List of points

The following comment, which caused me great sorrow, will also make you reflect: “I see very clearly why there is a lack of resistance, and why what resistance there is to iniquitous laws is so ineffective, for above, below and in the middle there are many people — so very many! — who just follow the crowd.”

To think of Christ’s Death means to be invited to face up to our everyday tasks with complete sincerity, and to take the faith that we profess seriously.

It has to be an opportunity to go deeper into the depths of God’s Love, so as to be able to show that Love to men with our words and deeds.

Make sure that your lips, the lips of a Christian — for that is what you are and should be at all times — speak those compelling supernatural words which will move and encourage, and will show your committed attitude to life.

We have to try to ensure that in all fields of intellectual activity there are upright people, people with a true Christian conscience, who are consistent in their lives, who can use the weapons of knowledge in the service of humanity and of the Church.

Because in the world there will always be, as there were when Jesus came on earth, new Herods who try to make use of scientific knowledge — even if they have to falsify it — to persecute Christ and those who belong to him.

What a great task we have ahead of us!

The Master has said it already: if only we children of the light were to put at least as much effort and obstinacy into doing good as the children of darkness put into their activities!

—Don’t complain. Work, instead, to drown evil in an abundance of good!

I insist: ask God to grant us, his children, the “gift of tongues”, the gift of making ourselves understood by all.

You can find the reason why I want this “gift of tongues” in the pages of the Gospel, which abound in parables, in examples which materialise the doctrine and illustrate spiritual truths, without debasing or degrading the word of God.

All of us, both the learned and the less learned, find it easier to reflect on and understand God’s message through these human images.

In modico fidelis! — faithful in little things. Your job, my son, is not just to save souls but to bring them to holiness, day after day, giving to each moment — even to apparently commonplace moments — the dynamic echo of eternity.

You asked me what you could do to prevent the loneliness of that friend of yours.

—I will tell you what I always say, because we have at our disposal a marvellous weapon which is the answer to everything: prayer. In the first place, you must pray. And then you must do for him what you would like others to do for you if you were in similar circumstances.

Without humiliating him, you must help him in such a way that what he finds difficult is made easy .

As well as having given you abundant and effective grace, the Lord has given you a brain, a pair of hands and intellectual powers so that your talents may yield fruit.

God wants to work miracles all the time — to raise the dead, make the deaf hear, restore sight to the blind, enable the lame to walk… — through your sanctified professional work, which you will have turned into a holocaust that is both pleasing to God and useful to souls.