Book Review: Is ‘The Kiss of Jesus’ Right for You?

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CS_BOOK REVIEW1

Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle’s memoir “The Kiss of Jesus” is best categorized as an appropriate Lenten read. It is an honest story of a woman’s difficult, harrowing journey through unfortunate relationships and troubled marriages in an unjust world. Through it all, Ms. Cooper O’Boyle rediscovers and heroically clings to her Catholic faith, and challenges us to realize the mark of a Christian’s journey is the always the cross of Christ.

Unfortunately, I read the memoir during the Christmas season, and thus found it incongruously depressing for the festive mood. There were far too many painful parts that weighed heavily on me; they made me cringe and ask God why do bad things happen to good people? (rhetorically, for I know the answer to that). In several chapters, I slammed the book shut, not knowing if it was permanently sealed or if I could revisit it at a later time. It was not what I expected, arriving on the heels of Ignatius Press’ other memoirs Jennifer Fulwiler’s lighter “Something Other than God” or Dolores Hart’s detailed “The Ear of the Heart.”

The Kiss of Jesus is not an easy read. Not because of the writing style, which is unassuming and straightforward enough with frequent conversational tone and anecdotes inserted here and there, but because I could not fathom so much evil and trials one woman had to endure. I thought these kinds of things only happened on the six o’clock news, or a fast pace plot-based fiction… or in a saint’s biography!

Ms. Cooper O’Boyle’s dramatic story evokes a range of sympathy, grief, frustration, consolation and inspiration.  A flaw is that the choppy sequence of events doesn’t give the reader a pause between emotions. However, in reading deep below the surface of “the Kiss of Jesus,” one can inevitably recognize how grace flowing from the Church Sacraments and grace found in Ms. Cooper O’Boyle’s devotion to her vocation of motherhood carried her to peaceful acceptance. She was even blessed by close relationships with living saints like Mother Teresa and Fr. John Hardon. Incredibly, despite her struggles or precisely because of them, Ms. Cooper O’Boyle reaches out to others in need: from her EWTN audience, people who randomly run into her, her former in-laws, to a neurologist.

I am ever so grateful that I remained a faithful reader to the end of the memoir, for “The Kiss of Jesus” offers us all a vital message of hope and forgiveness. The author’s informal, approachable voice on a tale of suffering becomes endearing.  Her warm, spontaneous interactions with people (as documented in her memoir) encourages us to follow our inspirations for we never know when the Holy Spirit can use us as the starting point for a possible conversion.

“The Kiss of Jesus” most redeeming parts sparkles in the later pages when Ms. Cooper O’Boyle shares the wisdom of saints like Mother Teresa advice and St. Faustina’s diary excerpts as well as the writings of Pope Benedict VI. Anyone who has ever suffered (that means us all) will appreciate the poignant beauty of the cross and the gift of our Catholic faith stapled in our distinct understanding of redemptive suffering.

But please, pretty please, read it during Lent. Then you may be able to give it more than the 3 1/2 star rating that I’ve settled on.

 

 

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