List of points

Being chosen by God means, — and demands! —, personal holiness.

If you respond to the call the Lord has made to you, your life — your poor life! — will leave a deep and wide furrow in the history of the human race, a clear and fertile furrow, eternal and godly.

Each day be conscious of your duty to be a saint. — A saint! And that doesn’t mean doing strange things. It means a daily struggle in the interior life and in heroically fulfilling your duty right through to the end.

Sanctity does not consist in great concerns. — It consists in struggling to ensure that the flame of your supernatural life is never allowed to go out; it consists in letting yourself be burned down to the last shred, serving God in the lowest place… or in the highest: wherever the Lord may call you.

Our Lord did not confine himself to telling us that he loved us. He showed it to us with deeds, with his whole life. — What about you?

If you love the Lord, you will necessarily feel the blessed burden of souls, and the need to bring them to God.

For someone who wants to live for Love with a capital letter, the middle course is not good enough; that would be meanness, a wretched compromise.

Here is a recipe for your way as a Christian: pray, do penance, work without rest, fulfilling your duty lovingly.

My God, teach me how to love! — My God, teach me how to pray!

We must ask God for faith, hope and charity, with humility, with persevering prayer, with upright behaviour and a clean life.

You told me that you did not know how to repay me for the holy zeal that flooded your soul.

—I hastened to answer: It is not I who have given you any of those yearnings; it is the Holy Spirit.

—Desire his company, get to know him. — That way you will come to love him better and better, and you will come to thank him for taking up his abode in your soul so that you may have interior life.

Keep struggling, so that the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar really becomes the centre and root of your interior life, and so your whole day will turn into an act of worship — an extension of the Mass you have attended and a preparation for the next. Your whole day will then be an act of worship that overflows in aspirations, visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the offering up of your professional work and your family life…

Our Lord has made you see your way clearly as a Christian in the middle of the world. Nevertheless, you tell me that you have often thought, enviously (though in the end you admitted it would be taking the easy way out) of the happiness of being a nobody, of working away, totally obscure, in the remotest corner… God and you!

—Now, apart from the idea of missionary work in Japan, the thought of just such a hidden and sacrificed life has come to your mind. But if, free from other holy natural obligations, you were to try to “hide away” in a religious institution, assuming that was not your vocation, you would not be happy. You would lack peace; because you would have done your own will, not God’s.

—Your “vocation”, in that case, would deserve another name: it would be a defection. It would not be the result of divine inspiration, but of sheer human reluctance to face the coming struggle. And that would never do!

In living holy purity and a clean life, there is a great difficulty to which we are all exposed. The danger is one of becoming bourgeois, either in our spiritual life or in our professional life; the danger — also a real one for those called by God to marriage — of becoming dry old bachelors, selfish; people who do not love.

—Fight that danger tooth and nail, without making concessions of any kind.

Because we shall always have to put up with this little donkey which is our body, to conquer sensuality you have to practise daily and generously little mortifications — and sometimes big ones as well. And you must live in the presence of God, who never ceases to watch over you.

Your chastity cannot be confined to avoiding falls or occasions… In no way can it be a cold and mathematical negative.

—Haven’t you realised that chastity is a virtue and that as such it should grow and become more perfect?

—It is not enough, then, to be continent according to your state. You have to be chaste, with a heroic virtue.

The bonus odor Christi, the fragrance of Christ, is also that of our clean life, of our chastity — the chastity of each one in his own state, I repeat — of our holy purity, which is a joyful affirmation. It is something solid and at the same time gentle; it is refined, avoiding even the use of inappropriate words, since they cannot be pleasing to God.

Get used to thanking the Guardian Angels in advance, thus putting them under an obligation.

One ought to be able to apply to every Christian the name that was used in the early ages: Bearer of God.

—Your actions should be such that you really deserve to be called by that wonderful name.

Think what would happen if we Christians chose not to behave as such… and then rectify your behaviour.

Discover Our Lord behind each event and in every circumstance, and then, from everything that happens, you will be able to draw more love for God and a greater desire to respond to him. He is always waiting for us, offering us the possibility to fulfil at all times that resolution we made: Serviam! I will serve you!

Renew each day the effective desire to empty yourself, to deny yourself, to forget yourself, to walk in novitate sensus, with a new life, exchanging this misery of ours for all the hidden and eternal grandeur of God.

Lord, make me so much yours that not even the holiest affections may enter my heart except through your wounded Heart.

Try to be considerate, well-mannered. Don’t be boorish!

—Try to be polite always, which doesn’t mean being affected.

A saint! A son of God should exaggerate in practising virtue — if exaggeration is possible here… Because other people will see themselves reflected in him, as in a mirror, and it is only by our aiming very high that others will reach a middling level.

Don’t be ashamed to discover in your heart the fomes peccati — the inclination to evil, which will be with you as long as you live, for nobody is free from this burden.

Don’t be ashamed, because the all-powerful and merciful Lord has given us all the means we need for overcoming this inclination: the Sacraments, a life of piety and sanctified work.

—Persevere in using these means, ever ready to begin again and again without getting discouraged.

Lord, rescue me from myself!

An apostle who does not pray regularly and methodically will necessarily fall into lukewarmness… and he will then cease to be an apostle.

Lord, from now on let me become someone else: no longer “me”, but that “other person” you would like me to be.

—Let me not deny you anything you ask of me. Let me know how to pray. Let me know how to suffer. Let me not worry about anything except your glory. Let me feel your presence all the time.

—May I love the Father. May I hunger for you, my Jesus, in a permanent Communion. May the Holy Spirit set me on fire.

Meus es tu — you are mine, the Lord has declared to you.

—To think that God, who is all beauty and all wisdom, all splendour and all goodness, should say to you that you are his…! and then, after all this, you can’t bring yourself to respond to him!

You should not be surprised to feel in your life that weight dragging you down which Saint Paul spoke of: “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.”

—Remember then that you belong to Christ, and have recourse to the Mother of God, who is your Mother. They will not abandon you.

Receive the advice you are given in spiritual guidance as though it came from Jesus Christ himself.

You asked me to suggest a way for winning through in your daily struggles, and I replied: When you lay your soul open, say first of all what you wouldn’t like to be known. In this way the devil will always end up defeated.

—Lay your soul wide open, clearly and simply, so that the rays of God’s Love may reach and illuminate the last corner of it!

If that dumb devil mentioned in the Gospel gets into your soul, he will spoil everything. On the other hand, if you get rid of him immediately, everything will turn out well; you will carry on merrily, and all will be well.

—A firm resolution: to be “savagely sincere” in spiritual direction, always keeping your good manners…, and to be sincere immediately.

Love and seek help from the person who guides your soul. In spiritual direction lay your heart completely open — rotten, if it were rotten! — with all sincerity, with the desire to be cured. If you don’t, you will never get rid of that rottenness.

If you go to someone who can only cleanse the wound superficially… you are a coward, because really you will be going along to hide the truth, doing yourself harm.

Never be afraid of telling the truth. But don’t forget that sometimes it is better to remain silent out of charity towards your neighbour. However, you should never be silent out of laziness, or love of comfort, or cowardice.

If you know how to love other people and you spread that affection — Christ’s kindly, gentle charity — all around you, you will be able to support one another, and if someone is about to stumble he will feel that he is being supported, and also encouraged, to be faithful to God through this fraternal strength.

Bring out your spirit of mortification in those nice touches of charity, eager to make the way of sanctity in the middle of the world attractive for everyone. Sometimes a smile can be the best proof of a spirit of penance.

May you know how to put yourself out cheerfully, discreetly and generously each day, serving others and making their lives more pleasant.

—To act in this way is the true charity of Jesus Christ.

You should make sure that wherever you are there is that good humour — that cheerfulness — which is born of an interior life.

Make sure you practise this very interesting mortification: that of not making your conversation revolve around yourself.

Here is a good way of doing an examination of conscience:

—Have I accepted in a spirit of expiation the difficulties which have come to me this day from the hand of God? Or those which came from the behaviour of my colleagues? Or from my own wretchedness?

—Have I managed to offer Our Lord, in expiation, the very sorrow I feel for having offended him so many times? Have I offered him the shame of all my inner embarrassment and humiliation at seeing how little progress I make along the path of virtue?

Habitual and customary mortifications are a good thing, but don’t become one-track minded about them.

—They need not necessarily be the same ones all the time. What should be constant, habitual and customary — without your getting accustomed to it — is to have a spirit of mortification.

You want to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to wear his livery, to identify yourself with Jesus. Well then, make your faith a living faith, full of sacrifice and deeds of service, and get rid of everything that stands in the way.

Sanctity has the flexibility of supple muscles. Whoever wishes to be a saint should know how to behave so that while he does something that involves a mortification for him, he omits doing something else — as long as this does not offend God — which he would also find difficult, and thanks the Lord for this comfort. If we Christians were to act otherwise we would run the risk of becoming stiff and lifeless, like a rag doll.

Sanctity is not rigid like cardboard; it knows how to smile, to give way to others and to hope. It is life — a supernatural life.

Mother, do not leave me! Let me seek your Son, let me find your Son, let me love your Son — with my whole being! — Remember me, my Lady, remember me.

When our vision is clouded, when our eyes have lost their clarity, we need to go to the light. And Jesus Christ has told us that he is the Light of the world and that he has come to heal the sick.

—That is why your weaknesses and your falls — when God allows them — should not separate you from Christ, but rather draw you closer to him!

In my wretchedness I complained to a friend of mine, saying that it seemed as if Jesus were passing me by… and leaving me on my own.

—But immediately I thought better of it and was sorry. Full of confidence, I said: It is not true, my Love. Quite clearly it is I who have gone away from you. Never again!

How villainous has been my behaviour and how unfaithful I have been to God’s grace!

—My Mother, Refuge of sinners, pray for me. May I never again hinder God’s work in my soul.

So close to Christ for so many years and… such a sinner!

—Does that intimate love of Jesus for you not make you sob?

It is not that I lack true joy; on the contrary… And yet, painfully aware of my unworthiness, it is only natural that I should cry out with Saint Paul, “wretched man that I am!”

—It is at such a time that you should increase your desire to tear down once and for all the barriers you yourself have set up.

Do not become alarmed or discouraged to discover that you have failings… and such failings!

—Struggle to uproot them. And as you do so, be convinced that it is even a good thing to be aware of all those weaknesses, for otherwise you would be proud. And pride separates us from God.

Be filled with wonder at God’s goodness, because Christ wants to live in you. Be filled with wonder also when you are aware of all the weight of your poor wretchedness, of this poor flesh, of all the vileness of this poor clay.

—Yes, but then remember too that call from God: Jesus Christ, who is God and Man, understands me and looks after me, for he is my Brother and my Friend.

Your life is happy, very happy, though on occasions you feel a pang of sadness, and even experience almost constantly a real sense of weariness.

—Joy and affliction can go hand in hand like this, each in its own “man”: the former in the new man, the latter in the old.

Humility is born of knowing God and knowing oneself.

Lord, I ask for a gift from you: Love… a Love that will cleanse me. — And another gift as well: self-knowledge so that I may be filled with humility.

The saints are those who struggle right to the end of their lives: those who always manage to get up each time they stumble, each time they fall, and courageously embark on their way once more with humility, love and hope.

If your mistakes make you more humble, if they make you reach out more urgently for God’s helping hand, then they are a road to sanctity: Felix culpa! — O happy fault!, the Church sings.

Prayer — even my prayer! — is all-powerful.

Humility teaches each soul not to lose heart in the face of its own blunders.

—True humility leads us… to ask for forgiveness!

Invoke the Lord, and beg him for the spirit of penance of one who conquers himself every day, and offers him this constant victory unassumingly and perseveringly.

In your personal prayer, whenever you experience the weakness of the flesh you should repeat: Lord, give the Cross to this poor body of mine, which gets tired and rebellious!

How right that priest was when he preached, saying, “Jesus has forgiven me the great multitude of my sins in spite of my ingratitude. How generous he is! If the many sins of Mary Magdalen were forgiven because she loved greatly, many more have been forgiven me. What a great debt of love still remains for me to pay!”

Jesus, I’m ready to the point of madness and heroism! With the help of your grace, even if I have to die for you, Lord, I will never abandon you again.

Lazarus rose because he heard the voice of God and immediately wanted to get out of the situation he was in. If he hadn’t wanted to move, he would just have died again.

A sincere resolution: to have faith in God always; to hope in God always; to love God always… he never abandons us, even if we are rotting away as Lazarus was.

Let us marvel at the lovable paradox of our Christian condition: it is our own wretchedness which leads us to seek refuge in God, to become “like unto God”. With him we can do all things.

When you have fallen or when you find yourself overwhelmed by the weight of your wretchedness, repeat with a firm hope: Lord, see how ill I am; Lord, you who died on the Cross for love of me, come and heal me.

Be full of confidence, I insist. Keep on calling out to his most loving Heart. As he cured the lepers we read about in the Gospel, he will cure you.

Trust fully in God and have a greater desire each day never to run away from him.

Virgin Immaculate, my Mother!, do not abandon me. See how my poor heart is filled with tears. — I do not want to offend my God!

—I already know, and I trust I shall never forget, that I am worth nothing. My smallness and my loneliness weigh upon me so much! But… I am not alone. You, Sweet Lady, and my Father God will never leave me.

Faced with the rebellion of my flesh and the diabolical arguments against my Faith, I love Jesus and I believe: I do Love and do Believe.

Follow Saint Paul’s advice: hora est iam nos de somno surgere! — it is time to get down to work! Both on the inside, building up your soul; and on the outside, right where you are, building up the Kingdom of God.

All contrite you told me: “How much wretchedness I see in myself! I am so stupid and I am carting around such a weight of concupiscence that it is as though I had never really done anything to get closer to God. O Lord, here I am beginning, beginning, always just beginning! I will try, however, to push forward each day with all my heart.”

—May he bless those efforts of yours.

Father, you told me, I have committed many errors, I have made so many mistakes.

—I know, I replied. But God Our Lord, who also knows all that and has taken it into account, only asks you to be humble enough to admit it and asks that you struggle to make amends, so as to serve him better each day with more interior life, with continual prayer and with piety, and making use of the proper means to sanctify your work.

Would that you could acquire, as I know you would like to, the virtues of the donkey! Donkeys are humble, hard-working, persevering — stubborn! — and faithful, with a sure step, tough and — if they have a good master — also grateful and obedient.

Agreed: your concern ought to be for “them”. But your first concern must be yourself, your own interior life. Otherwise, you will not be able to serve them.

How difficult you find that mortification suggested to you by the Holy Spirit! Look at a Crucifix, steadily… and you will come to love that expiation.

“To be nailed to the Cross!” This aspiration kept coming again and again, as a new light, to the mind and heart and lips of a certain soul.

“To be nailed to the Cross?”, he asked himself. “How hard it is!” And yet he knew full well the way he had to go: agere contra — self-denial. This is why he earnestly implored, “Help me, Lord!”

Being at Calvary, where Jesus died, the experience of our own sins should move us to be sorry, to make a deeper and more mature decision not to offend him again.

We need to smooth off the rough edges a little more each day — just as if we were working in stone or wood — and get rid of the defects in our own lives with a spirit of penance. And with small mortifications, which are of two types: active mortifications — the ones we ourselves look for, like little flowers we gather up during the course of the day — and passive mortifications, which come from outside and we find difficult to accept. Jesus Christ will later make up for whatever is still lacking.

—What a wonderful figure of the crucified Christ you will become if generously and cheerfully you give your all!

Our Lord, with his arms outstretched, is continually begging for your alms of love.

Draw close to Jesus who has died for you; draw close to that Cross, outlined against the sky on the summit of Golgotha…

But draw close sincerely and with interior recollection, which is the sign of Christian maturity. That way the divine and human events of the Passion will sink deep into your soul.

We should accept mortification with those same sentiments that Jesus Christ had in his Holy Passion.

Mortification is a necessary premise for any apostolate, and for the perfect carrying out of each apostolate.

A spirit of penance is to be found first of all in taking advantage of the many trifling occasions — deeds, renunciations, sacrifices, services rendered… — which we find daily along our way and we then convert into acts of love and contrition, into mortifications. In this way we shall be able to gather a bouquet at the end of each day — a fine bunch of flowers which we can offer to God!

The best spirit of sacrifice is to persevere in the work begun: when it is exciting and when it proves an uphill struggle.

Submit your plan of mortifications to your spiritual Director, for him to ‘moderate’ them.

—But to ‘moderate’ will not always mean to diminish. It can also mean increasing them, if he thinks fit. — Either way, accept his advice!

Holiness is attained with the help of the Holy Spirit, who comes to dwell in our souls, through grace given us by the sacraments and as a result of a constant ascetical struggle.

My son, let us not have any false illusions about this. You and I — I will never tire of repeating it — will always have to struggle, always, until the end of our lives. So we will come to love peace, and we will spread peace around us, and we will receive our everlasting reward.

Don’t just talk to the Paraclete. Listen to him!

When you pray, consider how the life of childhood, which enabled you to realise deeply that you are a son of God, filled you with a filial love for the Father. Think how, before that, you have gone through Mary to Jesus, whom you adore as his friend, as his brother, as his lover, for that is what you are…

After receiving this advice you realised that until now you had known that the Holy Spirit was dwelling in your soul, to sanctify it… But you hadn’t really grasped this truth about his presence. You needed that advice. Now you feel his Love within you, and you want to talk to him, to be his friend, to confide in him… You want to facilitate his work of polishing, uprooting, and enkindling…

I wouldn’t know how to set about it!, you thought. Listen to him, I insist. He will give you strength. He will do everything, if you so want… And you do want!

—Pray to him: Divine Guest, Master, Light, Guide, Love, may I make you truly welcome inside me and listen to the lessons you teach me. Make me burn with eagerness for you, make me follow you and love you.

To draw closer to God, to fly all the way to God, you need the strong and generous wings of Prayer and Expiation.

To avoid routine in your vocal prayers try to say them with the same ardour with which a person who has just fallen in love speaks… and as if it were the last chance you had to approach Our Lord.

If you feel proud to be a son of Our Lady, ask yourself: How often do I express my devotion to the Virgin Mary during the day, from morning to night?

There are two reasons, among others, that friend was saying to himself, why I should make reparation to my Immaculate Mother every Saturday and on the eve of her feasts.

The second is that on Sundays and on feasts of Our Lady (which are often feasts in villages), instead of dedicating such days to prayer, so many people spend them — you have only to look around you and see — offending Our Jesus with public sins and scandalous crimes.

The first reason is that, perhaps due to the devil’s influence, those of us who want to be good sons are not taking proper care in the way we live these days dedicated to Our Lord and to his Mother.

You’ll realise that unfortunately these reasons are still very valid. And so we too should make reparation.

I have always understood Christian prayer as being a loving conversation with Jesus, which shouldn’t be interrupted even in the moments we are physically far from the Tabernacle, because our whole life is made up of verses of human love in a divine way … and we can love always.

God’s love for his creatures is so boundless and our response to it should be so great that, when Holy Mass is being said, time ought to stand still.

When the branches are united to the vine they grow to maturity and bear fruit.

—What then should you and I do? We should get right close to Jesus, through the Bread and through the Word. He is our vine… We should speak affectionate words to him throughout the day. That is what people in love do.

Love Our Lord very much. Maintain and foster in your soul a sense of urgency to love him better. Love God precisely now when perhaps a good many of those who hold him in their hands do not love him, but rather ill-treat and neglect him.

Be sure to take good care of the Lord for me, in the Holy Mass and throughout the whole day!

Prayer is the most powerful weapon a Christian has. Prayer makes us effective. Prayer makes us happy. Prayer gives us all the strength we need to fulfil God’s commands.

—Yes!, your whole life can and should be prayer.

Personal sanctity is not an unrealistic idea, but a precise reality, which is both divine and human. And it manifests itself constantly in daily deeds of Love.

You have to live in harmony with your fellow men and understand them as a brother would. As the Spanish mystic says, where there is no love, put love and you will find love.

We are not good brothers to our fellow men if we are not ready to continue behaving correctly, even when those around us may interpret our actions badly or react in an unpleasant manner.

Your love for Mother Church and the service you render her should in no way be conditioned by the greater or lesser holiness of the individuals who make up the Church, even though we ardently desire that everyone will achieve Christian perfection.

—You have to love the Spouse of Christ, your Mother. She is, and always will be, pure and spotless.

Our striving for our own sanctification has repercussions on the sanctity of so many souls and also on the sanctity of God’s Church.

Be convinced of this!: if only you wish it (and don’t forget that God listens to you and loves you and promises you glory and you will be protected by the almighty hand of your Father in Heaven) you can be a person full of fortitude, ready to be a witness everywhere to the most lovable truth of his doctrine.

The Lord’s field is fertile and the seed he sows of good quality. Therefore when weeds appear in this world of ours, never doubt that they spring up because of a lack of correspondence on the part of men, Christians especially, who have fallen asleep and have left the field open to the enemy.

—Don’t complain, for there’s no point; examine your behaviour, instead.

The following comment, which caused me great sorrow, will also make you reflect: “I see very clearly why there is a lack of resistance, and why what resistance there is to iniquitous laws is so ineffective, for above, below and in the middle there are many people — so very many! — who just follow the crowd.”

The enemies of God and his Church, manipulated by the devil’s unremitting hatred, are relentless in their activities and organization.

With “exemplary” constancy they prepare their cadres, run schools, appoint leaders and deploy agitators. In an undercover way — but very effectively — they spread their ideas and sow, in homes and places of work, a seed which is destructive of any religious ideology.

—What is there that we Christians should not be ready to do, always with the truth, to serve our God?

Don’t confuse serenity with laziness, with neglect, and putting off making decisions or studying questions that need attending to.

Serenity always goes hand in hand with diligence, which is a virtue we need in order to consider and resolve pending matters without delay.

—My son, where is the Christ that people look for in you? In your pride? In your desire to impose yourself on others? In those defects of character which you don’t wish to overcome? In your stubbornness?… Is Christ to be found there? No, he is not!

—You need to have your own personality, agreed. But you should try to make it conform exactly to Christ’s.

I will suggest to you a good rule of conduct for living fraternity and a spirit of service. When you are not around, other people should be able to go ahead with the work you have in hand thanks to the experience you have generously passed on to them, and to your not having made yourself indispensable.

It is you — in spite of your passions — who have the responsibility for the sanctity of the others, for their Christian behaviour and for their effectiveness.

You are not on your own. If you stop you could be holding up or harming so many people!