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Et viam Dei in veritate doces. Teach others. Never stop teaching: that means showing the ways of God with utter truthfulness. You needn't worry about your defects being seen, yours and mine. I like making mine public, and telling of my personal struggle and my desire to correct this failing or that in my battle to be loyal to Our Lord. Our efforts to banish and overcome our defects will in themselves be a way of teaching God's ways: first, and in spite of our visible errors, he wants us to strive to give witness with our lives; then, with our teaching, just like Our Lord did when he coepit facere et docere. He began with works, then afterwards he devoted himself to preaching.

Having reminded you that this priest loves you very much and that your Father in Heaven loves you more because he is infinitely good, infinitely a Father; and having shown you that there is nothing I can reproach you with, I feel all the same that I must help you to love Jesus Christ and the Church, his flock, because in this I think you are not ahead of me; you emulate me, but you are not ahead of me. When, through my preaching or in my personal conversations with each one of you, I draw attention to some defect, it is not in order to make you suffer. My only motive is to help us love Our Lord more deeply. And when I impress upon you the need to practise the virtues, I never forget that I am under the same obligation myself.

References to Holy Scripture
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