List of points

You are crying? Don't be ashamed of it. Yes, cry: men also cry like you, when they are alone and before God. Each night, says King David, I soak my bed with tears. With those tears, those burning, manly tears, you can purify your past and supernaturalize your present life.

'What I owe to God as a Christian! My failure to respond to God's grace, in the face of that debt, has made me weep with sorrow; with Love-sorrow. Mea culpa!

It is good that you acknowledge your debts; but don't forget how they are paid: with tears… and with deeds.

Love and sorrow. Because he is good. Because he is your friend, who gave his life for you. Because every good thing you have is his. Because you have offended him so much… Because he has forgiven you… He!… you!

Weep, my son, with Love-sorrow.

Mary's loneliness. Alone! She weeps, forsakenly.

You and I should keep our Lady company, and weep also, for Jesus has been fixed to the wood, with nails — our sins.

How that saintly young priest, who was found worthy of martyrdom, wept at the foot of the altar as he thought of a soul who had come to receive Christ in the state of mortal sin!

Is that how you offer him reparation?

If you were to obey the impulses of your heart and the dictates of reason, you would always be flat on the ground, prostrate, like a

filthy worm, ugly and miserable, before that God who puts up with so much from you.

'Father, how can you listen to such filth?' you asked me, after a contrite confession.

I said nothing, and thought that if your humility makes you feel like that, — filth: a heap of filth! — we may yet turn all your weakness into something really great.