List of points

You are not happy because you make everything revolve around yourself as if you were always the centre: you have a stomach-ache, or you are tired, or they have said this or that…

—Have you ever tried thinking about Him, and through Him, about others?

If you cut any hint of envy out at the roots, and if you sincerely rejoice in other people’s success, you will not lose your joy.

It is such a waste of time and such a human way of looking at things, when everything is reduced to tactics of a sort, as if the secret of being effective lay there.

—They forget that God’s tactic is charity, the Love without limits: thus it was that He bridged the unbridgeable gap that man, through sin, opens up between Heaven and earth.

Listen to me carefully and echo my words: Christianity is Love; getting to know God is a most positive experience; concern for others — the apostolate — is not an extra luxury, the task of a few.

—Now that you know this, fill yourself with joy, because your life has acquired a completely different meaning; and act in consequence.

You fulfil a demanding plan of life: you rise early, you pray, you frequent the sacraments, you work or study a lot, you are sober and mortified… but you are aware that something is missing!

Consider this in your conversation with God: since holiness, or the struggle to achieve it, is the fullness of charity, you must look again at your love of God and your love of others for his sake. Then you may discover, hidden in your soul, great defects that you have not even been fighting against: your not being a good son, a good brother, a good companion, a good friend, a good colleague. And that, since you love “your holiness” in a disordered manner, you are envious.

You “sacrifice” yourself in many small personal details, and so you are attached to yourself, to your own person. Deep down you do not live for God or for others, but only for yourself.

It is impossible to love God with perfection, and at the same time to let yourself be ruled by selfishness —or by apathy— in your dealings with your neighbour.

To love is… to cherish but one thought, to live for the person loved, not to belong to oneself, to be happily and freely, with one’s heart and soul, subjected to another’s will… and at the same time to one’s own.