and prayerfully. Time can be put aside each day for essential personal prayer and family prayer, seeking a bit of stillness in which to retreat to the heart for reflection.

The Catechism tells us, "When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor's birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: 'He must increase, but I must decrease'" (CCC no. 524 and John 3:30).

Parents should make use of the Advent wreath tradition within their own homes — their domestic Churches. Each evening at the family dinner table... (my article is continued here at Catholic Exchange.)

My Advent article

Here is an Advent article I have over at Catholic Mom.Com.

Advent activities for kids

Here is a nice selection of activity ideas for CCD (Religious Education) classes throughout Advent. Some of activities will work well with your children at home too. Just click here.

And some more Advent wreath ideas here.

Here is a St. Nicholas activity here.

Advent: Time to get ready...

Our new liturgical year begins. Advent is upon us! It's time to get our hearts and homes ready to greet the Christ Child! Are we getting caught up in the worldly hustle and bustle of getting ready for Christmas? Let's be sure that we take the time to pause each day in prayer to prepare our hearts as we also set the example and guide our household in prayer.

Did you get a chance to set up your Advent wreath? It's not too late, of course. It can be simple or elaborate. A prayer said together as a family each evening at the dinner table after the first candle on the wreath is lit is in keeping with a wonderful tradition of our Catholic Church (of course, always use caution with a flame and candles with children and also pets).

In Hope We are Saved: our holy father, Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, Spe Salvi was just released and is extremely beautiful. I encourage everyone to read and reflect upon this document that is so beautifully written and came at an absolutely perfect time immediately before Advent. You can get the encyclical here. I plan to bring it with me before the Blessed Sacrament and prayerfully read it and reflect upon it.

God bless you this first week of Advent!