The Fruit of the First Week: I realise in a way I never did before that God created me for His service, that He has a strict right that I should serve Him perfectly, and that every moment of my life is  His and given to me for the one end of praising and serving Him. I recalled with horror how often I have wandered from this my end, what an appalling amount of time I have wasted, and how few of my actions were done for God, or worthy of being offered to Him. I see what I should have been and what I am. But the thought of Jesus waiting and eagerly looking out for me, the prodigal, during fifteen years, has filled me with hope and confidence and new resolve to turn to my dearest Jesus and give Him all He asks.

I have begun to try to perform each little action with great fervour and exactness, having as my aim to get back the fervour of my first year’s novitiate.

Lord, what would you have me do? I am ready to do Your will, no matter how hard it may seem to me.

COMMENT: The aim of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises is to purify the soul so that it is better disposed to meditate on the service of Christ and to discern God’s will in the later stages of the Exercises.

It is clear that Fr Doyle was open to God’s will even when it was hard. His promise wasn’t just idle chatter. He followed it up with action and with total abandonment, even to the extent of offering his own life for his soldiers.

Let us pray that we too can be fully committed to doing God’s will, instead of just daydreaming about it…