List of points

If you don't keep in touch with Christ in prayer and in the Bread, how can you make him known to others?

Plagiarising the words of another writer, I will tell you that your apostolic life is worth what your prayer is worth.

If you are not a man of prayer, I don't believe in the sincerity of your intentions when you say that you work for Christ.

An hour of study, for a modern apostle, is an hour of prayer.

And how shall I acquire 'our formation', how shall I keep 'our spirit'? — By being faithful to the specific norms your Director gave you and explained to you, and made you love: be faithful to them and you will be an apostle.

May the fire of your love not be a will-o'—the-wisp: an illusion, a dying fire, that neither sets ablaze what it touches nor gives off any heat.

The harvest is great and the labourers few. Rogate ergo! Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.

Prayer is the most effective means of winning new apostles.

Leaders!… Strengthen your will so that God can make a leader of you. — Consider the tactics of those infamous secret societies. They don't try to win over the masses. In their dens they form a number of demon-men who set to work stirring up the multitudes to madness, so that they will follow them to the precipice of all excess… and to hell. They spread an accursed seed.

If you wish, you will spread God's word, which is a thousand times blessed and can never fail. If you are generous…, if you respond, with your personal sanctification you will help to bring about the sanctification of others; the kingdom of Christ: omnes cum Petro ad Jesum per Mariam — 'all with Peter to Jesus through Mary.'

What conversations! What vulgarity and what dirt! And you have to associate with them, in the office, in the university, in the operating-theatre…, in the world.

Ask them if they wouldn't mind stopping, and they laugh at you. Look annoyed, and they get worse. Leave them, and they continue.

This is the solution: first pray for them, and offer up some sacrifice; then face them like a man and make use of the 'strong language apostolate'. — The next time we meet I'll tell you — in a whisper — a few useful words.

Be a little child; the greatest daring is always that of children Who cries for… the moon? Who is blind to dangers in getting what he wants?

To such a child add much grace from God, the desire to do his Will, great love for Jesus, all the human knowledge he is capable of acquiring, and you will have a likeness of the apostles of today such as God undoubtedly wants them.

You write: 'Our longing to see it all going ahead and spreading seems about to turn into impatience. When will things get under way, when will the break-through come,… when will we see the world ours?'

And you add: 'It won't be a useless longing if we seek an outlet for it in "coercing", in "pestering" God: then we will have made excellent use of our time.'

All that exterior activity is a waste of time, if you lack Love. It's like sewing with a needle and no thread.

What a pity if in the end you had carried out 'your' apostolate and not 'his' apostolate!