List of points

Get rid of that 'small-town' outlook. Enlarge your heart till it becomes universal, 'catholic'.

Don't flutter about like a hen, when you can soar to the heights of an eagle.

Selfish. Always looking after yourself You seem incapable of feeling the fraternity of Christ. In those around you, you do not see brothers: you see stepping stones.

I can foresee your complete failure. And when you have fallen, you will want others to treat you with the charity you are not willing to show towards them.

You will never be a leader if you see others only as stepping-stones to get ahead. You will be a leader if you are ambitious for the salvation of all mankind.

You can't turn your back on your fellow-men: you have to be anxious to make them happy.

Don't you feel that greater peace and closer union await you when you respond to that extraordinary grace which demands your total detachment?

Struggle for him, to please him: but strengthen your hope.

You are afraid of becoming cold and distant towards everyone. For you want to be so detached!

There is no need to worry: if you belong to Christ — completely to Christ! — from him you will get fire, light and warmth for all men.

That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you're unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in the persons who live with you… this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.

Let us drink to the last drop the chalice of pain in this poor present life. What does it matter to suffer for ten years, twenty, fifty… if afterwards there is heaven for ever, for ever… for ever?

And, above all — rather than because of the reward, propter retributionem — what does suffering matter if we suffer to console, to please God our Lord, in a spirit of reparation, united to him on his Cross; in a word: if we suffer for Love?…

These are the ripe fruits of the mortified soul: tolerance and understanding for the defects of others; intolerance for one's own.

If you lose the supernatural meaning of your life, your charity will be philanthropy; your purity, decency; your mortification, stupidity; your discipline, a whip; and all your works, fruitless.

A change! You say you need a change!… opening your eyes wide so as to take in better the images of things, or almost closing them because you are short-sighted.

Close them altogether! Have interior life, and you will see, in undreamt-of colour and relief, the wonders of a better world, of a new world: and you will draw close to God…, and know your weakness…, and be deified… with a deification which, by bringing you nearer to your Father, will make you more a brother of your fellow-men.

Purity of intention. You will have it always if, always and in everything, you seek only to please God.

A missionary. — You dream of being a missionary. Another Francis Xavier… And you long to conquer an empire for Christ. Japan, China, India, Russia… the peoples of the North of Europe, or America, or Africa, or Australia?

Stir up that fire in your heart, that hunger for souls. But don't forget that you are more of a missionary 'obeying'. Geographically distant from those apostolic fields, you work both 'here' and 'there': don't you — like Xavier — feel your arm tired after administering baptism to so many?

The charity of Jesus Christ will often lead you to make concessions. That is very noble. And the charity of Jesus Christ will often lead you to stand your ground. That too is very noble.

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.

Be uncompromising in doctrine and conduct. But be yielding in manner. A mace of tempered steel, wrapped in a quilted covering.

Be uncompromising, but don't be obstinate.

Don't be content to ask Jesus pardon just for your own faults: don't love him just with your own heart…

Console him for every offence that has been, is, or will be done to him. Love him with all the strength of all the hearts of all those who have most loved him.

Be daring: tell him that you are crazier about him than Mary Magdalen, than either of his two Teresas, that you love him madly, more than Augustine and Dominic and Francis, more than Ignatius and Xavier.

The secret that ennobles the humblest, even the most humiliating thing, is Love.

How little a life is to offer to God!

To punish out of Love: this is the secret that raises to a supernatural plane the punishment of those who deserve it.

For the love of God, who has been offended, let punishment serve as reparation. For the love of our neighbour and for the sake of God, let it be imposed, never as revenge, but as health-giving medicine.

To know that you love me so much, my God, and yet… I haven't lost my mind!

Lord: may I have due measure in everything… except in Love.

Live by Love and you'll conquer always — even when you are defeated — in the battles of your interior struggle.

Crazy! Yes, I saw you in the bishop's chapel — alone, so you thought — as you left a kiss on each newly-consecrated chalice and paten: so that he might find them there, when he came for the first time to those eucharistic vessels.

Never think badly of anyone, not even if the words or conduct of the person in question give you good grounds for doing so.

Force yourself, if necessary, always to forgive those who offend you, from the very first moment. For the greatest injury or offence that you can suffer from them is as nothing compared with what God has pardoned you.

A very important characteristic of the apostolic man is his love for the Mass.

'The Mass is long', you say, and I add: 'Because your love is short.'

Isn't it strange how many Christians, who take their time and have leisure enough in their social life (they are in no hurry), in following the sleepy rhythm of their professional affairs, in eating and recreation (no hurry here either), find themselves rushed and want to rush the Priest, in their anxiety to shorten the time devoted to the most holy Sacrifice of the Altar?

'Treat him well for me, treat him well'! Words, mingled with tears, of a certain venerable bishop to the priests he had just ordained.

Would that I had the power, Lord, and the authority to repeat that same cry in the ears and in the hearts of many, many Christians!

Going to Communion every day for so many years! Anybody else would be a saint by now, you told me, and I… I'm always the same!

Son, I replied, keep up your daily Communion, and think: what would I be if I had not gone?

Communion, union, conversation, confidence: word, bread, love.

Go to Communion. It doesn't show lack of respect. Go this very day when you have just got over that 'spot of trouble.'

Have you forgotten that Jesus said: It is not by those who are well, but by those who are sick, that the physician is needed?

Do everything unselfishly, for pure Love, as if there were neither reward nor punishment. But in your heart foster the glorious hope of heaven.

Once again they have spoken, they have written: in favour, against; with good and with not so good will; faint praise and slander; panegyrics and plaudits; hits and misses…

Don't be a fool! As long as you are making straight for your goal, head and heart intoxicated with God, why worry about the voice of the wind, or the chirp of the cricket, or the mooing or the grunting or the braying?

Besides, it's inevitable; don't waste time answering back.

Tongues have been wagging and you have suffered rebuffs that hurt you all the more because you were not expecting them.

Your supernatural reaction should be to pardon, — and even to ask pardon, — and to take advantage of the experience to detach yourself from creatures.

Do you hear? Somewhere else, in another state, in another position, you would do much more good. Talent isn't needed to do what you are doing.

Listen to me: wherever you have been placed you please God,… and what you have just been thinking is clearly a suggestion from the devil.

Does your soul not burn with the desire to make your Father God happy when he has to judge you?

Purity of intention. The suggestions of pride and the impulses of the flesh are not difficult to recognize… and you fight and, with grace, you conquer.

But the motives that inspire you, even in the holiest actions, do not seem clear; and deep down inside you hear a voice which makes you see human reasons in such a subtle way that your soul is invaded by the disturbing thought that you don't act as you should — for pure Love, solely and exclusively to give God all his glory.

React at once each time and say: 'Lord, for myself I want nothing. All for your glory and for Love.'

You have but little love if you are not zealous for the salvation of all souls. You have but poor love if you are not eager to inspire other apostles with your craziness.

Do everything for Love. Thus there will be no little things: everything will be big. Perseverance in little things for Love is heroism.

Have no enemies. Have only friends: friends on the right — if they have done or have wished to do you good; and on the left — if they have harmed or tried to harm you.

My clumsiness, Beloved, is so great, so very great that even when I wish to caress I cause pain. Refine the manners of my soul: within the sturdy manliness of this life of childhood, give me — I want you to give me — the gentleness and affection that children show towards their parents in their intimate outpourings of love.

One pinprick. And another. And another. Suffer them! Don't you see you are so small that in your life — in your way — you can only offer him those little crosses?

Besides, just think: one pinprick and another, one cross on top of another,… what a huge pile!

When all is said and done, child, you have learned to do one really big thing: to Love.

Lord, make us crazy, with that infectious craziness that will draw many to your apostolate.

Be particularly respectful to whoever is in charge, whenever he consults you and you have to contradict his opinions. And never contradict him in the presence of those who are subject to him, even if he is in the wrong.

Rejoice, when you see others working in good apostolic activities. And ask God to grant them abundant grace and that they may respond to that grace.

Then, you, on your way: convince yourself that it's the only way for you.