St Augustine

How many wish to belong entirely to Jesus without reserve or restriction? Most want to serve two masters, to be under two standards. A union of wordliness and devotion; a perpetual succession of sins and repentance; something given to grace, more to nature; fervour and tepidity by turns. Such is the state of many religious. Obligations are whittled down; rules are interpreted laxly; all kinds of excuses are invented for self-indulgence, health, greater glory of God in the end, etc. No service is so hard as the half-and-half; what is given to God costs more; His yoke is heavy; the cross is dragged, not cheerfully carried; the thought of what is refused to grace causes remorse and sadness; there is no pleasure from the world and little from the service of Christ.

COMMENT: This is perhaps an uncharacteristically harsh saying from Fr Doyle. But he seems to be on to something here in his analysis of our human tendency to be half-hearted, and it is very appropriate for our feast today. St Augustine wanted to serve God, but not yet. He wanted to be good, but did not want to give up his easy going life. Perhaps counter-intuitively to our purely human eyes, it is this half-hearted commitment that is most difficult and that tears us apart. We can recognise this in many aspects of life. Any half-hearted commitment – to work, to relationships, to exercise, to study – makes the task itself so much harder. It is when we give ourselves with full commitment that we prosper and the road seems easier.

Jesus said that His yoke was easy and His burden was light. But we have to embrace the yoke and the burden, always knowing that God’s grace is there to help us. So often we can make the mistake of thinking that being fully committed to our faith will make us morose or sad or diminish our personality in some way. But the opposite is the case. In the life of Fr Doyle, to take just one example, we see a man who did not opt for the half-and-half solution, but who gave himself fully to God. Yet he was also a tremendous practical joker and was a man who was renowned for his kindness and his warm personal qualities, precisely because of his whole-hearted commitment which filled his soul with such joy. His soldiers loved him dearly. No dour, plaster saint could win that kind of affection from Irish soldiers in the trenches.

As St Augustine says in one of his famous quotes:

Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you

We were made for God. We should not fear Him.