List of points

He hasn’t got the time? — So much the better. Christ is interested precisely in those who do not have the time.

Don’t be surprised and don’t be cowed because he has reproached you with having placed him face to face with Christ, nor because he may have added, indignantly: “Now I can’t live in peace unless I make up my mind…”

Pray for him… It would be useless to try to calm him down. What may have happened is that some previous worry, the voice of his own conscience, has now come to the fore.

Vocations, Lord, more vocations! It doesn’t matter whether I did the sowing or someone else: it was You, Jesus, who sowed the seed with our hands! All I know is that you have promised that the fruit will ripen; et fructus vester maneat — and your fruit will endure.

Be honest. If there are people who tell you that you have been trying “to catch them”, admit that this is what you want to do. But there is no need for them to worry! Because, if they haven’t got a vocation — if He does not call them — they won’t come; and if they have, what a shame for them to end up like the rich young man in the Gospel: alone and sad.

As an apostle you have a great and beautiful task. You find yourself at the place where grace and the freedom of each soul meet. You are also present at that most solemn occasion in the life of some men: their encounter with Christ.

It seems as if you have been individually picked, he said.

And that is right!

How easily you leave the plan of life unfulfilled, or do things so badly that it is worse than not doing them at all. —Is that the way you mean to fall in love more each day with your way, and to pass on this love later to others?