List of points

Make use of those holy 'human devices' that I suggested to help you keep presence of God: ejaculations, acts of love and reparation, spiritual Communions, 'glances' at a picture of our Lady.

When you were asked which picture of our Lady aroused your devotion most, and you answered — with the air of long experience — 'all of them', I realized that you were a good son: that is why you are equally moved — 'they make me fall in love', you said — by all the pictures of your Mother.

Piety has its own good manners. Learn them. It's a shame to see those 'pious' people who don't know how to attend Mass — even though they go daily, — nor how to bless themselves (they throw their hands about in the weirdest fashion), nor how to bend the knee before the Tabernacle (their ridiculous genuflections seem a mockery), nor how to bow their heads reverently before a picture of our Lady.

Don’t put up those “mass-produced” images for public devotion: I prefer a figure of Christ made of rough wrought-iron to those painted plaster Crucifixes that look as if they are made of sugar candy.