“They forgot God who saved them” (Psalm 105, 21). To how many may not these words be applied today! How many there are who come into this world and pass beyond its bounds and never know the loving God who died to save them. COMMENT: What Fr Doyle wrote 100 years ago is even more apt for our world today. How many, even in traditionally Christian countries and even among …
Virtues
April 20, 2018
St Maximilian Kolbe in the concentration camp starvation bunker If I were put in a dungeon, like the martyrs, with nothing to lie on but the bare stone floor, with no protection from intense cold, bread and water once a day for food, with no home comfort whatever, I could endure all that for years and gladly for the love of Jesus; yet I am unwilling to suffer a little …
April 19, 2018
Sanctity is so precious, it is worth paying any price for it. God sanctified souls in many ways, the path of daily and hourly sacrifices in everything and always is mine. Will Jesus be content with only half-measures from me? I feel He will not; He asks for all. My Jesus, with your help I will give you all. COMMENT: Do we really believe that sanctity is worth paying any …
April 18, 2018
106 years ago today, the Titanic sank with the loss of 1,514 lives. A lot of the media coverage of the anniversary, in Ireland at least, tends to mention Fr Francis Browne S.J., and rightly so. For those who do not know, Fr Browne (or Br Browne, as he then was) was a passenger on board the Titanic as it sailed from Southampton to Cobh. He was due …
April 15, 2018
What more insignificant than the ordinary daily duties of religious life! Each succeeding hour brings with it some allotted task, yet in the faithful performance of these trifling acts of our everyday life lies the secret of true sanctity. Too often the constant repetition of the same acts, though in themselves they be of the holiest nature, makes us go through them in a mechanical way We meditate, we assist …
April 15, 2018
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 …
April 10, 2018
If you are not yet strong enough to seek humiliations, just accept the little reverses that come. When you say or do awkward things, give them to our Lord and tell Him you are glad of them. Say: “All these are humiliations, so they must be good for me.”
April 9, 2018
Whenever there is a question of choice, ask yourself, “Which would please God most?”, then, “Which will come hardest to my nature?”. It is this, then, that you will choose: and even though you may not always do so, keep your mind and will bent in the direction of doing always whatever goes against self. This is true holiness. COMMENT: Just like the quite from Monday, this is one of …
April 7, 2018
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 much continuously rise from sin, from spiritual death. Fr Doyle makes an extremely important point in today’s quote – if …
April 2, 2018
He loves your soul dearly, cling to Him, and trust Him, He so longs to be trusted. COMMENT: There is something of an unfortunate stereotype about the Catholicism of 100 years ago in Ireland. It suggests that God’s love was ignored or downplayed and that there was an excessive emphasis on morality and on Catholicism as a set of rules rather than as a relationship with Jesus. There is …
March 7, 2018