List of points

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.

Listen to that parable which comes to us from Jesus’ own lips and is told us by Saint John in his Gospel: Ego sum vitis, vos palmites — I am the vine, you are the branches.

Picture the whole parable in your imagination and in your mind. You will see that a branch separated from the stock, from the vine, is useless, it will not bear abundant fruit. It will end up like a dry stick which men or animals trample underfoot, or thrown on the fire…

—You are the branch; draw the necessary conclusions.

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.

Think about your Mother the Holy Church and consider how, if one member suffers, the whole body suffers.

—Your body needs each one of its members, but each member needs the whole body. What would happen if my hands were to stop doing their duty… or if my heart were to stop beating!

I would like — help me with your prayer — all of us within Holy Church to feel that we are members of the same body, as the Apostle asks of us. I would like us to be vividly and profoundly aware, without any lack of interest, of the joys, the troubles, the progress of our Mother who is one, holy, catholic, apostolic, Roman.

I would like us to live in unison with one another and all of us with Christ.

Convince yourself, my child, that lack of unity within the Church is death.

You must reject that form of nationalism which hinders understanding and harmony. In many moments of history it has been one of the most evil of barriers.

You must reject it yet more strongly, since it would be all the more harmful, when it tries to set foot within the Body of the Church, where the unity of everyone and everything in the love of Jesus Christ ought to shine out most clearly.

If piety is lacking — the bond which ties us close to God and, for his sake, to others because we see Christ in them — disunity is inevitable, with the loss of all Christian spirit.

Physically far away and yet feeling very close to them all, “very close to them all…” you cheerfully repeated.

You were happy thanks to that communion of charity which I spoke to you about, and which you must not get tired of keeping alive.

At times, fifty per cent of the work is lost because of in-fighting stemming from a lack of charity, and from tales and back-biting among brothers. Furthermore, yet another twenty-five per cent of the work is lost by constructing buildings which are unnecessary for the apostolate. Gossip should never be allowed and we shouldn’t waste our time building so many houses. People will then be apostles, one hundred per cent.