List of points

A time of hard trial arrived for him, and he came to you grief-stricken.

—Do you remember? For him — the friend who used to give you his “prudent” advice — your behaviour was only a utopia, the result of deformed ideas, manipulation of wills, and… other “cleverness” of that type.

—“This self-giving to the Lord”, he would assert, “is an abnormal excitement of the religious sentiment.” And with his faulty reasoning, he thought that between your family and you a stranger had entered: Christ.

Now he has understood what you told him so often: Christ never separates souls.

What compassion you feel for them!… You would like to cry out to them that they are wasting their time… Why are they so blind, and why can’t they perceive what you — a miserable creature — have seen? Why don’t they go for the best?

—Pray and mortify yourself. Then you have the duty to wake them up, one by one, explaining to them — also one by one — that they, like you, can find a divine way, without leaving the place they occupy in society.

When you launch out into the apostolate, be convinced that it is always a question of making people happy, very happy: Truth is inseparable from true joy.

Here is a recipe to make your apostolic spirit effective: make definite plans, not for the whole week but for the day ahead, for this moment and the next.

Sometimes they didn’t want to understand: it is as if they were blind… But sometimes it has been you who did not manage to be understood properly. You must change that!

With the grace of God and a solid formation you can make yourself understood in a backward environment. There, they would find it difficult to follow you if you lacked “the gift of tongues”, the capacity to try and reach their understanding.

Every day you are becoming more ‘crazy’… —It is noticeable in the wonderful self-assurance and confidence that knowing you are working for Christ has given you.

—Sacred Scripture has already proclaimed it: Vir fidelis multum laudabitur — the faithful man merits praise from all.

Violence is not a good method for convincing anyone… Even less is it so in the apostolate.

This advice is for you, since you are still young and have just started along your way. As God deserves everything, try to be outstanding professionally, so that you will later be able to spread your ideas more effectively.

Pray that your holy ingenuity may achieve what your intelligence cannot attain, so that you may give more service of a better kind to everyone.

Believe me, the apostolate of giving doctrine usually has to be, as it were, capillary, spreading from one to another, from each believer to his immediate companion.

The children of God care about all souls, because every soul is important.

You should behave as if it all depended on you: whether the atmosphere in your place of work is to be one of hard work, cheerfulness, presence of God and supernatural outlook.

—Why are you so apathetic? If you come across a group at work who are a bit difficult, you lose interest in them. Perhaps they have become difficult because you have neglected them. Yet you throw in the towel and think of them as a dead weight which holds back your apostolic ideals because they do not understand you…

—You may love and serve them with your prayer and mortification, but how do you expect them to listen to you if you never speak to them…?

—You will have many surprises the day you decide to talk to them one by one. What is more, if you do not change, they will one day be able to point a finger at you and say quite rightly: Hominem non habeo — I have no one to help me!