List of points

Do you hesitate to launch yourself into speaking about God, about a Christian life, about vocation… because you do not want to cause suffering? You forget that it is not you who are doing the calling, it is He: Ego scio quos elegerim — I know well those I have chosen.

Moreover, I should not like to think that behind this false respect lurked a spirit of comfort or lukewarmness. At this stage, do you still prefer poor human friendship to the friendship of God?

The ploughshare that breaks up the earth and opens up the furrow sees neither the seed nor the harvest.

It hurts you to see that some use the technique of speaking about the Cross of Christ, only so as to climb and obtain positions. They are the same people who consider nothing they see as clean if it does not coincide with their own particular standards.

—All the more reason, then, for you to persevere in the rectitude of your intentions, and to ask the Master to grant you the strength to repeat: Non mea voluntas, sed tua fiat! — Lord, may I fulfil your Holy Will with love!

When you work in apostolic enterprises, do not build for the present alone… Dedicate yourself to these tasks with the hope that others — brothers of yours sharing the same spirit as you — may reap what you are now sowing abroad, and may crown the buildings for which you are now laying the foundations.

When you truly become filled with the Christian spirit your ambitions will be put right. —You will feel no longer a hankering after celebrity, but a desire for perpetuating your ideal.

When you work in earnest for the Lord, your greatest satisfaction will be that there are many others competing with you.

Don’t be worried by those contradictions and all that talk. It is true that we are working in a divine undertaking, but we are men… And it is natural that as we walk we raise dust along the road.

If anything bothers you or hurts you… make use of it for your purification and, if necessary, to straighten out your own behaviour.