List of points

If they have witnessed your faults and weaknesses, will it matter if they witness your penance?

In the deep pit opened by your humility, let penance bury your negligences, offences and sins. Just as the gardener buries rotten fruit, dried twigs and fallen leaves at the foot of the very trees which produced them. And so what was useless, what was even harmful, can make a real contribution to a new fruitfulness.

From the falls learn to draw strength: from death, life.

Don't be content to ask Jesus pardon just for your own faults: don't love him just with your own heart…

Console him for every offence that has been, is, or will be done to him. Love him with all the strength of all the hearts of all those who have most loved him.

Be daring: tell him that you are crazier about him than Mary Magdalen, than either of his two Teresas, that you love him madly, more than Augustine and Dominic and Francis, more than Ignatius and Xavier.

How that saintly young priest, who was found worthy of martyrdom, wept at the foot of the altar as he thought of a soul who had come to receive Christ in the state of mortal sin!

Is that how you offer him reparation?

Don't worry if they see your defects; the offence against God and the scandal you may give; that is what should worry you.

Apart from this, may you be known for what you are and be despised. Don't be sorry to be nothing, since then Jesus will have to be everything for you.

Jesus remains silent. Jesus autem tacebat. Why do you speak, to console yourself, or to excuse yourself?

Say nothing. Seek joy in contempt: you will always receive less than you deserve.

Can you, by any chance, ask: Quid enim mali feci, what evil have I done?

Child, enkindle in your heart an ardent desire to make up for the excesses of your grown-up life.

When a child-like soul tells our Lord of its desires to be forgiven, it can be sure that it will soon see those desires fulfilled: Jesus will free the soul from the filthy tail that it drags in punishment for its past miseries. He will remove the dead-weight which still remains from all its impurities and drags it down to the ground. He will free the child from all the earthly ballast in its heart so that it can rise up towards God's Majesty, and be enveloped in the living flame of his Love.