List of points

That pose and that self-satisfied manner don't suit you at all: they are easily seen to be affected. Try, at least, to use them neither with God, nor with your Director, nor with your brothers: and between them and you there will be one barrier less.

You lack strength of character: what insistence on having a hand in everything! You are bent on being the salt of every dish. And — you won't be annoyed if I speak clearly — you have little aptitude for being salt: in particular, you lack its capacity to dissolve and pass unnoticed.

You have too little spirit of sacrifice and too great a spirit of curiosity and ostentation.

With that self-satisfied air you are becoming an objectionable and repellent type, you are making a fool of yourself, and, what is worse, you are harming your apostolic work.

Don't forget that even mediocrities can sin by being pompous.

Your very inexperience leads you to that presumption, to that vanity, to all that you imagine gives you an air of importance.

Correct yourself, please. Foolish and all, you might come to occupy a position of responsibility (it has happened more than once) and, if you are not convinced of your lack of ability, you will refuse to listen to those who have the gift of counsel. And it frightens me to think of the harm your mismanagement will do.

Your charity is ostentatious. From afar, you attract; you have light. From near by, you repel; you lack warmth. What a pity I

You… proud? About what?

Pride? Why Before long — years, days, — you will be a heap of rotting flesh: worms, foul-smelling liquids, filthy shreds of cloth, and no one, on earth, will remember you.

For all your learning, for all your fame, your eloquence and power, if you are not humble, you are worth nothing. Cut out, root out that self-complacency which dominates you so completely. — God will help you — and then you will be able to begin working for Christ, in the lowest place in his army of apostles.

If you wish to be humble — you, who are so empty and self-satisfied — just consider these words of Isaias: you are 'a drop of water or dew that falls on the ground and is scarcely seen.'

Get rid of that 'self-satisfied air' which isolates your soul from the souls that approach you. Listen to them. And speak with simplicity; only thus will your work as an apostle grow in extent and fruitfulness.