List of points

After twenty centuries, we have to proclaim with complete conviction that the spirit of Christ has not lost its redemptive force, which alone can satisfy the desires of the human heart. —Begin by feeding that truth into your own heart, which will be perpetually restless, as Saint Augustine wrote, for as long as you don’t place it entirely in God.

Don’t doubt it: the heart has been created to love. Let us therefore bring Our Lord Jesus Christ into all the love that we feel. Otherwise, the empty heart takes revenge and fills itself up with the most despicable vileness.

It seems as if the “spirit” were growing smaller, shrinking to a little point… And the body seems to grow and become gigantic, until it gains control. —It was for you that Saint Paul wrote: “I buffet my own body, and make it my slave; or I, who have preached to others, may myself be rejected as worthless.”