List of points

You should show the moderation, fortitude and sense of responsibility that many people acquire after many long years, in their old age. You will achieve all this, while you are still young, if you do not — I beg you — lose the supernatural outlook of a son of God. For he will give you, more than to the old, those qualities you need for your apostle’s work.

With your life of piety you will learn how to practise the virtues proper to your condition as a son of God, as a Christian.

—And together with those virtues you will acquire a whole range of spiritual values which seem small but are really very great. They are like shining precious stones, and we must gather them along the way and then take them up to the foot of God’s Throne in the service of our fellow men: simplicity, cheerfulness, loyalty, peace, small renunciations, services which pass unnoticed, the faithful fulfilment of duty, kindness…

You shouldn’t be so easy on yourself! Don’t wait until the New Year to make your resolutions. Every day is a good day to make good decisions. Hodie, nunc! — Today, now!

It tends to be the poor defeatist types who leave it until the New Year before beginning afresh… And even then, they never really begin.

Encourage your noble human qualities. They can be the beginning of the building of your sanctification. At the same time, remember what I have already told you before, that when serving God, you have to burn everything, even “what people will say”, and even what they call reputation, if necessary.

Work with cheerfulness, with peace, with presence of God.

—In this way you will also do your task with common sense. You will carry it through to the end. Though tiredness is beating you down, you will finish it off well; and your works will be pleasing to God.

I was deeply impressed by the willingness to yield of that holy and very learned man, as well as his refusal to give way, when he said “I can come to terms with anything except an offence against God.”

“Lord!,” you were telling him, “I like to say thank you. I want to be grateful to everyone, always.”

—Well, look: you aren’t a stone… or a speechless tree… or a mule. You are not one of those created things whose life is completed here on this earth. This is because God chose to make you a man or woman, a child of his. And he loves you in caritate perpetua, with an eternal love.

—So you like to be grateful? And are you going to make an exception of your Lord? Make sure that your thanksgiving comes pouring out from your heart every day.

You have heard me speak many times about the apostolate ad fidem.

I still think the same way. What a marvellous field of work awaits us throughout the world with those who do not know the true faith and who, nonetheless, are noble, generous and cheerful.