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.”

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.

Optimism? Yes, always! Even when things seem to turn out badly: perhaps that is the time to break into a song, with a Gloria, because you have sought refuge in Him, and nothing but good can come to you from Him.

Be daring in your prayer, and the Lord will turn you from a pessimist into an optimist; from being timid, to being daring, from being feeble-spirited to being a man of faith, an apostle!

The test, I don’t deny it, proves to be very hard: you have to go uphill, “against the grain”.

—What is my advice? That you must say: omnia in bonum, everything that happens, “everything that happens to me”, is for my own good… Therefore do accept what seems so hard to you, as a sweet and pleasant reality.

Once you were pessimistic, hesitant and apathetic. Now you are completely transformed: you feel courageous, optimistic and self-confident, because you have made up your mind, at last, to rely on God alone.