List of points

Make up the time you have lost resting on the laurels of your self-complacency, and thinking what a good person you are, as if it were enough just to keep going, without stealing or killing.

Speed up the pace of your piety and your work: you still have such a long way to go: Live happily with everyone, even with those who annoy you, and make an effort to love — to serve! — those whom you despised before.

A decree went out from the Emperor Augustus, enjoining that all the inhabitants of Israel should be registered. Mary and Joseph made their way to Bethlehem. —Has it ever occurred to you that the Lord made use of the exact acceptance of a law to fulfil his prophecy?

Love and respect the norms of behaviour required for living in amity. Have no doubt, either, that your loyal submission to duty can be the means for others to discover Christian integrity, which is the fruit of divine love, and to find God.

You have to learn to disagree charitably with others — whenever the need arises — without becoming unpleasant.

Sometimes you try to excuse yourself, saying that you are distracted or absent-minded, or that it is your character to be dry and reserved. That, you add, is why you don’t even know very well the people you live with.

—Listen, isn’t it true that this excuse doesn’t really satisfy you?

I advised you to inject a great deal of supernatural outlook into every detail of your ordinary life. And I added immediately that living with other people provided you with ample opportunity throughout the day.

Because you don’t know, or don’t want to know, how to imitate that man’s upright manner of acting, your secret envy makes you seek to ridicule him.

Some people seem to think that when they are not causing harm or mortifying others they are at a loose end.