List of points

If you only knew what you are worth!… It is Saint Paul who tells you: you have been bought 'at a great price'. And he adds: 'That is why you should use your body for the glory of God'.

'What a wretched man am I! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?' The cry is Saint Paul's. — Courage: he too had to fight.

'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ', says Saint Paul to the Romans. It is in the Sacrament of Penance that you and I put on Jesus Christ and his merits.

Our Lord says: 'I give you a new commandment: Love one another. By this love everyone will know that you are my disciples'.

And Saint Paul: 'Carry each other's troubles and you fulfil the law of Christ'.

I have nothing to add.

And what of the means? — They are the same as those of Peter and of Paul, of Dominic and Francis, of Ignatius and Xavier: the Cross and the Gospel…

Don't they satisfy you?

Courage! You… can! Don't you see what God's grace did with sleepy-headed Peter, the coward who had denied him…, and with Paul, his fierce and relentless persecutor?

'So I bear it all for the sake of those who are chosen, so that in the end they may have the salvation that is in Christ Jesus'.

What a way to live the Communion of Saints!

Ask our Lord to give you this spirit of Saint Paul.

It is Saint Paul who tells you, apostolic soul: 'The just man lives by faith'.

How is it that you are letting your fire die out?

Stir up that fire of faith. Christ is not a figure that has passed. He is not a memory that is lost in history.

He lives! 'Jesus Christus heri et hodie, ipse et in saecula', says Saint Paul. — 'Jesus Christ is the same to-day as he was yesterday and as he will be for ever'.

What a pity that whoever is in charge doesn't give you good example! But, is it for his personal qualities that you obey him? Or do you conveniently interpret Saint Paul's 'obey your leaders' with a qualification of your own…, 'always provided they have virtues to my taste'?

Courage. Don't you know that Saint Paul tells the Corinthians that each will duly be paid according to his share in the work?

What amazes you seems natural to me— that God has sought you out in the practice of your profession!

That is how he sought the first, Peter and Andrew, James and John, beside their nets, and Matthew, sitting in the custom-house.

And — wonder of wonders! — Paul, in his eagerness to destroy the seed of the Christians.