List of points

If they have witnessed your faults and weaknesses, will it matter if they witness your penance?

Don't forget that before teaching one must act. 'Coepit facere et docere,' the holy scripture says of Jesus Christ: 'He began to do and to teach.'

First, action: so that you and I may learn.

If you're not bad, and yet appear to be bad, then you are stupid. And that stupidity — source of scandal — is worse than being bad.

When you see people of uncertain professional standing acting as leaders at public functions of a religious nature, don't you feel the urge to whisper in their ears: Please, would you mind being just a little less Catholic?

If you have an official position, you have also certain rights which arise from the practice of that office, and certain duties.

You stray from your apostolic way if you use the opportunity — or the excuse — offered by a work of zeal to leave the duties of your position unfulfilled. For you will lose that professional prestige which is your 'bait' as a 'fisher of men.'

'There's no denying the influence of environment', you've told me. And I have to answer: Quite. That is why you have to be formed in such a way that you can carry your own environment about with you in a natural manner, and so give your own 'tone' to the society in which you live.

And then, if you have acquired this spirit, I am sure you will tell me with the amazement of the disciples as they contemplated the first fruits of the miracles being worked by their hands in Christ's name: 'There's no denying our influence on environment!'

'And in a paganised or pagan environment when my life clashes with its surroundings, won't my naturalness seem artificial?' you ask me.

And I reply: Undoubtedly your life will clash with theirs; and that contrast — faith confirmed by works! — is exactly the naturalness I ask of you.

Lord, make us crazy, with that infectious craziness that will draw many to your apostolate.

'Did our hearts not burn within us as he talked to us on the road?'

If you are an apostle, these words of the disciples of Emmaus should rise spontaneously to the lips of your professional companions when they meet you along the ways of their lives.

Try to live in such a way that you can voluntarily deprive yourself of the comfort and ease you wouldn't like to see in the life of another man of God.

Remember that you are the grain of wheat the Gospel speaks of. If you don't bury yourself and die, there will be no harvest.

Be careful that contact with you doesn't make people feel like that person who once exclaimed (and not without reason): 'I'm sick of these righteous types!…'