List of points

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?

A keen and living faith. Like Peter's. When you have it — our Lord has said so — you will move the mountains, the humanly insuperable obstacles that rise up against your apostolic undertakings.

Catholic, apostolic, Roman! I want you to be very Roman. And to be anxious to make your 'path to Rome', videre Petrum — to see Peter.

Drink at the clear fountain of the Acts of the Apostles. In the twelfth chapter, Peter, freed from prison by the ministry of Angels, comes to the house of the mother of Mark. Those inside will not believe the girl, who says that Peter is at the door. Angelus ejus est! It must be his Angel!' they said.

See on what intimate terms the early Christians were with their guardian Angels.

And you?

The power of obedience! The lake of Genesareth had denied its fishes to Peter's nets. A whole night in vain.

Then, obedient, he lowered his net again to the water and they caught 'a huge number of fish'.

Believe me: the miracle is repeated each day.

'Duc in altum. Put out into deep water!' Throw aside the pessimism that makes a coward of you. And pay out your nets for a catch!

Don't you see that you, like Peter, can say: 'In nomine tuo, laxabo rete': Jesus, if you say so, I will search for souls?

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.

There is a brilliant man whom you long to attract to your apostolate; there is another, a man of great influence; and a third, full of prudence and virtues…

Pray, offer up sacrifices, and work on them with your word and example. — They don't want to come! — Don't lose your peace; it's because they are not needed.

Do you think there were no brilliant and influential and prudent and virtuous contemporaries of Peter outside the apostolate of the first twelve?

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.'

Just as observant religious are eager to know how the first of their order or congregation lived, so as to have their model to follow you too, christian gentleman, should also seek to know and imitate the lives of the disciples of Jesus, who knew Peter and Paul and John, and all but witnessed the Death and Resurrection of the Master.

'Have we not the right to take a christian woman round with us, like all the other apostles do and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?'

Words of Saint Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. We cannot underestimate the co-operation of women in the apostolate.