List of points

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.

We've got to be convinced that God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.

He is there like a loving Father. He loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children — helping us, inspiring us, blessing… and forgiving.

How often we have misbehaved and then cleared the frowns from our parents' brows, telling them: I won't do it any more! — That same day, perhaps, we fall again… — And our father, with feigned harshness in his voice and serious face, reprimands us, while in his heart he is moved, realizing our weakness and thinking: poor child, how hard he tries to behave well!

We've got to be filled, to be imbued with the idea that our Father, and very much our Father, is God who is both near us and in heaven.

What depths of mercy there are in God's justice! For, in the judgments of men, he who confesses his fault is punished: and in the Judgment of God, he is pardoned.

Blessed be the holy Sacrament of Penance!

'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ', says Saint Paul to the Romans. It is in the Sacrament of Penance that you and I put on Jesus Christ and his merits.

Force yourself, if necessary, always to forgive those who offend you, from the very first moment. For the greatest injury or offence that you can suffer from them is as nothing compared with what God has pardoned you.

All right: that person has behaved badly towards you. But, haven't you behaved worse towards God?

You are full of weaknesses. Each day you see them more clearly. But don't let them frighten you. He well knows you can't yield more fruit.

Your involuntary falls — a child's falls — show your Father-God that he must take more care and your Mother Mary that she must never let you go from her loving hand. Each day as our Lord picks you up from the ground, take advantage of it, embrace him with all your strength and lay your wearied head on his open breast so that you will be carried away by the beating of his most lovable Heart.

The discouragement produced by your repeated lack of generosity, your lapses, your falls — which perhaps are only apparent — often makes you feel as if you had broken something of exceptional value (your sanctification).

Don't be worried: apply to your supernatural life the wise way simple children have of solving such a conflict.

They have broken — nearly always because of its fragility — something their father values greatly. They are sorry, perhaps they shed tears, but… they go to seek consolation from the owner of what has been damaged by their awkwardness, and their father forgets the value — great though it may be — of the broken object and, filled with tenderness, he not only pardons, but consoles and encourages the little one. Learn.

You went astray, and did not come back because you were ashamed to. It would be more logical if you were ashamed not to return.