List of points

Another man of faith wrote to me: “When you have to be on your own, you can notice clearly the help of your brothers. Now, when it comes to my mind that I have to put up with everything ‘all alone’, I often think that, if it weren’t for that ‘company we keep from afar’ — the holy Communion of Saints! — I would not be able to preserve this optimism which fills my heart.”

A sincere resolution: to make the way lovable for others and easy, since life brings enough bitterness with it already.

For as long as you are convinced that others should always be paying you all their attention, and for as long as you delay the decision to serve (to hide yourself and disappear from view), your dealings with your brothers, colleagues and friends will be a constant source of disappointment, ill-humour…: of pride.

Your duty to be a brother to all souls will lead you to practise the “apostolate of little things”, without others noticing it. You will want to serve them so that their way becomes agreeable.

It has cost you a lot to begin getting rid of those niggling worries and forgetting about those personal things you were looking forward to. They may have been few and not very splendid, but they were deeply rooted. —In exchange, you are sure now that you are interested and concerned about your brothers, and only about them, for you have learned to discover Jesus Christ in your neighbour.

Carefully avoid anything that can hurt other people’s hearts.

Out of ten ways of saying No, why must you always choose the most disagreeable? —Virtue has no wish to hurt.

The thought of death will help you to grow in the virtue of charity, for it might be that this particular instant in which you are together with one person or another is the last one… They, or you, or I, could be gone at any moment.

You should always avoid complaining, criticising, gossiping… You must avoid absolutely anything that could bring discord among brothers.

Custos, quid de nocte? — Watchman, how goes the night?

May you acquire the habit of having a day on guard once a week, during which to increase your self-giving and loving vigilance over details, and to pray and mortify yourself a little more.

Realise that the Holy Church is like a great army in battle array. And you, within that army, are defending one “front” on which there are attacks, engagements with the enemy and counter-attacks. Do you see what I mean?

This readiness to grow closer to God will lead you to turn your days, one after the other, into days on guard.