I want you to stick to two things: the aspirations and the tiny acts of self-conquest. Count them and mark them daily. You need nothing else to make you a saint. The weekly total, growing bigger as you persevere, will show you how fast you are growing in perfection. COMMENT: Fr Doyle reveals his Jesuit training in today’s quote. In the Spiritual Exercises St Ignatius recommends making lists and monitoring daily …
Saints
April 10, 2024
If my resurrection is to be a real one and is to produce fruit, it must be external, so that all may see I am not the same man, that my life is changed in Christ. COMMENT: Just as Christ rose from the dead, in a sense we too must continuously rise from sin, from spiritual death. Fr Doyle makes an extremely important point in today’s quote – if the …
April 1, 2024
Pain and privation are only momentary, they quickly pass and become even delightfully sweet, if only borne in the spirit with which many of my grand boys take these things: ‘Sure, Father, it’s not worth talking about; after all, is it not well to have some little thing to suffer for God and His Blessed Mother?’ But the craven fear which at times clutches the heart, the involuntary shrinking and …
March 28, 2024
My denial of Jesus has been baser than that of Peter, for I have refused to listen to His voice calling me back for fifteen years. But Jesus has won my heart in this retreat by His patient look of love. God grant my repentance may in some degree be like St Peter’s. I could indeed weep bitterly for the wasted sinful past in the Society. The time I have …
March 26, 2024
With great earnestness recommend to His mercy the poor souls who are in their agony. What a dreadful hour, an hour tremendously decisive, is the hour of our death! Surround with your love these souls going to appear before God, and defend them by your prayers. COMMENT: Today is the feast of St Joseph. We traditionally pray to St Joseph for many things – work, fidelity to one’s vocation, purity, …
March 18, 2024
I was struck today by the fact that St Patrick was above all a man of continuous prayer and felt inspired to ask him to help me to do what Jesus wants and be faithful, at any cost, to do the 100,000 aspirations. COMMENT: Fr Willie wrote these words on St Patrick’s Day 1917. He is referring here to Patrick’s reference in his Confessions to his constant prayer; Patrick tells …
March 17, 2024
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 …
March 8, 2024
Press on bravely and don’t mind the scratches, even when they come from human nails! COMMENT: We must always push on in our spiritual lives. Often this will involve some difficulty, not least difficulty in overcoming ourselves. But there is also a particular kind of difficulty that comes from others, namely criticism or jokes about religious zeal. An indiscreet or unbalanced zeal should be amended with fraternal correction. But sometimes …
March 4, 2024
Over and over again I asked myself, when reading that book, was it not strange that I should come across the very ideas which had been in my mind so long: namely, the longing of our Lord for more souls who would be absolutely at His mercy, His pleasure and disposal; souls in whom He could work at will, knowing that they would never resist Him, even by praying to …
February 27, 2024
As regards confession it would be much better to confine yourself to the accusation of, say, three faults, and turn the whole flood of your sorrow upon these. I fear you, like so many, lay too much stress on the accusation of sins, which in these frequent confessions, is the least important part of the Sacrament. To my mind the one thing which completely changes all our notions of confession …
February 22, 2024