List of points

I must remind you that you will not find happiness if you don't fulfil your Christian duties. If you were to leave them aside, you would feel terrible remorse and would be thoroughly miserable. Even the most ordinary things, which are licit and which bring a bit of happiness, would then become as bitter as gall, as sour as vinegar and as repugnant as arum.

Let each of us, myself included, put our trust in Jesus, saying to him: 'Lord, I am ready to struggle and I know that you do not lose battles. I realise too that if at times I lose, it is because I have gone away from you. Take me by the hand. Don't trust me. Don't let go of me.'

You may be thinking: 'But, Father, I am so happy! I love Jesus! Even though I am made of clay, I do want to become a saint with the help of God and his Blessed Mother!' I don't doubt you. I am only forewarning you with these words of advice just in case, just supposing a difficulty were to arise.

At the same time, I would remind you that for Christians (for you and me) our life is a life of Love. This heart of ours was born to love. But when it is not given something pure, clean and noble to love, it takes revenge and fills itself with squalor. True love of God, and consequently purity of life, is as far removed from sensuality as it is from insensitivity, and as far from sentimentality as it is from heartlessness or hard-heartedness.

It is such a pity not to have a heart. How unfortunate are those people who have never learned to love with tenderness! We Christians are in love with Love: Our Lord does not want us to be dry and rigid, like inert matter. He wants us to be saturated with his love! People who, for the sake of God, say No to a human love are not bachelors or spinsters, like those sad, unhappy, crestfallen men and women who have despised the chance of a pure and generous love.

As I have often told you, and I don't care who knows it, I have also used the words of popular songs, that almost always treat of love, to keep up my conversation with Our Lord. I like them, I really do. Our Lord has chosen me and some of you as well to belong totally to himself; so we translate the noble love expressed in human love songs into something that is divine. The Holy Spirit does this in the Song of Songs; and the great mystics of all ages have done the same.

Look at these verses of St Teresa of Avila:

'If you would have me idling

For love of you I will be idle;

But if you bid me work, my

Sole desire is to die working.

Tell me the when, the how, the where;

O sweetest love I beg of you

To say what you would have me do.'

Or that song of St John of the Cross, which begins so charmingly:

'A little shepherd boy

Is all alone and far from joy

Full of sorrow and distress

From thinking of his shepherdess

Love unrequited in his breast.'

Human love, when it is pure, fills me with immense respect and inexpressible veneration. How could we fail to appreciate the holy and noble love shared by our parents, to whom we owe a great part of our friendship with God? I bless such love with my two hands, and if anyone asks me why I say with my two hands, I reply at once: 'Because I don't have four.'

Blessed be human love! But Our Lord has asked something more of me. And, as Catholic theology clearly states, to give oneself out of love for the Kingdom of heaven to Jesus alone and, through Jesus, to all men, is a love more sublime than married love, even though marriage is a sacrament and indeed sacramentum magnum.

But, whatever the calling, the fact is that each person, in his own place, according to the vocation which God has inspired in his soul (be he single, married, widowed or priest) must strive to live chastity with great refinement, because it is a virtue for everyone. It calls on everyone to struggle, to be delicate, sensitive and strong. It calls for a degree of refinement which can only be fully appreciated when we come close to the loving Heart of Christ on the Cross. Don't worry if at times you feel threatened by temptation. One thing is to feel temptation, quite another to consent. Temptation can be rejected easily with God's help. What we must never do is to dialogue with temptation.

Each day without fail we should devote some time specially to God, raising our minds to him, without any need for the words to come to our lips, for they are being sung in our heart. Let us give enough time to this devout practice; at a fixed hour, if possible. Before the Tabernacle, close to him who has remained there out of Love. If this is not possible, we can pray anywhere because our God is ineffably present in the heart of every soul in grace. Still I would advise you to go to the oratory whenever you can. I make a point of calling it an oratory and not a chapel, to emphasise that it is not a place where you adopt a formal, ceremonial manner, but rather one where you can raise up your mind in an intimate and recollected way, to heaven, and you can be sure that Jesus sees us and hears us, that he is waiting for us and presides over us from the Tabernacle where he is truly present, hidden under the sacramental species.

Each one of you, if he wants, can find his own way to converse with God. I do not like to talk about methods or formulas, because I have never wished to straitjacket anyone. What I have always tried to do is to encourage everyone to come closer to Our Lord, respecting each soul as it is, each with its own characteristics. Ask him to introduce his ideas and plans into our lives: not only into our heads, but also into the depths of our hearts and into all our outward actions. I assure you that you will thus be spared many of the disappointments and sorrows of selfishness, and you will find you have the strength to do good to all around you. How many obstacles vanish when in our hearts we place ourselves next to this God of ours, who never abandons us! Jesus' love for his own, for the sick and for the lame, is renewed, expressed in different ways, 'What is the matter?' he asks, and we reply, 'It's my…' At once there is light, or at least the acceptance of his will, and inner peace.

When I encourage you to open your heart in confidence to the Master, I am referring especially to your own difficulties, because most of the obstacles to our happiness come from our pride, which may be hidden to a greater or less degree. We had thought we were worth a great deal and had a lot of exceptional qualities; then, when others didn't agree, we felt humiliated. This is a good time to pray and to correct our mistaken attitude. We can be sure it is never too late to change our course. But it's wise to start changing it as soon as possible.

In prayer, with God's grace, pride can be transformed into humility. Then, true joy wells up in our heart, even though we feel that the wings of our soul are still clogged with the mud, the clay of our wretchedness which is now beginning to dry out. If we practise mortification the mud will fall off, allowing us to soar very high, because the wind of God's mercy will be blowing in our favour.

Let us not think that because we are on this road of contemplation our passions will have calmed down once and for all. We would be mistaken if we thought that our longing to seek Christ, and the fact that we are meeting him and getting to know him and enjoy the sweetness of his love, makes us incapable of sinning. Though your own experience will tell you, let me nevertheless remind you of this truth. Satan, God's enemy and man's, does not give up nor does he rest. He maintains his siege, even when the soul is ardently in love with God. The devil knows that it's more difficult for the soul to fall then, but he also knows that, if he can manage to get it to offend its Lord even in something small, he will be able to cast over its conscience the serious temptation of despair.

If you want to learn from the experience of a poor priest whose only aim is to speak of God, I will tell you that when the flesh tries to recover its lost rights or, worse still, when pride rears up and rebels, you should hurry to find shelter in the divine wounds that were opened in Christ's Body by the nails that fastened him to the Cross and by the lance that pierced his side. Go as the spirit moves you: unburden in his Wounds all your love, both human and… divine. This is what it means to seek union, to feel that you are a brother to Christ, sharing his blood, a child of the same Mother, for it is She who has brought us to Jesus.