List of points

You often ask yourself why souls who have had the great fortune of knowing the true Jesus ever since their childhood, hesitate so much in responding with the best they have: their life, their family, their ideals.

Look: you are bound to show yourself very grateful to the Lord, precisely because you have received ‘everything’ in one go. Just as it would strike a blind man if he suddenly recovered his sight, while it does not even occur to others to give thanks because they see.

But that is not enough. You have to help those around you, daily, to behave with gratitude for their being sons of God. If you don’t, don’t tell me you are grateful.

Meditate on this slowly: I am asked for very little compared to how much I am being given.

The summit? For a soul which has surrendered itself, everything becomes a summit to conquer. Every day it discovers new goals, because it does not know how, or want, to limit the love of God.

The scene of the parable is being repeated: it is the same as with those people who were invited to the wedding feast. Some are afraid, others have their own concerns, many… make up stories or give silly excuses.

They put up resistance. That is why they feel the way they do: fed up, all in a muddle, listless, bored, bitter. And yet how easy it is to accept the divine invitation at every moment, and live a happy life, full of joy!

You do not lack God’s grace. Therefore, if you respond to it, you will be sure to win.

Victory depends on you: your strength and drive — together with that grace — are reason enough for you to have the optimism of one who knows victory is assured.

There are a great number of Christians who would be apostles… if they were not afraid.

They are the same people who then complain, because the Lord —they say! — has abandoned them. How do they treat God?

When you feel your conscience gnawing at you for not having done something good, it is a sign that the Lord did not want it to be omitted.

—Just so. Moreover, you can be sure that you could have done it, with God’s grace.

“Don’t help the Holy Spirit so much!”, a friend of mine said, jokingly, but sounding very scared.

I answered: I think we “help him” very little.

I have always thought that many mean by “tomorrow” or “later”, a resistance to grace.

Days of silence and of intense grace… Prayer face to face with God…

I broke out into thanksgiving, on seeing those people, mature in years and experience, who opened out to the touch of grace. They responded like children, eagerly grasping the chance to convert their lives, even now, into something useful… which would make up for all the times they have gone astray and for all their lost opportunities.

—Recalling that scene, I put it to you: do not neglect your struggle in the interior life.

“A great sign appeared in Heaven: a woman adorned with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars about her head.” —From this, you and I and everyone may be sure that nothing perfects our personality so much as correspondence with grace.

—Try to imitate the Virgin Mary and you will be a complete man or woman.

In this case, as in so many others, people are doing various things and all think they are right. But God is guiding them, that is to say, over and above their own particular ideas, God’s inscrutable and most lovable Providence will win through in the end.

Allow yourself, therefore, to be guided by the Lord, without opposing his plans, even though they might go against your “basic assumptions”.