Today we continue with some of Fr Doyle’s reflections on the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises and his resolutions aimed at achieving the Third Degree of Humility. Once again, Fr Doyle’s words are very direct and succinct and there is little requirement for commentary and elaboration.
The reformation of one’s life must be the work of every day, I should take each rule and duty, think how Jesus acted, or would have done, and contrast my conduct with His.
I think it better not to make any definite resolutions about mortification, such as “I will never do so-and-so.” I know how such resolutions have fared. But I am determined to keep up a constant war against myself, now in one matter and now in another, varying the kinds of mortification as much as possible, but trying to do ten little acts each day.
We have a strict right to the love of God, because our vocation is to follow Him; we cannot do this unless we love Him. Jesus will assuredly give me a sensible love of Him, if I only ask. I must ask, seek, and knock daily and hourly.
Fr. Petit told me that the spirit of the Third Degree is not so much the practice of austerities as the denial of one’s will and judgement and perfect abnegation of self and humility. This is the spirit of our rules which are simply the Third Degree.
Have I a real hunger and thirst for the love and the service of Jesus? Is it growing?
If I do not begin to serve God as I ought now, when shall I do so? shall I ever? This retreat is a time of special grace, and if my cooperation is wanting, Jesus may pass by and not return. The devil has made me put off my thorough conversion to God for seventeen years, making me content myself with the resolution of “later on really beginning in earnest and becoming a saint.” What might not have been done in that time!
The reason, said Fr Petit, why we find our life so hard, mortification difficult, and why we are inclined to avoid all that we dislike, is because we have no real love for Jesus.
The Gospel says, “He was teaching daily in the temple”. How often, and for how long, am I in the chapel? Is the chapel the place where people know I am to be found? What a difference it would make in my visits, if only I realised the real corporal presence of Jesus in the Tabernacle. This is a grace I must earnestly ask for.
“He passed the whole night in the prayer of God”. I say I am anxious to imitate the life of Jesus, here is something in which I can do so. Would it not be possible (afterwards) to spend an hour at night in the chapel after examen?
Venerable Adolphe Petit (1822-1914), Fr Doyle's spiritual director during his year in Belgium (1907-1908)