List of points

Get rid of that 'small-town' outlook. Enlarge your heart till it becomes universal, 'catholic'.

Don't flutter about like a hen, when you can soar to the heights of an eagle.

A missionary. — You dream of being a missionary. Another Francis Xavier… And you long to conquer an empire for Christ. Japan, China, India, Russia… the peoples of the North of Europe, or America, or Africa, or Australia?

Stir up that fire in your heart, that hunger for souls. But don't forget that you are more of a missionary 'obeying'. Geographically distant from those apostolic fields, you work both 'here' and 'there': don't you — like Xavier — feel your arm tired after administering baptism to so many?

To be 'Catholic' means to love your country and to be second to no one in that love. And at the same time, to hold as your own the noble aspirations of other lands. — So many glories of France are glories of mine! And in the same way, much that makes Germans proud, and the peoples of Italy and of England…, and Americans and Asians and Africans, is a source of pride to me also.

Catholic: big heart, broad mind.

The closer an apostle is to God, the more universal his desires. His heart expands and takes in everybody and everything in its longing to lay the universe at the feet of Jesus.

I can understand how you love your country and your people so much, and that, in spite of these ties, you long for the moment when you will cross lands and seas — far away — for your heart is consumed by the thought of the harvest.

You are right. 'The peak' — you told me — 'dominates the country for miles around, and yet there is not a single plain to be seen: just one mountain after another. At times the landscape seems to level out, but then the mist rises and reveals another range that had been hidden.'

So it is, so it must be with the horizon of your apostolate: the world has to be crossed. But there are no ways made for you. You yourselves will make them through the mountains with the impact of your feet.

You were amazed to hear me approve of the lack of 'uniformity' in that apostolate in which you work. And I told you:

Unity and variety. You have to be different from one another, as the saints in heaven are different, each having his own personal and special characteristics. But also as alike one another as the saints, who would not be saints if each of them had not identified himself with Christ.

May I never see 'cliques' developing in your work. It would make a mockery of the apostolate: for if, in the end, the 'clique' got

control of a universal undertaking, how quickly that universal undertaking would be reduced to a clique itself!

'There are so many ways', you told me dejectedly. There need to be many; so that each soul can find its own in that wonderful variety.

Bewildered? Make your choice once and for all: and the bewilderment will turn into certainty.

Rejoice, when you see others working in good apostolic activities. And ask God to grant them abundant grace and that they may respond to that grace.

Then, you, on your way: convince yourself that it's the only way for you.

You show bad spirit if it hurts you to see others work for Christ without regard for what you are doing. Remember this passage in Saint Mark: 'Master, we saw a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.' But Jesus said, 'You must not stop him: no one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us'.