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.

Enter into the wounds of Christ Crucified. There you will learn to guard your senses, you will have interior life, and you will continually offer to the Father the sufferings of our Lord and those of Mary, in payment of your debts and the debts of all men.

Love for our Mother will be the breath that kindles into a living flame the embers of virtue hidden in the ashes of your indifference.

All the sins of your life seem to rise up against you. Don't lose confidence. Rather, call on your holy Mother Mary, with the faith and abandonment of a child. She will bring peace to your soul.

Mary, teacher of prayer. See how she asks her Son, at Cana. And how she insists, confidently, with perseverance. And how she succeeds.

Learn from her.

Mary, teacher of the sacrifice that is hidden and silent!

See her, nearly always in the background, co-operating with her Son; she knows, yet says nothing.

If everything seems to be fading away, if your spiritual edifice totters, find your support in that filial confidence in Jesus and Mary the sure and steady rock on which you should have built from the beginning.

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.

You are not alone. Suffer that tribulation joyfully. It's true, poor child, that you don't feel your Mother's hand in yours. But… have you never seen the mothers of this earth, with arms outstretched, following their little ones when, without anyone's help, they venture to take their first shaky steps? You are not alone: Mary is close beside you.