List of points

Lord, from now on let me become someone else: no longer “me”, but that “other person” you would like me to be.

—Let me not deny you anything you ask of me. Let me know how to pray. Let me know how to suffer. Let me not worry about anything except your glory. Let me feel your presence all the time.

—May I love the Father. May I hunger for you, my Jesus, in a permanent Communion. May the Holy Spirit set me on fire.

Keep turning this over in your mind and in your soul: Lord, how many times you have lifted me up when I have fallen and once my sins have been forgiven have held me close to your Heart!

Keep returning to the thought… and never separate yourself from Him again.

So close to Christ for so many years and… such a sinner!

—Does that intimate love of Jesus for you not make you sob?

If we are faithful to him, Jesus’ own life will somehow be repeated in the life of each one of us, both in its internal development (the process of sanctification) and in our outward behaviour.

—Give thanks to him for being so good.

Listen to that parable which comes to us from Jesus’ own lips and is told us by Saint John in his Gospel: Ego sum vitis, vos palmites — I am the vine, you are the branches.

Picture the whole parable in your imagination and in your mind. You will see that a branch separated from the stock, from the vine, is useless, it will not bear abundant fruit. It will end up like a dry stick which men or animals trample underfoot, or thrown on the fire…

—You are the branch; draw the necessary conclusions.

When you are troubled… and also in the hour of success, say again and again, “Lord, don’t let go of me, don’t leave me, help me as you would a clumsy child; always lead me by the hand!”

If you really want to be sure that your heart is ready to respond, I would recommend you enter one of the Wounds of Our Lord. In this way you will get to know him closely, you will cleave to him, you will feel his Heart beating… and you will follow him in everything that he asks of you.

There can be no doubt that for us who love Jesus, prayer is the great “pain-reliever”.

The Cross symbolises the life of an apostle of Christ, with a strength and a truth that delight both soul and body, though sometimes it is hard, and we can feel its weight.

I understand that, through Love, you want to suffer with Christ — to put your back between him and the executioners who are flogging him, your head instead of his for the thorns, and your hands and feet for the nails. Or at least to accompany our Mother, Holy Mary, on Calvary, and to plead guilty to deicide on account of your sins… and to suffer and to love.

You tell me: I have made up my mind to go more often to the Paraclete, to ask him for his light.

—Good. But remember, my child, that the Holy Spirit is a fruit of the Cross.

The cheerful love that fills the soul with happiness is founded on suffering. There is no love without renunciation.

To find the Cross is to find Christ.

Jesus, may your Divine Blood enter my veins, to make me live the generosity of the Cross at every moment.

Look at Jesus hanging dead on the Cross, and pray. In this way the Life and Death of Christ can become the model and the spur of your life, and for your answer to the Will of God.

Remember this at the moment of sorrow or expiation: the Cross is the symbol of the redeeming Christ. It has ceased to be the symbol of evil, becoming instead the sign of victory.

Among the ingredients of your meal include that most delicious one, mortification.

It is not the spirit of penance to do great mortifications some days, and nothing on others.

—The spirit of penance means knowing how to overcome yourself every single day, offering up both great and small things for love, without putting on show.

If we join our own little things, those insignificant or big difficulties of ours, to the great sufferings of Our Lord, the Victim (He is the only Victim!), their value will increase. They will become a treasure, and then we will take up the Cross of Christ gladly and with style.

—And then every suffering will soon be overcome: nobody, nothing at all, will be able to take away our peace and our joy.

To be an apostle you have to bear within you Christ crucified, as Saint Paul teaches us.

It’s true! When the Holy Cross comes into our lives it unmistakably confirms that we belong to Christ.

The Cross is not pain, or annoyance, or bitterness… It is the holy wood on which Jesus Christ triumphs… and where we triumph too, when we receive cheerfully and generously what He sends us.

You have come to see that, after the Holy Sacrifice, it is on your Faith and your Love, on your penance, your prayer and your activity, that the perseverance, and even the life on earth of your people, to a great extent depend.

—Bless the Cross: the Cross that He — my Lord Jesus — and you and I bear.

O Jesus, I want to be a blazing fire of Love-madness. I want it to be sufficient for me just to be present in order to set the world on fire for miles around, with an unquenchable flame. I want to know that I am yours. Then, let the Cross come…

—This is a marvellous way: to suffer, to love, and to believe.