List of points

How often you resolve to serve God in something, and you have to content yourself — you are so weak — with offering him the frustrated feeling of having failed to keep such a simple resolution !

Be definite. Don't let your resolutions be like fireworks that sparkle for a moment, to leave behind as hard reality a blackened, useless stub that one throws disgustedly away.

You are so young! To me you are like a ship setting out on its voyage. If that slight deviation of to-day is left uncorrected, you will never reach port in the end.

Make few resolutions. Make them definite. — And fulfil them with the help of God.

I listened in silence as you said, 'Yes, I want to be a saint.' Though usually such a vague and general statement seems nonsense to me.

'To-morrow': sometimes it is prudence; very often it is the adverb of the defeated.

Make this firm and determined resolution: to recall, when you receive honours and praise, all that brings a blush of shame to your cheek.

The shame is yours; the praise and glory, God's.

Do your duty 'now', without looking back on 'yesterday', which has already passed, or worrying over 'to-morrow', which may never come for you.

Now! Return to your noble life now. Don't be a fool: 'now' is not too soon… nor too late.

You want to hear all that I think of 'your way'? Very well, then…, listen: if you respond to the call, you will do your utmost in your work for Christ: if you become a man of prayer, you will be granted the grace necessary to respond and, hungry for sacrifice, you will seek out the hardest tasks…

And you will be happy here, and unspeakably happy hereafter.

That is a painful wound. But it is well on its way to being healed. Stick to your resolutions. And the pain will soon turn into Joyful peace.

You drag along like a dead-weight, as if you had no part to play. No wonder you are beginning to feel the symptoms of lukewarmness. Wake up!