List of points

We've got to be convinced that God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.

He is there like a loving Father. He loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children — helping us, inspiring us, blessing… and forgiving.

How often we have misbehaved and then cleared the frowns from our parents' brows, telling them: I won't do it any more! — That same day, perhaps, we fall again… — And our father, with feigned harshness in his voice and serious face, reprimands us, while in his heart he is moved, realizing our weakness and thinking: poor child, how hard he tries to behave well!

We've got to be filled, to be imbued with the idea that our Father, and very much our Father, is God who is both near us and in heaven.

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!

You are hurt by your neighbour's lack of charity towards you. Think how God must be hurt by your lack of charity — of Love — towards him!

If you are so weak, is it surprising that others too have their weaknesses?

Force yourself, if necessary, always to forgive those who offend you, from the very first moment. For the greatest injury or offence that you can suffer from them is as nothing compared with what God has pardoned you.

All right: that person has behaved badly towards you. But, haven't you behaved worse towards God?

Tongues have been wagging and you have suffered rebuffs that hurt you all the more because you were not expecting them.

Your supernatural reaction should be to pardon, — and even to ask pardon, — and to take advantage of the experience to detach yourself from creatures.

The discouragement produced by your repeated lack of generosity, your lapses, your falls — which perhaps are only apparent — often makes you feel as if you had broken something of exceptional value (your sanctification).

Don't be worried: apply to your supernatural life the wise way simple children have of solving such a conflict.

They have broken — nearly always because of its fragility — something their father values greatly. They are sorry, perhaps they shed tears, but… they go to seek consolation from the owner of what has been damaged by their awkwardness, and their father forgets the value — great though it may be — of the broken object and, filled with tenderness, he not only pardons, but consoles and encourages the little one. Learn.