List of points

It makes me very sad to see a Catholic — a child of God, called by Baptism to be another Christ — calming his conscience with a purely formal piety, with a religiosity that leads him to pray now and again, and only if he thinks it worthwhile! He goes to Mass on holidays of obligation — though not all of them — while he cares punctiliously for the welfare of his stomach and never misses a meal. He is ready to compromise in matters of faith, to exchange his faith for a platter of lentils, rather than give up his job… And then he impudently or scandalously seeks to climb up in the world on the strength of being a Christian. No! Let us not live on labels. I want you to be genuine, solid Christians; and to become such you will have to be unswerving in your search for suitable spiritual food.

Personal experience shows, and you have often heard me tell you so, to warn you against discouragement, that our interior life consists in beginning again and again each day; and you know in your hearts, as I do in mine, that the struggle is never ending. You will have noticed too, when making your examination of conscience just as I do (excuse these personal references, but even as I am speaking to you I am going over the needs of my own soul with Our Lord) that you often experience little setbacks, which at times perhaps may seem to you enormous, revealing as they do an evident lack of love, of self-surrender to God, of a spirit of sacrifice, of refinement. Well, strengthen your yearning for reparation, with a sincere act of contrition, but please do not lose your peace of mind.

Et viam Dei in veritate doces. Teach others. Never stop teaching: that means showing the ways of God with utter truthfulness. You needn't worry about your defects being seen, yours and mine. I like making mine public, and telling of my personal struggle and my desire to correct this failing or that in my battle to be loyal to Our Lord. Our efforts to banish and overcome our defects will in themselves be a way of teaching God's ways: first, and in spite of our visible errors, he wants us to strive to give witness with our lives; then, with our teaching, just like Our Lord did when he coepit facere et docere. He began with works, then afterwards he devoted himself to preaching.

Having reminded you that this priest loves you very much and that your Father in Heaven loves you more because he is infinitely good, infinitely a Father; and having shown you that there is nothing I can reproach you with, I feel all the same that I must help you to love Jesus Christ and the Church, his flock, because in this I think you are not ahead of me; you emulate me, but you are not ahead of me. When, through my preaching or in my personal conversations with each one of you, I draw attention to some defect, it is not in order to make you suffer. My only motive is to help us love Our Lord more deeply. And when I impress upon you the need to practise the virtues, I never forget that I am under the same obligation myself.

I once heard someone say very rashly that the experience of one's lapses serves to make one fall a further hundred times into the same error. I tell you, instead, that a prudent person makes use of these setbacks to be more careful in the future, to learn to do good and to renew his decision to seek greater holiness. From your failures and successes in God's service, seek always to draw, together with an increase in love, a stronger determination to carry on fulfilling your rights and duties as Christian citizens, no matter what the cost. And do this manfully, without fleeing from honours or responsibilities, without being afraid of the reactions we produce in those around us, perhaps originating from false brethren, when we nobly and loyally try to seek God's glory and the good of our neighbour.

So, then, we have to be prudent. Why is this? In order to be just, in order to live charity, and to give good service to God and to all our fellow men. Not without good reason has prudence been called genitrix virtutum, the mother of virtues, and also auriga virtutum, the guide of every good habit.