A habit of ejaculatory prayer is a sign of nearness to God, for our own holiness will be in proportion to our love and thought of Him all day long.
COMMENT: St Paul tells us to pray always. The great saints and mystics lived constantly in God’s presence, almost unconsciously making everything they did a prayer. Yet, unless they have received many graces, it is unlikely that they started out with this constant presence of God. For many, it required much effort and discipline to overcome their natural human tendency towards dissipation.
One technique for living more completely in God’s presence is the use of aspirations – short prayers interspersed throughout the day to help remind us that we are in the presence of God.
If we love someone with a human passion, it is normal that we think about them throughout the day. Can we really say that we love God as we ought if we only think of Him during our times of formal prayer, or when we want His help with something?
Our work and domestic duties can seem to fill up every second of every day. They leave no room for those short aspirations we Catholics all know. This brief comment from Father Willie is a great help. If we desire it, we can find a few seconds here and there, no matter how busy the day. And a few seconds here and there is really all we need to tell God we love Him, each in his or her own way.
My grandfather Alexander Moran was in the flying Corp in WW1. He was subjected to anti catholic sentiment and it is something that I have encountered in recent times. It is alive and well. Hitler started it with his regime in the 1930s and Fr Doyle was a bastion of breaking down divisions in protestant and Catholic relations by the way he ministered to all on the battlefield 20 years earlier.
He was denied his due posthumously by anti Catholics in England and he is a beacon for the church to look to in a time when the church is under attack, especially elements of the clergy. We need to look to the good, the heroic, the leaders, those who lived the life of christ in circumstances that were devilish. I hope and pray that Fr Doyle’s remains can be found incorrupt, that his case for canonization can be realised and I pray for every catholic that is persecuted in the world today, and the church which is not only under attack but lacking leadership and direction.
God bless you all.
Stephen Moran
Australia