List of points

That acquaintance of yours, very intelligent, well off, a good man, used to say: “You have to do what the law says, but within limits, doing what is strictly necessary, without going too far.”

And he would add: “You shouldn’t sin, of course, but there is no need to give up everything.”

How sad it is to see men who are mean, calculating, incapable of making any sacrifice, of giving themselves wholeheartedly to a noble ideal.

At times, seeing those souls asleep, one feels an enormous desire to shout at them, to make them take notice, to wake them up from that terrible torpor they have fallen into. It is so sad to see them walk like a blind man hitting out with his stick, without finding the way!

—I can well understand how the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem sprang from his perfect charity.

Ideologically you are very Catholic. You like the atmosphere of the hall of residence. A pity the Mass is not at twelve, and the classes are not in the afternoon, so you can study late in the evening after one or two drinks. That “Catholicism” of yours does not come up to the real thing: it remains simply bourgeois.

—Don’t you see that you can’t think like that at your age? Leave behind your laziness and your self-worship… and adapt to the needs of others, to the reality around you, then you will be taking your Catholicism seriously.

You run the great risk of being satisfied with living, or thinking that you have to live, “like a good boy”, who stays in a cosy and neat house, with no problems, and knowing only happiness.

That is a caricature of the home in Nazareth. Because Christ brought happiness and order, he went out to spread those treasures among men and women of all times.