List of points

You began in good heart. But little by little your spirit has shrunk… And you are going to end up in your own poor shell, if you continue to let your horizons become smaller and smaller.

—You have to allow your heart to expand more and more, with real hunger for the apostolate! Out of a hundred souls we are interested in a hundred.

People from different countries, different races, and very different backgrounds and professions… When you speak to them about God, you become aware of the human and supernatural value of your vocation as an apostle. It is as if you are re-living, in its total reality, the miracle of the first preaching of Our Lord’s disciples. Phrases spoken in a strange tongue, which open up new ways, have been heard by each one, in the depth of his heart in his own language. And in your mind you can see that scene taking on a new life, in which “Parthians, Medes and Elamites” have come joyfully to God.

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.

You made me smile, because I know what you meant when you said: I am enthusiastic about the possibility of going to new lands and opening a breach there, perhaps very far away… I would like to find out if there are men on the moon…

—Ask the Lord to increase that apostolic zeal of yours.

The masses have been going off down “the road of a justified discontentment” and continue to do so.

It hurts… but, how many we have caused to be disaffected among those who are spiritually or materially in need!

—Christ may once more be set among the poor and the humble: it is precisely with them that he is more at ease.

Flee from sectarianism, which is opposed to loyal collaboration.

Naturalness has nothing to do with coarseness, or being shabby or doing things poorly, or being bad-mannered.

Some people are determined to reduce the service of God to working in the world of miserable and — forgive the expression — lousy poverty. Such work is and will always be admirable; but if we stop there, apart from abandoning the vast majority of souls, what should we do when we have brought them out of their need — ignore them?

Believe me, the apostolate of giving doctrine usually has to be, as it were, capillary, spreading from one to another, from each believer to his immediate companion.

The children of God care about all souls, because every soul is important.