List of points

“It’s very difficult”, you exclaim, disheartened.

Listen, if you make an effort, with the grace of God that is enough. Put your own interests to one side, you will serve others for God, and you will come to the aid of the Church in the field where the battles are being fought today: in the street, in the factory, in the workshop, in the university, in the office, in your own surroundings, amongst your family and friends.

Those who have met Christ cannot shut themselves in their own little world: how sad such a limitation would be! They must open out like a fan in order to reach all souls. Each one has to create — and widen — a circle of friends, whom he can influence with his professional prestige, with his behaviour, with his friendship, so that Christ may exercise his influence by means of that professional prestige, that behaviour, that friendship.

The wish to teach and to teach from the heart creates in pupils a gratitude which is a suitable soil for the apostolate.

I understand perfectly when you write to me about your apostolate: “I am going to pray for three hours, studying Physics. It will be a bombardment so that another position, which is on the other side of the library table, falls — you have met him already when he came round here.”

I remember how happy you were when you heard me say that prayer and work can easily go together.

To study, to work: these are inescapable duties for all Christians. They are means of defending ourselves from the enemies of the Church and of attracting, with our professional prestige, so many souls who, being good, fight in isolation. They are most fundamental weapons for whoever wants to be an apostle in the middle of the world.

You too have a professional vocation which spurs you on. Well, that spur is the hook to fish for men.

Rectify your intention, then, and be sure you acquire all the professional prestige you can for the service of God and of souls. The Lord counts on this too.

We read in the Scriptures: Stultorum infinitus est numerus, the number of fools is infinite, and they seem to grow more every day. In all sorts of places, in the most unexpected situations, under the mantle of high office and respected positions — and even in the guise of “virtue”— you will have to put up with so much forgetfulness and so little good judgement.

But I do not understand how you can lose the supernatural view of life and give up caring. There is nothing you can do but put up with these situations, though your interior dispositions must be very poor if you put up with them for human motives.

If you do not help these people to find the right way by doing your work responsibly and finishing it well — by sanctifying it! — you will become like them, a fool. Either that or an accomplice.

When you come to understand that ideal of fraternal work for Christ, you will feel better, more secure, and as happy as one can be in this world, which so many are bent on making distorted and bitter by following their own selfish aims alone.

I was convinced by that priest who is a friend of ours. He was talking about his apostolic work, and he assured me that there are no tasks of little importance. Hidden under this garden covered in roses, he said, is the silent effort of so many souls who with their work and prayer, their prayer and work, have won from Heaven abundant showers of grace, which makes everything fertile.

Whenever your will weakens in your ordinary work, you must recall these thoughts: “Study, work, is an essential part of my way. If I were discredited professionally as a consequence of my laziness it would make my work as a Christian useless or impossible. To attract and to help others, I need the influence of my professional reputation, and that is what God wants.”

—Never doubt that if you abandon your task, you are going away from God’s plans and leading others away from them!

This advice is for you, since you are still young and have just started along your way. As God deserves everything, try to be outstanding professionally, so that you will later be able to spread your ideas more effectively.

You should behave as if it all depended on you: whether the atmosphere in your place of work is to be one of hard work, cheerfulness, presence of God and supernatural outlook.

—Why are you so apathetic? If you come across a group at work who are a bit difficult, you lose interest in them. Perhaps they have become difficult because you have neglected them. Yet you throw in the towel and think of them as a dead weight which holds back your apostolic ideals because they do not understand you…

—You may love and serve them with your prayer and mortification, but how do you expect them to listen to you if you never speak to them…?

—You will have many surprises the day you decide to talk to them one by one. What is more, if you do not change, they will one day be able to point a finger at you and say quite rightly: Hominem non habeo — I have no one to help me!