List of points

The standard of holiness that God asks of us is determined by these three points:

Holy intransigence, holy coercion and holy shamelessness.

Holy shamelessness is one thing: plain cheekiness, quite another.

Holy shamelessness is a characteristic of the 'life of childhood.' A little child worries about nothing. He makes no effort to hide his weaknesses, his natural miseries, not even when everyone is watching him.

This shamelessness applied to the supernatural life, brings with it the following train of thought: praise, contempt; esteem, ridicule; honour, dishonour; health, sickness; riches, poverty; beauty, ugliness…

All right… so what?

Laugh at ridicule. Despise the bogey of what people will say. See and feel God in yourself and in your surroundings. And you will acquire the holy shamelessness that you need — what a paradox! — in order to live with the refinement of a christian gentleman.

If you have holy shamelessness, you won't be worried by the thought of 'what will people say?' or 'what can they have said?'

Convince yourself that there is no such thing as ridicule for whoever is doing what is best.

A man, a 'gentleman', ready to compromise would condemn Jesus to death again.

To compromise is a sure sign of not possessing the truth. When a man gives way in matters of ideals, of honour or of Faith, that man is a man without ideals, without honour and without Faith.

Listen to a man of God, an old campaigner, as he argues: 'So I won't yield an inch? And why should I, if I am convinced of the truth of my ideals? You, on the other hand, are very ready to compromise… Would you agree that two and two are three and a half? You wouldn't? Surely for friendship's sake you will yield in such a little thing?'

And why won't you? Simply because, for the first time, you feel convinced that you possess the truth, and you have come over to my way of thinking!

Holy intransigence is not bigotry.

Be uncompromising in doctrine and conduct. But be yielding in manner. A mace of tempered steel, wrapped in a quilted covering.

Be uncompromising, but don't be obstinate.

Intransigence is not just simply intransigence: it is 'holy intransigence.'

Don't forget that there also exists a 'holy coercion.'