Contrition

Tell your Guardian Angel, as I tell mine, not to look at our faults, for we are sorry and contrite. Ask him to present to God this good will that is born in our hearts like a lily that has flowered on a dunghill.

Sincerity

Don’t give in to discouragement because of your personal failings or mine, or because of our defeats. Open your heart, be simple. Let us continue along our way with more affection and with the fortitude God gives us, because he is our strength.¹⁹

Love for God

If we love ourselves in a disordered way, we have good reason to be sad. How often we have failed! How feeble we are! Seeing our wretchedness will make us sad and discouraged. But if we love God above all things, and love others and ourselves in God and for God, then how many reasons we have for rejoicing! “It is part of humility that a man, considering his own faults, does not make too much of himself; but if a man despises the good things he has received from God, this, far from being a proof of humility, shows him to be ungrateful. And from that contempt, sloth arises,”²⁰ the distaste for spiritual things, lukewarmness, which is the tomb of the interior life.

Abandonment

If ever you feel crestfallen on experiencing your own wretchedness (perhaps in a particularly vivid way), that is the moment to abandon yourself completely and docilely in God’s hands. The tale is told how Alexander the Great was met one day by a beggar asking for alms. Alexander halted and commanded that the man be made governor of five cities. The poor man, overwhelmed and bewildered, exclaimed, “I didn’t ask for so much!” And Alexander replied, “You asked according to what you are; I give according to what I am.”