Don’t be one of those who give God everything but one little corner of their heart on which they put up a notice board with the inscription: “Trespassers not allowed.”
COMMENT: Perhaps Fr Willie’s lines today get to the heart of the difference between the saints and the rest of us. We may want to love God and we may try our best, albeit with many falls and weaknesses. Yet somewhere or other there is something that we want to hold onto and that we don’t want God interfering with. Perhaps it is our health or our financial security or perhaps some sin or even a little weakness or temptation that we enjoy flirting with. We may love God to a certain extent, but too many of us do not love Him enough to hand over everything, unconditionally. Jesus warns in the Gospel that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. We cannot grow to the holiness to which we are called if we do not want it. As Fr Doyle said elsewhere, there is nothing as hard as the half a half – a bit given to God and another bit given over to selfishness.
Fr Willie was different. Yes, he struggled, and he had failings. But what is very clear from his diaries is that he really did want to give everything to God; there were no warnings against Divine trespassers in his soul. This did not come about automatically but rather was the result of his constant striving to go against his self-will, even in small things and even in things that were not bad in and of themselves. We are all called to this battle against our love of comfort. Perhaps we are not all called to use the methods employed by Fr Willie (who seems to have had a special calling to a hard life of penance) but we shall never be able to give ourselves entirely to God if we don’t make a start in disciplining ourselves even in little ways.
The saints were also fully open to God’s will in their lives. Today is the feast of St John of God. He was so totally overcome by love of God and neighbour that he became a shining beacon of charity for the poor and abandoned of Granada in Spain. He did not consider God a trespasser in his soul, and he placed no limits on his own charity.
There is also another similarity between Fr Doyle and Saint John of God. Fr Doyle died when trying to assist some fallen soldiers; St John died from an illness he contracted after he jumped into a river to save a drowning boy.
Today we can pray to both of these “martyrs of charity” for the generosity to which Christ calls during Lent.
Father Doyle, please pray that we will, like you, try daily to open our hearts totally to God, and so come to realize His enormous love for us, and in that way, we will want to give more generously and consistently to help build up the Kingdom of God in our midst. In that way we will continue on the path to holiness and help others along our way.
Some thoughts from regular spiritual reading that may lend an extra hand here: “To love God is to want what God wants for the simple reason the He wants it. Love is seated in the will, that power of the soul that enables us to desire, to choose, to prefer one thing to another. To love God is to choose God, to prefer Him and His Will above all things and before all else. It is to will the same things as God wills but it is not enough to say that we love God, we must prove it. The first requisite for the love of God is obedience to his commandments. This is the necessary beginning of the union of our will with God’s Will. Christ Himself has said, ‘He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me’ (John 14:21)”