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?

You persist in being worldly, superficial, scatter-brained, because you are a coward. What is it but cowardice not to want to face yourself?

There is need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and undo the savage work of those who think that man is a beast.

And that crusade is a matter for you.

Don't show the cowardice of being 'brave'; take to your heels!

Suffering overwhelms you because you take it like a coward. Meet it bravely, with a christian spirit: and you will regard it as a treasure.

Examine yourself: slowly, courageously. Is it not true that your bad humour and your gloominess, both without cause — without apparent cause — are due to your lack of determination in breaking the subtle but real snares laid for you — cunningly and attractively — by your concupiscence?

Say to her: Mother, my Mother — yours, because you are hers on many counts — may your love bind me to your Son's Cross: may I not lack the Faith, nor the courage, nor the daring, to carry out the will of our Jesus.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus visit Jesus privately when things are normal and also in the hour of triumph.

But they are courageous in the face of authority, declaring their love for Christ audacter, boldly, in the hour of cowardice. Learn from them.