15 years ago today the website fatherdoyle.com was started with the simple aim of fostering devotion to Fr Willie by posting a daily quote from Fr Willie, and comment to contextualise it. At the time there was no certainty about how long the project would last. Praise God, 15 years later that simple blog has developed into the Father Willie Doyle Association, and ultimately into Fr Willie’s canonisation cause. Who …
Uncategorized
June 7, 2025
Today we have a small excerpt from one of Fr Doyle’s letters which describes his preparations for the Battle of Messines. It was a truly devastating engagement. Here is Fr Doyle’s description of this night in 1917, which also happened to be the night before the feast of Corpus Christi: On Wednesday night, June 6th we moved off, so as to be in position for the attack at 3.10 a.m. …
June 6, 2025
I think it is evident that, in these days of awful sin and hatred of God, our Blessed Lord wants to gather round Him a legion of chosen souls who will be devoted, heart and soul, to Him and His interests, and upon whom He may always count for help and consolation. Souls who will not ask “How much must I do?” but rather “How much can I do for …
June 3, 2025
Jesus is the most loving of lovable friends there never was a friend like Him before, there never can be one to equal Him, because there is only one Jesus in the whole wide world and the vast expanse of Heaven; and that sweet and loving friend, that true lover of the holiest and purest love is my Jesus, mine alone and all mine. Every fibre of His divine nature …
June 2, 2025
I assert fearlessly that if only we all prayed enough – and I mean by that a constant, steady unflagging stream of aspirations, petitions etc from the heart – there is no one, no matter how imperfect, careless or even sinful, who would not become a saint, and a big one. But you certainly never will until you learn to turn every action into a prayer and shake off the …
June 1, 2025
We must be intellectually pious, that is, our piety should rest on the bedrock of principle, and not on mood, on sentiment, on spiritual consolation. COMMENT: It is true that God may for a time give some people special consolations and gifts. However, it is more likely that we will face many periods of dryness and spiritual aridity. Many of the saints experienced long periods of spiritual darkness, but they persevered …
May 30, 2025
As you might like to know how the ‘game of raiding your neighbour’ is played, a sort of novelty for your next garden party, I shall give you a few particulars. You dig two trenches about 100 yards apart and fill one with the enemy, who are well provided with hand bombs, machine guns etc. Some night when you think they won’t expect your coming, a party of your men …
May 29, 2025
“One thing is wanting to thee” (Luke 18:22). How many souls there are upon whom Jesus looks would love, souls who are very dear to his Sacred Heart, for they have done much and sacrificed much for Him. Yet He asks for more, He wants that last sacrifice, the surrender of that secret clinging to some trifling attachment, that their lives may be a perfect holocaust. How many souls hear …
May 28, 2025
You can test your love infallibly and find out how much you have by asking yourself this question: What am I willing to suffer for Him? It is the test of St Francis de Sales: ”Willingness to suffer is a certain proof of love”
May 27, 2025
Dear Sir — One is often struck, on glancing over the papers, at the numerous appeals made to provide ‘comforts for our troops,’ but no one ever seems to think that the souls of those who have fallen in battle may possibly be in need of much greater comfort than the bodies of their comrades who survive. With all the spiritual help now at their disposal, even in the very …
May 26, 2025