List of points

In the deep pit opened by your humility, let penance bury your negligences, offences and sins. Just as the gardener buries rotten fruit, dried twigs and fallen leaves at the foot of the very trees which produced them. And so what was useless, what was even harmful, can make a real contribution to a new fruitfulness.

From the falls learn to draw strength: from death, life.

What depths of mercy there are in God's justice! For, in the judgments of men, he who confesses his fault is punished: and in the Judgment of God, he is pardoned.

Blessed be the holy Sacrament of Penance!

'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ', says Saint Paul to the Romans. It is in the Sacrament of Penance that you and I put on Jesus Christ and his merits.

How good Christ was to leave the Sacraments to his Church! They are the remedy for all our needs. Venerate them and be very grateful both to God and to his Church.

'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.