List of points

When one is working to extend an apostolic undertaking, “No” must never be taken for a final answer: you have to insist!

You are too “cautious” and not very “supernatural” and that is why you are a bit too clever: don’t start inventing your own “snags” and trying to solve them all.

—Perhaps the person you speak to is less “clever” or maybe more generous than you are, and as he can count on God, he won’t raise so many objections.

There are some ways of acting that are so careful that, in a word, they are just pusillanimous.

Rest assured: when you work for God, there are no difficulties that cannot be overcome, nor discouragements that will make you abandon the task, nor failures worthy of the name, however unfruitful the results may seem.

Your faith is not operative enough; it seems that you are over-pious, rather than a man who is struggling to be a saint.

Be calm! Be daring!

With these virtues you must rout the fifth column of people who are lukewarm, who are cowards or traitors.

You assured me that you wanted to fight without respite, and now you come to me with a long face.

Look, even humanly speaking, it is good not to find it all done for you, with no hitches. Something — a lot! — depends on you. Otherwise, how could you become a saint?

You won’t commit yourself to working in that supernatural enterprise, because — you say — you are afraid of not knowing how to please, or of making some unfortunate mistake. If you thought more about God, those excuses would disappear.

Sometimes I think that a few enemies of God and his Church live off the fear of many good people, and I am filled with shame.

As we talked, he assured me that he never wanted to leave the hut where he lived, because he preferred to count the beams of “his” shack rather than the stars in heaven.

—There are many like him who are incapable of leaving their own petty things so as to raise their eyes to heaven: it is time they acquired a loftier vision!

I understand the supernatural and human joy of one man who had the good fortune of being in the vanguard of the divine sowing.

“It is wonderful to have the feeling of being the only one, to stir up a whole city and its surroundings”, he would often say, fully convinced.

—Don’t wait until you can count on more means, or until others come: souls have need of you today, now.

You made me smile, because I know what you meant when you said: I am enthusiastic about the possibility of going to new lands and opening a breach there, perhaps very far away… I would like to find out if there are men on the moon…

—Ask the Lord to increase that apostolic zeal of yours.