List of points

Lord, may your children be like very well lit embers, showing no flames that would make the fire be seen from afar. Let them be embers that will set alight each heart they come into contact with.

—You will make that first spark turn into a big fire, because your Angels are very skilled at blowing on embers in hearts… I know, I have seen it. And a heart cleared of dead ashes cannot but be yours.

Following the Master’s wishes, you are to be salt and light while being fully immersed in this world we were made to live in, sharing in all human activities. Light which illuminates the hearts and minds of men. Salt which gives flavour and preserves from corruption.

That is why if you lack apostolic zeal you will become insipid and useless. You will be letting other people down and your life will be absurd.

If you are another Christ, if you behave as a son of God, wherever you are you will set others alight. Christ burns with love, he does not leave hearts indifferent.

I look at your Cross, my Jesus, and I rejoice in your grace, because your Calvary has won for us the reward of the Holy Spirit. And you give yourself to me, each day, lovingly, madly, in the Sacred Host. And you have made me a son of God, and have given me your Mother to be mine.

I can’t be satisfied with just giving thanks. My thoughts take flight: Lord, Lord, there are so many souls who are so far from you!

Foster those yearnings for apostolate in your life, that many may get to know him…, and love him…, and come to feel loved by him!

You wrote: “My King, I hear you proclaiming in a loud voice that still resounds: Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accendatur? — I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled!”

Then you added: “Lord, it is me — all of me — who answers with all my senses and faculties: Ecce ego quia vocasti me! — here I am because you have called me.”

—May this answer of yours be a daily reality.

Sweet Mother…, lead us to that madness that will make others fall madly in love with our Christ.

Sweet Lady Mary, may Love not be in us a flash in the pan, or a will-o’-the-wisp, such as decomposing corpses sometimes produce. May it be a true devouring fire, which sets alight and burns everything it touches.

The moment you have anyone — whoever he may be — at your side, find a way, without doing anything strange, to pass on to him the joy you experience in being a son of God and living as such.

Practise a cheerful charity which is at once kindly and firm; human and supernatural. An affectionate charity, knowing how to welcome everyone with a sincere and habitual smile, and how to understand the ideas and the feelings of others.

—In this way, gently and vigorously, and without concessions in matters of personal morals or in doctrine, the charity of Christ — when it is being well lived — will give you a spirit of conquest. Each day you will be more eager to work for souls.

My child, are you not aflame with the desire to bring all men to love Him?

To be a Christian in the world doesn’t mean isolating oneself — on the contrary! It means loving all mankind and burning with a desire to enkindle in everyone the fire of the love of God.

You have to act like a burning coal, spreading fire wherever it happens to be; or at least, striving to raise the spiritual temperature of the people around you, leading them to live a truly Christian life.

When you are with someone, you have to see a soul: a soul who has to be helped, who has to be understood, with whom you have to live in harmony, and who has to be saved.

Let this be your prayer, apostolic soul: Lord, may I know how to lean on people and get them all to burn like fires of Love, which will then become the driving force of all our undertakings.

You are to be yeast within the great multitudes that make up humanity — remember we are interested in all souls. In this way, with God’s grace and your own correspondence to it, you will act as leaven throughout the world, adding quality, flavour and volume to the bread of Christ so that it can nourish the souls of others.

Defend the truth with charity and firmness when the things of God are at stake. Practise holy shamelessness in denouncing errors, even though at times they are no more than insinuations; at other times they will be odious utterances of the most blatant ignorance, and, normally, a sign of man’s frustration at not being able to endure the fruitfulness of the word of God.

The day you no longer strive to draw others closer to God — since you ought to be a burning coal all the time — you will become a contemptible little piece of charcoal, or a little heap of ashes to be scattered by the slightest puff of wind.

—You have to be on fire; you need to be a thing that burns, producing flames of the love of God, of faithfulness and apostolate.

Much depends on you too. If you respond many will remain in darkness no longer, but will walk instead along paths that lead to everlasting life.

When you consider the beauty, the greatness and the effectiveness of apostolic work, you affirm that your head aches thinking of the amount of ground that still has to be covered — there are so many souls who are waiting! And you feel so very happy offering yourself as a slave to Jesus. You have a great desire for his Cross and for suffering, for Love and for souls. Without thinking about it, in an instinctive movement — which was one of Love — you stretched out your arms and opened the palms of your hands, ready for him to nail you to his Holy Cross. You were ready to be his slave — serviam — which is to reign.

To die is a good thing. How can anyone with faith be, at the same time, afraid to die? But as long as the Lord wants to keep you here on earth, it would be cowardice for you to want to die. You must live, live and suffer and work for Love: that is your task.

You became very serious when you heard me say: I accept death whenever God wants it, the way he wants it, where he wants it; and at the same time I think it is too easy to die early, because we should want to work many years for him, and because of him, in the service of others.

To die?… That’s too easy, I say once more.

—Say, just as that holy bishop did when he was old and sick, non recuso laborem — Lord, as long as I can be useful, I do not refuse to keep on living and working for you.