List of points

Excuses. You will always find plenty if you want to avoid your obligations. What a profusion of well-thought-out nonsense!

Don't stop to consider it. Dismiss it and do your duty.

Yes, that abuse can be eradicated. It shows lack of character to let it continue as something hopeless, with no possible remedy.

Don't shirk your duty. Carry it out conscientiously, even though others neglect theirs.

Give the polite excuse which christian charity and social convention demand. And then… on your way again! With holy shamelessness, without stopping until you have finally scaled the heights of duty.

Put your heart aside. Duty comes first. But, when fulfilling your duty, put your heart into it. It helps.

I have no need of miracles: there are more than enough for me in the Gospel. But I do need to see you fulfilling your duty and responding to grace.

You will find it easier to do your duty if you think of how your brothers are helping you, and of the help you fail to give them if you are not faithful.

That false humility is laziness. Such humbleness is a handy way of giving up rights that are really duties.

Ask yourself many times during the day: Am I doing at this moment what I ought to be doing?

Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing.

Persevere in the exact fulfilment of the obligations of the moment. That work — humble, monotonous, small — is prayer expressed in action that prepares you to receive the grace of the other work — great and wide and deep — of which you dream.

'My enthusiasm is gone', you write. You have to work not out of enthusiasm but out of Love: conscious of duty, which means self-denial.