Serving everyone

To serve all humanity: our field of apostolate is all men and women, of all races and of all social backgrounds. In order to be able to reach everyone, we direct ourselves in every environment first to the intellectuals, for we know that any attempt to change society necessarily involves them. It is the intellectuals who have the overall perspective, who give life to any movement that has coherence, who shape and organise the cultural, technical, artistic development of any human society.

Working without earthly personal ambition

My children, I have insisted that we need to put aside all earthly ambitions and be filled with a continuous concern to serve. We are convinced that nothing is worthwhile or of any substance compared to the sublime mission of serving Christ our Lord. Precisely because we have learned to despise human applause and the vain search for occasions to shine, our desire to preserve the treasure of humility must be even more attentive and refined.

With humility

We are exposed to a very subtle danger, an almost imperceptible snare of the enemy; the more successful he sees us becoming, the more he redoubles his efforts to deceive us. This subtle danger, my children, is a certain type of hidden pride, and it is often found in souls dedicated to working for God. It is a form of quiet self-satisfaction at seeing the miracles worked through our apostolate, and it arises when we realise that we are the instruments for wonderful, divine things. We see minds that were blind recover their sight; wills that were paralysed move once again; hearts of stone turn to flesh and become capable of supernatural charity and human affection; consciences covered with the leprosy of sin become cleansed; and completely dead and rotten souls – iam foetet, quatriduanus est enim³⁰ – recover supernatural life.