List of points

Even in our times, despite those who deny God, earth is very close to Heaven.

You wrote: “Simile est regnum caelorum — the Kingdom of God is like a treasure… This passage from the Holy Gospel has fallen on my soul and taken root. I had read it so many times before, without grasping its meaning, its divine flavour.”

Yes, everything! The prudent man has to sell everything to obtain the treasure — the precious pearl of Glory.

Talk with Our Lady and tell her trustingly, O Mary, in order to live the ideal which God has set in my heart I need to fly very high — ever so high!

It is not sufficient to detach yourself, with God’s help, from the things of this world, recognising them as the merest clay. More is needed: even if you were to put the whole universe in a pile under your feet to get closer to Heaven… it wouldn’t suffice!

You have to fly, without the support of anything here on earth, relying on the voice and the inspiration of the Spirit. And you will tell me: But my wings are stained and smeared with the clinging mud of many years.

And I repeat: Turn to Our Lady. Mary, you should say to her again, I can hardly get off the ground. The earth draws me like an accursed magnet. Mary, you can make my soul take off on that glorious and definitive flight which has as its destination the very Heart of God.

—Trust in her, for she is listening to you.

Think how pleasing to God Our Lord is the incense burnt in his honour. Think also how little the things of this earth are worth; even as they begin they are already ending.

In Heaven, instead, a great Love awaits you, with no betrayals and no deceptions. The fullness of love, the fullness of beauty and greatness and knowledge… And it will never cloy: it will satiate, yet still you will want more.

With a supernatural outlook, with serenity and peace. That is the way to see things, people and events — from the viewpoint of eternity.

And then, whatever barrier blocks your way — even if it is, humanly speaking, enormous — when you really raise your eyes to Heaven, how tiny it becomes!

Taste and see that the Lord is good, the Psalmist says.

—Spiritual conquest, which is Love, has to be — in big things and small — a desire for the Infinite, for eternity.

Jesus, I don’t want to think of what “tomorrow” will be like, for I don’t want to put limits on your generosity.