List of points

'They have the stuff of saints in them.' At times you hear this said of some people. Apart from the fact that the saints were not made of 'stuff, to have stuff is not sufficient.

A great spirit of obedience to your Director and great readiness to respond to grace are essential. For, if you don't allow God's grace and your Director to do their work, there will never appear the finished sculpture, Christ's image, into which the saintly man is fashioned.

And the 'stuff' of which we were speaking will be no more than a heap of shapeless matter, fit only for the fire…, for a good fire if it was good stuff!

Here is a safe doctrine that I want you to know: one's own mind is a bad adviser, a poor pilot to steer the soul through the storms and tempests and among the reefs of the interior life.

That is why it is the will of God that the command of the ship be entrusted to a Master who, with his light and his knowledge, can guide us to a safe harbour.

Without an architect you wouldn't build a good house for your life on earth. How then, without a Director, can you hope to build the palace of your sanctification for your eternity in heaven?

You think you are quite important: your studies, your research work, your publications, your social standing, your name, your political activities, the positions you hold, your wealth… your age: you're no longer a child!…

Just because of all that, you, more than others, need a Director for your soul.

Books: don't buy them without advice from a Christian who is learned and prudent. It's so easy to buy something useless or harmful.

How often a man thinks he is carrying a book under his arm, and it turns out to be a load of rubbish!

That disturbance in your spirit, the temptation which envelops you, seems to blindfold the eyes of your soul.

You are in darkness. Don't insist on walking by yourself, for, by yourself you will fall. Go to your Director — to the person in charge — and he will remind you of those words of Raphael the Archangel to Tobias:

'Take comfort; before long God will heal you.' Be obedient and the scales will fall from your eyes, and God will fill you with grace and with peace.