A soldier helping a casualty at the Battle of the Somme From the Gospel of the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time: As they were going along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, …
WWI
June 27, 2010
St John the Baptist by Titian c. 1542 The Birthday of St John the Baptist Today the Church celebrates the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist. Fr Doyle does not seem to have written about St John very much, but in one letter to his sister, a nun, written on 19th December 1916, alludes to the similarities between the harshness of his own life and that of …
June 24, 2010
Irish soldiers preparing for WWI. Christ expects His army to be "absolutely and lovingly devoted to Him" I have long had the feeling that, since the world is growing so rapidly worse and worse and God has lost His hold, as it were, upon the hearts of men, He is looking all the more earnestly and anxiously for big things from those who are faithful to Him still. He cannot, …
June 20, 2010
A typical WWI trench. It was faithfulness to the "narrow path" of ordinary duties that prepared Fr Doyle to adhere to the "narrow path" of the trenches I feel also a great longing to love Jesus very, very much, to draw very close to His Sacred Heart, and to be ever united to Him, always thinking of Him and praying. I long ardently to do something now to make up …
June 16, 2010