List of points

Let those very obstacles give you strength. God's grace will not fail you: 'Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae! You shall pass through the mountains!'

Does it matter that you have to curtail your activity for the moment if afterwards, like a spring which has been compressed, you will reach incomparably farther than you ever dreamed?

It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes.

Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections — the imperfections and defects — of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection?

If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.

Here is a safe doctrine that I want you to know: one's own mind is a bad adviser, a poor pilot to steer the soul through the storms and tempests and among the reefs of the interior life.

That is why it is the will of God that the command of the ship be entrusted to a Master who, with his light and his knowledge, can guide us to a safe harbour.

How is that heart of yours getting along? Don't worry: the saints — who were perfectly ordinary, normal beings like you and me — also felt those 'natural' inclinations. And if they had not felt them, their 'supernatural' reaction of keeping their heart — soul and body — for God, instead of giving it to creatures, would have had little merit.

That's why, once the way is seen, I think that the heart's weaknesses need be no obstacle for a determined soul, for a soul in love.

How clear the way! How easily seen the obstacles! What good weapons to overcome them!… — And nevertheless, what side-tracking and what stumbling! Isn't it true?

That fine thread — that chain: that chain of wrought iron — of which you and I are conscious and which you don't want to break, that is what draws you from your way and makes you stumble and even fall.

Why do you hesitate? — Cut it… and advance!

War! 'War', you tell me, 'has a supernatural end that the world is unaware of: war has been for us…'

War is the greatest obstacle to the easy way. But in the end we will have to love it, as the religious should love his disciplines.

Do you see? One strand of wire entwined with another, many woven tightly together, form that cable strong enough to lift huge weights.

You and your brothers, with wills united to carry out God's will can overcome all obstacles.