List of points

Don't forget, my son, that for you on earth there is but one evil, which you must fear and avoid with the grace of God: sin.

The standard of holiness that God asks of us is determined by these three points:

Holy intransigence, holy coercion and holy shamelessness.

Holy shamelessness is one thing: plain cheekiness, quite another.

Holy shamelessness is a characteristic of the 'life of childhood.' A little child worries about nothing. He makes no effort to hide his weaknesses, his natural miseries, not even when everyone is watching him.

This shamelessness applied to the supernatural life, brings with it the following train of thought: praise, contempt; esteem, ridicule; honour, dishonour; health, sickness; riches, poverty; beauty, ugliness…

All right… so what?

Laugh at ridicule. Despise the bogey of what people will say. See and feel God in yourself and in your surroundings. And you will acquire the holy shamelessness that you need — what a paradox! — in order to live with the refinement of a christian gentleman.

If you have holy shamelessness, you won't be worried by the thought of 'what will people say?' or 'what can they have said?'

What does it matter if you have the whole world against you, with all its power? You… keep going!

Repeat the words of the psalm: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom need I fear? Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum. — Though an army pitched camp against me, my heart shall not be afraid'.

'The truth is that there is no need to be a hero', you confess, 'to know how to isolate oneself as far as circumstances demand — without going to ridiculous extremes — and to persevere.' And you add: 'So long as I carry out the norms you gave me, the snares and pitfalls of my surroundings don't worry me: to fear such trifles — that is what I would be afraid of.'

Wonderful!