List of points

You should show the moderation, fortitude and sense of responsibility that many people acquire after many long years, in their old age. You will achieve all this, while you are still young, if you do not — I beg you — lose the supernatural outlook of a son of God. For he will give you, more than to the old, those qualities you need for your apostle’s work.

Pray resolutely using the words of the Psalmist: “Lord, you are my refuge and my strength, I trust in thee!”

I promise you that he will preserve you from the ambushes of the “noontide devil”, when you are tempted and… even when you fall, and when your age and virtues ought to have proved solid and you should have known by heart that He alone is your Strength.

See if you can understand this apparent contradiction. At thirty years of age, that man wrote in his diary: “I’m not young any more.” When he was over forty, he wrote again: “I will stay young till I’m eighty: if I die before that, I’ll think I haven’t done my stint.”

—Wherever he went he took with him, in spite of the passing years, the mature youthfulness of Love.

Because of the trust He has placed in you, by bringing you to the Church, you ought to have the balance, the calm, the strength, the human and supernatural prudence of a mature person, that many acquire with the passing of the years.

Don’t forget that Christian, as we learnt in the Catechism, means a man or woman who has the faith of Jesus Christ.

Order will bring harmony to your life, and lead you to perseverance. Order will give peace to your heart, and dignity to your composure.

God needs women and men who are sure and strong, on whom he can lean.