Let us always be serene. If we are pious and sincere, there will be no lingering sorrows. And all those other sorrows which we sometimes invent will disappear, because they are not at all objective. We will live with joy and peace, in the arms of the Mother of God, like her little children, which is what we are. Once in a while, each of us has some small inner conflict which our pride tries to enlarge and accentuate, in order to make us lose our peace. Don’t take any notice of these trivialities. Say, “I am a sinner who loves Jesus Christ.”

Giving oneself to the others

Almost all those who have personal problems have them because they selfishly think about themselves. What we have to do is to give ourselves to others, to serve others for the love of God. That is the way to make our sorrows disappear. Most of our trials are caused by forgetting about the service we owe to others and getting too caught up in our own selves. To forget about ourselves and give ourselves to the service of souls is so effective that God rewards it with a humility filled with joy.

And let’s have no victim mentality! There is only one Victim, Christ our Lord on the Cross. We need to be calm and have a spirit of service. For it is all [done] for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Cor 4:15-18).