List of points

Do your duty 'now', without looking back on 'yesterday', which has already passed, or worrying over 'to-morrow', which may never come for you.

Now! Return to your noble life now. Don't be a fool: 'now' is not too soon… nor too late.

'Now that our Lord is helping me with his usual generosity, I will try to respond by being even more "considerate" in my ways.

So you told me. And I had nothing to add.

Ah, if you would only resolve to serve God 'seriously', with the same zeal with which you serve your ambition, your vanity, your sensuality!…

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

But, surely — at this stage — you don't mean to tell me that you need the approval, the favour the encouragement of the powerful, to go on doing what God wants?

The powerful often change, and you have to be constant. Be grateful if they help you. But go ahead, unperturbed, if they treat you with contempt.

Take no notice. Madness has always been the term that 'prudent' people apply to God's works.

Forward! Without fear!

It has been a long trial this time. Perhaps — and without the perhaps — you haven't borne it well so far, for you were still seeking human consolations. And your Father— God tore them out by the roots so as to leave you nothing to cling to but him.

So you couldn't care less? Don't try to fool yourself. This very moment, if I were to ask you about certain people and undertakings in which for God's love you put your soul, I know that you would answer me eagerly, with the interest of one speaking of what is his own.

It's not true that you don't care. It's just that you're not tireless, and that you need more time for yourself: time that will also be for your activities since, after all, you are the instrument.

If you don't leave him, he won't leave you.

Discouragement is an enemy of your perseverance. If you don't fight against discouragement you will become pessimistic first, and lukewarm afterwards. Be an optimist.

You cannot 'rise'. It's not surprising: that fall!

Persevere and you will 'rise'. Remember what a spiritual writer has said: your poor soul is like a bird whose wings are caked with mud.

Suns of heaven are needed and personal efforts, small and constant, to shake off those inclinations, those vain fancies, that depression: that mud clinging to your wings.

And you will see yourself free. If you persevere, you will 'rise'.