List of points

Your happiness on earth is identified with your fidelity to faith, to purity and to the way God has marked out for you.

A gentle wind is not the same as a hurricane. Anyone can resist the first: it is child’s play, a parody of struggle.

—Gladly you bore small contradictions, shortages and little urgent problems. And you enjoyed the interior peace of thinking: now I am really working for God, because here we have the Cross!…

But now, my poor son, the hurricane has come, and you feel you are being shaken by a force that could uproot century-old trees. You feel this from without and within. But you must remain confident, for your Faith and your Love cannot be uprooted, nor can you be blown from your way… if you remain with the “head”, if you maintain unity.

Don’t behave like a fool. No one is ever a fanatic for wanting to know better every day, and love more, and defend with greater conviction the truth he has to know, love and defend.

On the other hand — I say this without fear — those who oppose this reasonable behaviour in the name of a false liberty become sectarian.

It is as easy now as it was at the time of Jesus Christ to say No, to deny or to put to one side the truth of faith. You who call yourself a Catholic have to start from Yes.

Later, after some study, you will be able to explain the reasons for your certainty, and that there is no contradiction — there can be none — between Truth and science, between Truth and life.

Do you object to my repeating in the same way the same essential things without taking into account the latest fashionable trends? —Look, a straight line has been defined in the same way for centuries, because it is the clearest and briefest definition. Other definitions would be more obscure and complicated.

You might not be able to expect understanding for the demands of your faith, but you do have to ask for respect.

Don’t forget that we will be more convincing the more convinced we are.

Sectarians protest loudly against what they call “our fanaticism” because the centuries go by and the Catholic Faith remains immutable.

On the other hand, the fanaticism of the sectarians, since it bears no relation to the truth, changes its coat at different times. They raise against the Holy Church a bogey of mere words lacking in any factual content. Their “freedom” enchains men; their “progress” leads humanity back to the jungle; their “science” conceals ignorance. Behind their stall are hidden only old damaged goods.

May such “fanaticism” for the Faith as yours is become stronger every day, for it is the sole defence of the one Truth.

In certain surroundings, especially in the intellectual sphere, one sees and feels a sort of conspiracy of “cliques”, not infrequently assisted even by Catholics. With cynical perseverance they maintain and spread slanders to cast a shadow over the Church, or over certain individuals and organisations within it. All this is done against all truth or reason.

Pray each day with faith: “Ut inimicos Sanctae Ecclesiae” — enemies, because that is what they proclaim themselves to be — “humiliare digneris, te rogamus audi nos.” Confound, Lord, those who persecute you, with the clarity of your light, which we are ready to spread.

Christianity is “unusual”; it does not sit easily with the things of this world. And that is perhaps its greatest “nuisance value” when it is used as a banner by the worldly.

When you look back on your life, which seems to have been marked by no great efforts or achievements, think how much time you have wasted, and how you can recover it with penance and greater self-giving.