I would like to confirm once more that I am not talking about an extraordinary way of living as Christians. Let each of us meditate on what God has done for him and how he has responded. If we are courageous in examining our behaviour, we will perceive what still needs to be done. Yesterday I was very moved when I heard that a Japanese catechumen was teaching the catechism to others who did not yet know about Christ. I felt ashamed. We need to have more faith, much more faith and, with faith, contemplation.

Go over, calmly, that divine admonition which fills the soul with disquiet and which at the same time tastes as sweet as honey from the comb: redemi te, et vocavi te, nomine tuo: meus es tu; I have redeemed you and called you by your name: you are mine! Let us not steal from God what belongs to him. A God who has loved us to the point of dying for us, who has chosen us from all eternity, before the creation of the world, so that we may be holy in his presence; and who continually offers us opportunities to purify our lives and give ourselves to him.

If there were still the slightest doubt in our minds, we receive yet another proof from his own lips: 'It was not you that chose me, it was I that chose you, to go out and bear fruit, fruit which will endure,' the fruit of your work as contemplative souls.

What we need, therefore, is faith, supernatural faith. When faith weakens men tend to imagine that God is far away and hardly cares for his children. They come to regard religion as a kind of appendage, something to have recourse to when there's no other remedy; they expect, with what justification one cannot say, spectacular manifestations, unusual happenings. But when faith is really alive in the soul, one discovers instead that to follow Christ one does not have to step aside from the ordinary pattern of everyday life, and also that the great holiness which God expects of us is to be found here and now in the little things of each day.