List of points

With God’s grace, you have to tackle and carry out the impossible… because anybody can do what is possible.

Reject your pessimism and don’t allow those around you to be pessimistic. — God should be served with cheerfulness and abandonment.

Get rid of that human prudence which makes you so very cautious, so — sorry to be so blunt! — cowardly.

—Let us not be narrow-minded. Let us not be infantile men or women, who are nearsighted and lack a supernatural breadth of vision…! Could we be working for ourselves? Of course not!

Well then, let us say quite fearlessly: Dearest Jesus, we are working for you, and… are you going to deny us the material means we need? You know full well how worthless we are; still, I would not treat a servant working for me in that way…

Therefore, we hope and are sure you will give us all we need to be able to serve you.

An act of faith: Nothing can prevail against God! Nothing can prevail against God’s people!

—Don’t forget it.

Don’t lose heart. Carry on! Carry on with that holy stubbornness which in spiritual terms is called perseverance.

My Lord, you always come to meet our real needs.

You are not getting worse. — It is just that now you have more light to see yourself as you really are. You must avoid even the slightest hint of discouragement.

Along the way to personal sanctity we can at times get the impression that we are going backwards instead of forwards, that we are getting worse instead of better.

As long as there is interior struggle this pessimistic thought is only an illusion, a deception to be rejected as false.

—Persevere and don’t worry. If you fight with tenacity you are making progress and are growing in sanctity.

Interior dryness is not lukewarmness. When a person is lukewarm the waters of grace slide over him without being soaked in. In contrast, there are dry lands which seem arid but which, with a few drops of rain at the right time, yield abundant flowers and delicious fruit.

That is why I ask: When are we going to be convinced? How important it is to be docile to the divine calls which come at each moment of the day, because it is precisely there that God is awaiting us!

Be clever, spiritually clever. Don’t wait for the Lord to send you setbacks; go out to meet them with a spirit of voluntary atonement. — Then you’ll receive them not so much with resignation (an old-sounding word) as with Love — a word which is forever young.

Today, for the first time, you had the feeling that things were getting simpler, that everything was “sorting itself out”. At last you see an end to the problems that were worrying you. And you understand that they are more thoroughly and better resolved the more you abandon yourself into the arms of your Father God.

What are you waiting for to start behaving always as a son of God? This should be the driving force in your life.

Turn to Our Lady — the Mother, Daughter and Spouse of God, and our Mother — and ask her to obtain more graces for you from the Blessed Trinity: the grace of faith, of hope, of love and of contrition. So that when it seems that a harsh dry wind is blowing in your life, threatening to wither those flowers of your soul, they will not wither… and neither will those of your brothers.

It seems incredible that a man like you — who say you know you’re nothing — should dare to place obstacles in the way of God’s grace.

Yet this is what you’re doing with your false humility, your “objectivity”, your pessimism.

Lord, grant me the grace to give up everything that has to do with myself. I should have no other concern than your Glory… in other words, your Love. — Everything for Love!

“When Herod heard this,” (that the King had come to this earth), “he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.”

This is an everyday occurrence! We see the same thing happening now. In the face of God’s greatness, which shows itself in a thousand ways, there are always some people — sometimes even in positions of authority — who are troubled. It’s because they do not love God; because they have no real wish to meet him; because they don’t want to follow his inspirations, and so they become obstacles in God’s path.

—Be forewarned; carry on working, don’t worry, seek the Lord, pray… and he will triumph.

You are not alone. — Neither you nor I can ever find ourselves alone. And even less if we go to Jesus through Mary, for she is a Mother who will never abandon us.

When it feels as if the Lord has given up on you, don’t give way to sadness. Seek him with greater determination! He who is Love does not leave you on your own.

—Be convinced that “he has left you on your own” out of Love, so that you may see clearly in your life what is his and what is yours.

You said to me: “I seem not only unable to go ahead along my way, but also unable to be saved without a miracle of grace. Oh, my poor soul! I remain cold and, what is worse, almost indifferent. It’s as if I were an outsider looking at ‘a case’ (mine) which had nothing to do with him. Will these days turn out to be completely futile?

And nevertheless, my Mother is my Mother and Jesus is — dare I say it? — my Jesus. And there are good and saintly souls, at this very moment, praying for me.”

—Go on walking hand in hand with your Mother, I replied, and “dare” to say to Jesus that he is yours. In his goodness he will bring clear light to your soul.

Grant me, Jesus, the Cross with no Simon of Cyrene to help me. No, that’s not right; I need your grace, I need your help here as in everything. You must be my Simon of Cyrene. With you, my God, no trial can daunt me…

—But what if my Cross should consist in boredom or sadness? — In that case I say to you, Lord, with You I would gladly be sad.

As long as I don’t lose You, no sorrow will be a sorrow at all.

Jesus will refuse a word to no one, and his words bring healing, they console, they bring light.

—This is what you and I have to remember at all times, especially when we find ourselves tired and weighed down by work or opposition.

Don’t expect people’s applause for your work.

—What is more, sometimes you mustn’t even expect other people and institutions, who like you are working for Christ, to understand you.

—Seek only the glory of God and, while loving everyone, don’t worry if there are some who don’t understand you.

If there are mountains in the way, obstacles, misunderstandings and backbiting, which Satan seeks and God allows, you must have faith, faith with deeds, faith with sacrifice, faith with humility.

Faced by apparent sterility in your apostolate you begin to detect the first waves of discouragement, which your faith rejects quite firmly. — But you realise that you need a more humble, lively and operative faith.

As someone who longs to bring health to souls, you should cry out like the father of that sick boy possessed by the devil: Domine, adiuva incredulitatem meam! — Lord, help my unbelief!

Have no doubt: the miracle will be performed again.

It is true that your contribution is nil and that it is God who does everything in your soul.

—However, let not this be the case as far as your correspondence to his grace is concerned.

Practise the virtue of hope and, with God as your motive, even when you find it hard, persevere at your work and try to finish it well, convinced that those efforts of yours are not useless in the Lord’s sight.

When in your daily struggle, normally made up of many little things, there is the desire and the reality of pleasing God continually, I assure you: nothing is ever lost!

You would be right in thinking: how good the Lord is, who has sought me and has made known to me this holy path where I can be effective and where I can love all men, bringing them peace and happiness.

—This thought has then to be turned into resolutions.

You know that you will never lack God’s grace, because he has chosen you from all eternity. And if this is what he has done for you, he will grant you all the help you need to be faithful to him as his son.

—Go forward, then, with assurance and try to respond at every moment.

I ask the Mother of God to smile upon us if she wishes, if she can… She will indeed do so.

Moreover, she will reward our generosity a thousandfold here on earth. A thousandfold, that’s what I am asking her for!

Practise a cheerful charity which is at once kindly and firm; human and supernatural. An affectionate charity, knowing how to welcome everyone with a sincere and habitual smile, and how to understand the ideas and the feelings of others.

—In this way, gently and vigorously, and without concessions in matters of personal morals or in doctrine, the charity of Christ — when it is being well lived — will give you a spirit of conquest. Each day you will be more eager to work for souls.

My son, I said with assurance, in spreading our “madness” to other apostles I am not unaware of the “obstacles” we will find. Some of them may appear insurmountable… But inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae — the waters will pass through the midst of the mountains. Our supernatural spirit and the drive of our zeal will cut through the mountains and we shall overcome those obstacles.

“My God, my God! All of them were equally loved, through you, in you and with you, and now they are all scattered.” Thus you complained when you saw yourself once again all alone and lacking in human resources.

—But Our Lord immediately made you feel sure in your soul that He would sort it out. And you said to him: “You will fix everything.”

—And so he did. God solved everything sooner, more fully and better than you expected.

It is indeed just that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit should crown the Blessed Virgin as Queen and Lady of all created things.

—You have to make use of her power! With the daring of a child join in this celebration in Heaven. — For myself, I crown the Mother of God and my Mother with my purified failings, since I have no precious stones or virtues.

—Take courage!