List of points

In order to practise the human virtues, we need to make a sustained effort, since it is not easy to maintain a spirit of honesty and integrity for any length of time when faced with situations that seem to put our own safety at risk. Take truthfulness, a virtue so clean and pure. Can it be true that it has fallen into disuse? Has the practice of compromise, of 'gilding the pill' and 'putting on a show' finally triumphed? People are afraid of the truth and to justify their attitude they make the shabby excuse that no one practises or tells the truth any more, that everyone has to resort to pretence and lies.

Fortunately this is not so. There are many people, Christians or not, who are ready to sacrifice honour and reputation for the sake of the truth, people who aren't always feverishly turning this way and that in search of 'the warmest place in the sun'. These are the very people who, because they love the truth, are happy to put things right when they discover they have made a mistake; whereas those who begin by lying, those for whom the truth has become merely a high-sounding word to cover up their baseness, such people refuse to make amends.

If the Gospel isn't helping us constantly to draw conclusions applicable to our everyday life, the reason is that we aren't meditating on it enough. Many of you are young; some of you have already reached maturity. You all want, all of us want — otherwise we wouldn't be here — to yield good fruit in our lives. We are trying to bring a spirit of sacrifice into our actions and to turn the talent that Our Lord has entrusted to us to good account, for we feel a divine zeal for souls. But, in spite of all these good intentions, it wouldn't be the first time that someone has fallen into the trap set by this alliance — ex pharisaeis et herodianis — made up perhaps of those who ought in some way or other to be defending God's rights because they are Christians, but who having instead become allied to and mixed in with the interests of evil forces, are treacherously laying snares to catch their brothers in the faith, who are servants with them of the same Redeemer.

Be prudent and always act with simplicity, which is a very appropriate virtue for a son of God. Behave naturally in the way you speak and in what you do. Get to the root of problems; don't stay on the surface. Remember that, if we really want to fulfil our obligations as Christians in a holy and manly way, we must anticipate unpleasant moments for others and for ourselves too.