List of points

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.

You asked what you could offer the Lord. —I don’t have to think twice about the answer: offer the same things as before, but do them better, finishing them off with a loving touch that will lead you to think more about Him and less about yourself.

You really do need to make an effort and put your shoulder to the wheel… For all that, you should put your professional interests in their place: they are only means to an end; they can never be regarded — in any way — as if they were the basic thing.

How many of these forms of “professionalitis” make union with God impossible!

Forgive my insistence: the instrument, the means, must not be made into an end. —If a spade were to weigh a hundredweight instead of what it should, the labourer would be unable to dig with it. He would use up all his energy carrying it around, and the seed could not take root, for it would remain unused.

It has always been the same: however upright and blameless the behaviour of someone at work may be, it can easily arouse rivalry, suspicion and envy. —If you occupy a position of authority, remember that some people may have prejudices against a particular colleague, but that is not sufficient reason for getting rid of “the accused”. It could be a sign, rather, that he would be useful in a greater enterprise.

You must study… but that is not enough.

What do those who kill themselves working to feed their self-esteem achieve? Or those who have nothing else in mind but assuring peace of mind for a few years ahead?

One has to study… to gain the world and conquer it for God. Then we can raise the level of our efforts: we can try to turn the work we do into an encounter with the Lord and the foundation to support those who will follow our way in the future.

In this way, study will become prayer.

An impatient and disordered anxiousness to climb up the professional ladder can mask self-love under the appearances of “serving souls”. It is a lie — and I really mean that — when we seek to justify our actions by saying that we must not miss certain opportunities, certain favourable chances.

Turn your eyes back to Jesus; he is “the Way”. During his hidden years, there were also “very favourable” chances to advance his public life — when he was twelve years old, for instance, and the doctors of the law were in amazement at his questions and at the answers he gave. But Jesus Christ fulfils the Will of his Father, and he waits. He obeys!

—Do not lose that holy ambition of yours to lead the whole world to God, but when those ideas present themselves (they might show perhaps a desire to desert) remember that you too have to be obedient and work away at that obscure job, which does not seem at all brilliant, for as long as God asks nothing else of you. He has his own times and paths.