List of points

If God gives you the burden, God will give you the strength.

“I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” With him there is no possibility of failure, and this conviction gives rise to the holy “superiority complex” whereby we take on things with a spirit of victory, because God grants us his strength.

Since you feel you have been chosen by God to support and co-redeem — without forgetting that you are… wretched and utterly so — your humility should lead you to place yourself under the feet — at the service — of all. This is what the supports of a building do.

But foundations need to be strong. Fortitude is an indispensable virtue for someone who has to sustain or encourage others.

—Say this to Jesus and say it to him strongly: May I never through false humility stop practising the cardinal virtue of fortitude. Make me know how to separate, my God, the gold from the dross.

You want to be strong? Then first realise that you are very weak. After that, trust in Christ, your Father, your Brother, your Teacher. He makes us strong, entrusting to us the means with which to conquer — the sacraments. Live them!

We cannot, must not, be sugar-candy Christians: on earth there must be suffering and the Cross.

As a child of God, with his grace in you, you have to be a strong person, a man or woman of desires and achievements.

—We are not hothouse plants. We live in the middle of the world, and we have to be able to face up to all the winds that blow, to the heat and the cold, to rain and storms…, but always faithful to God and to his Church.

It is not pride, but fortitude, when you make your authority felt, cutting out what needs to be cut out, when the fulfilment of the Holy Will of God demands it.

Hands must sometimes be tied, with respect and with temperateness, without insult or discourtesy. Not out of revenge, but as a remedy; not as a punishment, but as a medicine.