List of points

Let those very obstacles give you strength. God's grace will not fail you: 'Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae! You shall pass through the mountains!'

Does it matter that you have to curtail your activity for the moment if afterwards, like a spring which has been compressed, you will reach incomparably farther than you ever dreamed?

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.

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?

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.

That is nearly always the way the devil tackles souls who are going to resist him: hypocritically, quietly, with motives… of a spiritual nature! Trying not to attract attention. — And then, when there seems to be no way out (though there is), he comes brazenly trying to gain another Judas-like success — despair without repentance.

After losing those human consolations you have been left with a feeling of loneliness, as if you were suspended by a mere thread over the black emptiness of the abyss. And your cries, your shouts for help seem to be heard by nobody.

You really deserve to be forlorn. Be humble, don't seek yourself don't seek consolation. Love the Cross — to bear it is little — and our Lord will hear your prayer. And calm will be restored to your senses. And your wounded heart will heal. And you will have peace.

Everything seems to touch you on the raw…, to make you suffer in your mind and in your senses. And everything is temptation to you…

Be humble — I insist. You will see how quickly all this passes; and the pain will be turned into joy: and the temptation, into firm purpose.

But meanwhile, strengthen your faith; fill yourself with hope; and make constant acts of Love, even though you can feel them only on your lips.