List of points

Let me stress this point: it is in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day, that you have to find the secret, which is hidden from so many, of something great and new: Love.

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.

Here is a mission for ordinary Christians which is heroic and will always be relevant to the present day: to carry out in a holy way all different kinds of occupations even those that might seem least promising.

Let us work. Let us work a lot and work well, without forgetting that prayer is our best weapon. That is why I will never tire of repeating that we have to be contemplative souls in the middle of the world, who try to convert their work into prayer.

You are writing to me in the kitchen, by the stove. It is early afternoon. It is cold. By your side, your younger sister — the last one to discover the divine folly of living her Christian vocation to the full — is peeling potatoes. To all appearances — you think — her work is the same as before. And yet, what a difference there is!

—It is true: before she only peeled potatoes, now, she is sanctifying herself peeling potatoes.

You say that you are now beginning to understand what a “priestly soul” means. Don’t be annoyed with me if I tell you that the facts show that you only realise it in theory. —Every day the same thing happens to you: at night time, during the examination, it is all desire and resolutions; during the morning and afternoon at work, it is all objections and excuses.

Are you in this way living a “holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”?

When you started your ordinary work again, something like a groan of complaint escaped you: “It’s always the same!”

And I told you: “Yes, it’s always the same. But that ordinary job —which is the same one your fellow workers do — has to be a constant prayer for you. It has the same lovable words, but a different tune each day.”

It is very much our mission to transform the prose of this life into poetry, into heroic verse.

A day without mortification is a day lost, because if we have not denied ourselves, we have not lived the holocaust.