Laity � Remembering Fr William Doyle SJ

Laity  Remembering Fr William Doyle SJ

Otra referencia a San Josemaría Escrivá en el blog sobre el P. William Doyle, SJ.

Laity

Lessons for lay people from Fr Willie Doyle

Fr Doyle in uniform

Fr Doyle was a very ordinary “saint”. In fact, Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, referred to Fr Doyle in his classic book The Way as a “heroically ordinary… man of God”. True, he lived an extraordinary life of high adventure, and, in his practice of self-denial and love of neighbour he reached a high degree of sanctity. He passed the test of holiness laid down by Christ: “Greater love has no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)

St Josemaria Escriva

However, he is different from those canonised saints who performed remarkable miracles or received extraordinary mystical phenomena. Instead, Fr Doyle was a master of holiness amid ordinary duties and a humdrum existence.

Fr Doyle had a rather highly strung disposition by nature. Indeed, as a novice he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of a fire in the novitiate where he lived, and for a while he seemed that he would not be able to continue with his Jesuit training. While he was physically strong and good at sport, he always suffered ill health and so was not naturally constituted for a life of trench warfare. As pointed out continually on this site, it was his steady practice of virtue over the years that created the hero of the trenches who was willing to run across a battlefield battered with shells and bullets to bring help to his “poor brave boys”, as he called them.

This slow, daily practice of spiritual combat and training in virtue is something that we can all apply to our lives, including lay people.

There are numerous lessons that can be drawn from this remarkable life. 4 major themes are presented here.

Prayer

Above all, Fr Doyle as a man of prayer. He was one of the first people in Ireland to start the devotion of spending a holy hour in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. He regularly arose at night to pray, especially on Thursday nights in imitation of Christ in Gethsemane. He was of course a renowned spiritual director and retreat giver, and saw the importance of retreats for laity, a position that not all priests agreed with at the time.

He himself seemed to live the biblical command to pray always. He had an incredible system of counting aspirations (short prayers), often saying thousands of such short prayers daily as a way of ensuring that he was constantly in union with God. He did not find this system at all easy, once referring to this constant prayer as “the penance” of his life.

Not everyone is called to a life of prayer in the way Fr Doyle was. Nonetheless, we must all pray, laity included. Without this there can be no holiness; no sustainable attempt to live a life of charity as Fr Doyle lived it. As usual, Fr Doyle’s writings give us some useful insights into prayer. Only a small sample from the vast body of his correspondence and notes can be reproduced here:

You seem lately to have had a bad attack of want of confidence in God and a feeling of despair of ever becoming a saint. Yet, my dear child, it is neither impossible nor hopeless as long as God leaves it in our power to pray… I assert fearlessly that if only we all prayed enough and I mean by that a constant, steady, unflagging stream of aspirations, petitions, etc., from the heart there is not one, no matter how imperfect, careless or even sinful, who would not become a saint and a big one. I am perfectly and painfully conscious that, for my own part, I do not pray a hundredth part of what I should or what God wants. Prayer, then, being the key to sanctity, never tell me again, my dear child, that there is no chance of your becoming a saint. But you certainly never will until you learn to turn every action into a prayer and shake off the old tempter who strangles your efforts to pray.

Also:

Without constant union with our Lord there cannot be any real holiness, one reason being that without recollection the inspirations of the Holy Spirit are missed and with them a host of opportunities of little sacrifices and a shower of graces. As a means of gaining greater recollection, each morning at Holy Communion invite Jesus to dwell in your heart during the day as in a Tabernacle. Try all day to imagine even His bodily presence within you and often turn your thoughts inwards and adore Him as He nestles next your heart in a very real manner, quite different from His presence in all creation. This habit is not easily acquired, especially in a busy life like yours, but much may be done by constant effort. At times you will have to leave Him alone entirely, but as soon as you can, get back to His presence again.

Also:

Keep in God’s presence going through the house and try to grasp then any lights you may have got in prayer.

And for those inevitable times when prayer is difficult:

One word about the difficulty at prayer. It is an unnatural thing, that is a supernatural thing, and hence must always be hard; for prayer takes us out of our natural element. But pray on all the same.

Self-denial

As well as being a man of prayer, Fr Doyle was a man of penance. Unfortunately many Catholics downplay the importance of penance today, perhaps as a reaction to some excessive reliance on fear in past generations. Nonetheless, self-denial is an indispensible – and for most of us an unpalatable – necessity in the Christian life.

While Fr Doyle lived a life of very extreme penance – and always with the agreement of his confessor and based on the inspirations he received in prayer – we may not necessarily be called to such a life ourselves. In fact, Fr Doyle was most clear with those he directed that small acts of self-denial were preferred way of proceeding.

I am glad you have found profit from the particular examen. You must push on with this, for remember you are no beginner in the spiritual life. From time to time increase the number of acts when you find facility coming. However it is better to keep to a fixed number steadily than to go jumping up and down, better, for example, to make twenty-five acts every day than fifty one day and ten the next. The rule to keep before you is: Look upon nothing as too small to offer to God. Big sacrifices do not come very often, and generally we are too cowardly to make them when they do. But little ones are as plentiful as blackberries in September, and stiffen the moral courage, by the constant repetition of them, to do, in the end, even heroic things. Expect, too, that at times this steady keeping up the fixed number will pall upon you; possibly you will even pitch up the examen for a day or two, but pick it up again and no harm will be done; these failures will become fewer by degrees. Again, nothing is too small; in fact the smaller it is the better, so long as it is some denial of your will, some act you would just as soon not do.

Also:

Your desire for penance is an excellent sign. But have a fixed amount to be done each day and do not be doing it in fits and starts. Anything like what you call “frenzy” ought to be suspected and resisted.

Also:

Prayer is easy, works of zeal attractive; but going against self, till grace and perseverance give facility, is cruel work, a hard battle.

Also:

As I said before, my dear child, I fancy you tried to do too much, to be too generous. Do not try to run till you can walk well. Draw up a list of certain little sacrifices which you feel God is asking from you and which you know you will be able to give Him without very much difficulty: better be cowardly than too generous. Then, come what may, be faithful to your list and shake it in the face of the tempter when he suggests that you should give it up. After some time, when greater facility has come by practice, you might add a little to what you did at first, and so on till, please God, one day you will be able to say, “I know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified ; with Christ I am nailed to the Cross”

Also:

I believe strongly in corporal penance as a means to the end. But a denial of your own will often costs more than a hundred strokes of the discipline. To interior penance you need not, and must not, put any limit.

Also:

I do not want, in fact I forbid you, to be imprudent in the matter of corporal penances. But, my dear child, if you let a whole fortnight go by without any self-inflicted pain, can you honestly look Jesus in the face and say, “I am like to Him.”?

To what, then, might this self-inflicted pain involve? It can be something very little – Fr Doyle gave up butter on his bread and sugar in his tea, and, rather refreshingly, he also struggled with these little tasks. But perhaps most of all, it refers to the third theme was can adopt from Fr Doyle’s life – fulfilling the duties of our state in life.

Fidelity to duty

Fr Doyle continually stressed fidelity to duty as an absolute necessity for holiness. True, lay people are not bound by rules and norms as a Jesuit was 100 years ago, but there are still duties to be performed – children washed and fed and educated, spouses to be kept company, a house to clean and paid work to do. To perform these duties well sounds like it is an easy, and a small, thing to do. But in practice performing the duty of each moment with precision and our full attention is a matter of great holiness. And as for being a “little thing”, the Lord told us that he who would be faithful in little things would be faithful in great things (Luke 16:10). Christ is unlikely to entrust a great, heroic mission to those who have been negligent in the basic duties of life. Seen in this way, Fr Doyle’s faithfulness in small duties was the training ground for his fidelity in the trenches.

Let us read what Fr Doyle has to say:

What is it to be a saint? Does it mean that we must macerate this flesh of ours with cruel austerities, such as we read of in the life-story of some of God’s great heroes? Does it mean the bloody scourge, the painful vigil and sleepless night, that crucifying of the flesh in even its most innocent enjoyment? No, no, the hand of God does not lead us all by that stern path of awful heroism to our reward above. He does not ask from all of us the holy thirst for suffering, in its highest form, of a Teresa or a Catherine of Siena. But sweetly and gently would He lead us along the way of holiness by our constant unswerving faithfulness to our duty, duty accepted, duty done for His dear sake. How many alas ! who might be saints are now leading lives of indifferent virtue, because they have deluded themselves with the thought that they have no strength to bear the holy follies of the saints. How many a fair flower of innocence, which God had destined to bloom in dazzling holiness, has faded and withered beneath the chill blast of a fear of suffering never asked from it.

Also:

For sixteen years has Jesus been seeking fruit from my soul, and especially in these last three years of preparation for the priesthood. I have no excuse for He has told me how to produce that fruit, especially by the exact discharge of each little duty of the moment.

Also:

During the reflection on the Hidden Life I got a light that here was something in which I could easily imitate our Lord and make my life resemble His. I felt a strong impulse to resolve to take up as one of the chief objects of my life the exact and thorough performance of each duty, trying to do it as Jesus would have done, with the same pure intention, exquisite exactness and fervour. To copy in all my actions walking, eating, praying Jesus, my model in the little house of Nazareth. This light was sudden, clear and strong. To do this perfectly will require constant, unflagging fervour. Will not this be part of my “hard life”?

Also:

Each fresh meditation on the life of our Lord impresses on me more and more the necessity of conforming my life to His in every detail, if I wish to please Him and become holy. To do something great and heroic may never come, but I can make my life heroic by faithfully and daily putting my best effort into each duty as it comes round. It seems to me I have failed to keep my resolutions because I have not acted from the motive of the love of God. Mortification, prayer, hard work, become sweet when done for the love of Jesus.

Also:

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.

Also:

During His Passion our Lord was bound and dragged from place to place. I have hourly opportunities of imitating Him by going cheerfully to the duty of the moment.

And perhaps most difficult of all is the good use of time, a precious gift which is too frequently squandered:

We should call a man a fool who wasted his wealth warming himself before a fire made of banknotes. Do we act less madly in seeking gratification by consuming our precious day in frivolities?

Cheerfulness

St Teresa of Avila was, as usual, very straight-talking: “May God deliver me from gloomy saints”. She would have had no fear about Fr Doyle. Despite significant ill-health, a tremendously hard life of self-imposed austerities and penances, and sub-human conditions in the trenches, Fr Doyle always remained cheerful. He had a magnetic influence on people as a mission preacher and retreat giver. He was loved by the soldiers in the trenches for many qualities, but especially his cheerfulness and joy. When reading the letters he sent home from war, it is impossible not to be struck by their good humour and cheerfulness. It is hard to believe that many of these letters were written in circumstances where Fr Doyle’s life was at immediate risk from bullets, bombs and poison gas.

We are unlikely to face the dangers Fr Doyle dealt with on a daily basis. But we do face other frustrations – traffic jams, bills, annoying colleagues, rain! This cheerfulness is also important in apostolate and evangelisation. If we appear cranky and short tempered, how can we convince others that we have a life-changing message worth listening to?

Some thoughts from Fr Doyle on cheerfulness:

Since then I have gone on from day to day and year to year, with the same cheerful spirits, making the best of difficulties and always trying to look at the bright side of things.

Also:

Keep smiling. It is a grand thing to cultivate a smile. Keep the corners of your mouth up, especially if you are in for an attack of the dumps. There are three D s to be avoided the Devil, the Doctor, and the Dumps. The Devil, we all know, is bad enough; the Doctor is very little better; and the Dumps are the Devil himself! So I repeat, keep smiling, it is the very best remedy for gloom. The devil loves nothing better than a gloomy soul; it is his plaything.

Also:

Smile a while, and while you smile another smiles, and soon there’s miles and miles of smiles, and life’s worthwhile because you smile.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we actually have to feel joyful and cheerful, but we have to at least will it and try to communicate it. As Fr Doyle wrote:

It is a curious thing that I have never had a moment’s hesitation nor ever felt fear in going into the greatest danger when duty called and some poor chap needed help. But to sit in cold blood, so to speak, and to wait to be blown to pieces or buried by a crump is an experience which tests one’s nerves to the limit. Thank God, I have been able to conceal my feelings and so to help others to despise the danger, when I was just longing to take to my heels. An officer said to me at the Somme, ‘I have often envied you your coolness and cheerfulness in hot corners’. I rather surprised him by saying that my real feeling was abject fear and I often shook like a leaf.

Also:

Three of my lads came tearing in to my dug-out; they had nearly been sent to glory and felt they were safe with the priest. The poor priest cracks a joke or two, makes them forget their terror, and goes on with his lunch while every morsel sticks in his throat from fear and dread of the next shell. A moment passes, one, two, here it comes; dead silence and anxious faces for a second, and then we all laugh, for it is one of our own shells going over. Five minutes more and we know all danger has passed. It has been a memorable day for me, though only one of many such in the past.

Conclusion

Fr Doyle has sometimes been criticised for being too austere or being too exaggerated in his spirituality. If his “poor brave boys” from the trenches were around they would have had a thing or two to say to anyone making such a criticism in their hearing!

It is true that the religious and cultural climate of Fr Doyle’s time is vastly different from our own. Nonetheless, there is much that we can learn from him, and the 4 points presented here are only a very small sample of the spiritual lessons his life and writing present to us. But while these 4 basic lessons for lay people – prayer, mortification, fidelity to duty and cheerfulness – may seem simple; faithfully implementing them requires significant generosity and will surely lead us on a path to great intimacy with God.

PRAYER FOR PRIESTS BY FR DOYLE

O my God, pour out in abundance Thy spirit of sacrifice upon Thy priests. It is both their glory and their duty to become victims, to be burnt up for souls, to live without ordinary joys, to be often the objects of distrust, injustice, and persecution.

The words they say every day at the altar, "This is my Body, this is my Blood," grant them to apply to themselves: "I am no longer myself, I am Jesus, Jesus crucified. I am, like the bread and wine, a substance no longer itself, but by consecration another."

O my God, I burn with desire for the sanctification of Thy priests. I wish all the priestly hands which touch Thee were hands whose touch is gentle and pleasing to Thee, that all the mouths uttering such sublime words at the altar should never descend to speaking trivialities.

Let priests in all their person stay at the level of their lofty functions, let every man find them simple and great, like the Holy Eucharist, accessible to all yet above the rest of men. O my God, grant them to carry with them from the Mass of today, a thirst for the Mass of tomorrow, and grant them, ladened themselves with gifts, to share these abundantly with their fellow men. Amen.

June 26: The feast of St Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St Josemaria Escriva. Instead of a message from Fr Doyle, we have a message from a saint, ABOUT Fr Doyle. From point 205 of St Josemaria’s The Way:

We were reading — you and I — the heroically ordinary life of that man of God. And we saw him fight whole months and years (what ‘accounts’ he kept in his particular examination!) at breakfast time: today he won, tomorrow he was beaten… He noted: ‘Didn’t take butter…; did take butter!’

May you and I too live our ‘butter tragedy’.

Yes, that’s right: the heroically ordinary “man of God” was none other than Fr Willie Doyle.

Alfred O’Rahilly’s biography caused something of a stir on its release, and all before the age of blogs and facebook and twitter and all the easy ways of manufacturing celebrity and hype that we have today. Within a few years the book had been translated into German, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch and Polish (and perhaps translations I don’t know about?). This heroically ordinary Jesuit priest from Dublin seemed to have quite an appeal for people from very different cultures.

St Josemaria read a Spanish copy of the book and was obviously deeply impressed if he held up Fr Doyle as an example of holiness for members and friends of Opus Dei. St Josemaria’s The Way first appeared in 1934 under the title Consideraciones espirituales. Over the years, more than four and a half million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into 43 different languages. That’s an incredible level of popularity for this book, and, even though he is only a very small part of the book, it’s an incredibly powerful anonymous influence on the part of Fr Doyle. How many people have copied his example of small mortifications thanks to this reference from St Josemaria?

Perhaps this is a fitting place to include some references from O’Rahilly’s book on the matter of Fr Doyle and his diet. In all of this it is very clear that Fr Doyle didn’t find these mortifications easy; they were, as St Josemaria said, a tragedy:

He was systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points; every day he did many things for no other reason than that he would rather not do them; so that, when the hour of need and big-scale heroism drew nigh, it did not find him unnerved and untrained to stand the test. For most assuredly he was a man who daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. “Other souls may travel by other roads,” he once wrote, “the road of pain is mine.” He developed a positive ingenuity in discovering possibilities of denying himself. Thus he was always striving to bear little sufferings and physical discomforts were it only the irritation of a gnat without seeking relief; he tried to imagine that his hands were nailed to the cross with Jesus. He gave up having a fire in his room and even avoided warming himself at one. Every day he wore a hair-shirt and one or two chains for some time; and he inflicted severe disciplines on himself. Moreover, between sugarless tea, butterless bread and saltless meat, he converted his meals into a continuous series of mortifications. Naturally he had, in fact, a very hearty appetite and a keen appreciation of sweets and delicacies; all of which he converted into an arena for self-denial…

We find him pencilling this resolution on the first page of the little private notebook he kept with him at the Front: “No blackberries. Give away all chocolates. Give away box of biscuits. No jam, breakfast, lunch, dinner.”

…Just after giving a retreat in a Carmelite convent, he records: “I felt urged in honour of St. Teresa to give myself absolutely no comfort at meals which I could possibly avoid. I found no difficulty in doing this for the nine days. I have begged very earnestly for the grace to continue this all my life and am determined to try to do so. For example, to take no butter, no sugar in coffee, no salt, etc. The wonderful mortified lives of these holy nuns have made me ashamed of my gratification of my appetite.” That he by no means found this mortification easy we have many indications. Thus on 5th Jan., 1912, he writes: “During Exposition Jesus asked me if I would give up taking second course at dinner. This would be a very great sacrifice; but I promised Him at least to try to do so and begged for grace and generosity.”

“A fierce temptation during Mass and thanksgiving,” he records a year later (18th Sept., 1913), “to break my resolution and indulge my appetite at breakfast. The thought of a breakfast of dry bread and tea without sugar in future seemed intolerable. Jesus urged me to pray for strength though I could scarcely bring myself to do so. But the temptation left me in the refectory, and joy filled my heart with the victory. I see now that I need never yield if only I pray for strength.”

On the subject of butter there are many resolutions in the diary. Materially the subject may seem trivial, but psychologically it represents a great struggle and victory…It is in such little acts that man rises above the beast and fosters his human heritage of a rational will. So Fr. Doyle’s butter-resolutions are not at all so unimportant or whimsical as they who have ever thoughtlessly eaten and drunk may be inclined to fancy. “God has been urging me strongly all during this retreat,” he writes in September 1913, “to give up butter entirely. I have done so at many meals without any serious inconvenience; but I am partly held back through human respect, fearing others may notice it. If they do, what harm? I have noticed that X takes none for lunch; that has helped me. Would not I help others if I did the same?” “One thing,” he continues, “I feel Jesus asks, which I have not the courage to give Him: the promise to give up butter entirely.” On 29th July, 1914, we find this resolution: “For the present I will take butter on two mouthfuls of bread at breakfast but none at other meals.” To this decision he seems to have adhered.

…This relentless concentration of will on matters of food must not lead us to suppose that Fr. Doyle was in any way morbidly absorbed or morosely affected thereby. For one less trained in will or less sure in spiritual perspective there might easily be danger of entanglement in minutiae and over-attention to what is secondary. All this apparatus of mortification is but a means to an end, it should not be made an end in itself…This persistent and systematic thwarting of appetite helped Fr. Doyle to strengthen his will and to fix it on God. He never lost himself in a maze of petty resolutions, he never became anxious or distracted.

Alfred O’Rahilly concludes his discussion of Fr Doyle’s eating habits with some wise advice for the reader:

The armour of Goliath would hamper David. There are those whom elaborate prescriptions and detailed regulations would only strain and worry. And these best find the peace of God in a childlike thankful acceptance of His gifts, without either careless indulgence or self-conscious artificiality.

One amusing concluding note: Some translations of The Way refer to sugar instead of butter because the original translator couldn’t understand how anyone would want to give up butter on their bread. It’s unclear whether he thought the matter too trivial or too hard. In any event both translations are correct – Fr Doyle fought, and won, his battle against both butter and sugar.

Those who  are unfamiliar with Alfred O’Rahilly’s definitive biography of Fr Doyle, from where the above quotations are taken, can find details of how to order a reprint in the resources section of this site here

Categories: Life · Reparation · Saints · Self-conquest

Thoughts for June 25 from Fr Willie Doyle

June 25, 2010 · Leave a Comment

The Miraculous Catch of Fish by Gaspar de Crayer

Do nothing without consulting Him in the Tabernacle. But then act fearlessly, if you see it is for His honour and glory, never minding what others may think or say. Above all, “cast your care upon the Lord and He shall sustain you”, (Psalm 54. 23). Peace and calm in your soul, prayer ever on your lips, and a big love in your heart for Him and His interests, will carry you very far.

COMMENT: Fr Doyle had a tremendous devotion to the Eucharist which sustained his austere life of hard work, both in and out of the trenches. His advice to us today reflects the story of Jesus telling the apostles to let down their nets for a catch even though the task seems pointless (Luke 5:4-7):

And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

Do we act fearlessly today when the Holy Spirit inspires us? Or are we still too concerned about “what others may think or say”?