List of points

If you feel the urge to be a leader, let this be your aim: to be last among your brothers; and among others, the first.

So you are a nobody. And others have done wonders, are still doing them, in organisation, in publicity, in the press. And they have all the means, while you have none? Well then, Just remember Ignatius.

Ignorant, among the doctors of Alcala; penniless, among the students of Paris, persecuted, slandered…

That is the way: to love and to believe and… to suffer! Your Love and your Faith and your Cross are the infallible means to give effect — eternal effect — to the longing for apostolate that you bear in your heart.

Don't be a fool! It's true that at most you play the part of a little bolt in that great undertaking of Christ's.

But do you know what happens when a bolt is not tight enough or when it works itself out of place? Bigger parts also work loose or the gear-wheels get damaged and broken.

The work is slowed up. Perhaps the whole machine will be rendered useless.

What a big thing it is to be a little bolt!

Is there any greater folly than to scatter the golden wheat on the ground to let it rot? Without that generous folly there would be no harvest.

Son, how do we stand as regards generosity?

Look: the apostles, for all their evident and undeniable defects, were sincere, simple… transparent.

You too have evident and undeniable defects. May you not lack simplicity.

Don't rest on your laurels. If, humanly speaking, that attitude is neither comfortable nor becoming, what will it be when — as now — the laurels are not really yours, but God's?

Contempt and persecution are blessed signs of divine predilection, but there is no proof and sign of predilection more beautiful than this: to pass unnoticed.