List of points

Turn your back on the tempter when he whispers in your ear: 'Why make life difficult for yourself?'

Don't try to reason with concupiscence: scorn it.

Don't show the cowardice of being 'brave'; take to your heels!

At the time of temptation think of the Love that awaits you in heaven: foster the virtue of hope — this is not a lack of generosity.

You seem to hear a voice within you saying. 'That religious prejudice!' And then the eloquent defence of all the weaknesses of our poor fallen flesh: 'Its rights!'

When this happens, tell the enemy that there is a natural law and a law of God… and God! And also hell.

'Domine! — Lord — si vis, potes me mundare, — if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.'

What a beautiful prayer for you to say often, with the faith of the poor leper, when there happens to you what God and you and I know! You will not have to wait long to hear the Master's reply: 'Volo, mundare! I will: be thou made clean!'

To defend his purity, Saint Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, Saint Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush, Saint Bernard plunged into an icy pond… You…, what have you done?

If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee! Your poor heart, that's what scandalizes you!

Press it, squeeze it tight in your hands: give it no consolations. And when it asks for them, say to it slowly and with a noble compassion — in confidence, as it were: 'Heart, heart on the Cross, heart on the Cross!'

Stop thinking of your fall. That thought, besides overwhelming and crushing you under its weight, may easily be an occasion of further temptations. Christ has forgiven you: forget the 'old self'.

That supernatural mode of conduct is a truly military tactic.

You carry on the war — the daily struggles of your interior — far from the main walls of your fortress.

And the enemy meets you there: in your small mortifications, your customary prayer, your methodical work, your plan of life: and with difficulty will he come close to the easily-scaled battlements of your castle. And if he does come, he comes exhausted.

Love our Lady. And she will obtain for you abundant grace to conquer in your daily struggle. And the enemy will gain nothing by those foul things that continually seem to boil and rise within you, trying to engulf in their fragrant corruption the high ideals, the sublime determination that Christ himself has set in your heart. — Serviam, I will serve!

That disturbance in your spirit, the temptation which envelops you, seems to blindfold the eyes of your soul.

You are in darkness. Don't insist on walking by yourself, for, by yourself you will fall. Go to your Director — to the person in charge — and he will remind you of those words of Raphael the Archangel to Tobias:

'Take comfort; before long God will heal you.' Be obedient and the scales will fall from your eyes, and God will fill you with grace and with peace.