List of points

Most people have a plane-like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume.

If you lose the supernatural meaning of your life, your charity will be philanthropy; your purity, decency; your mortification, stupidity; your discipline, a whip; and all your works, fruitless.

Silence is the door-keeper of the interior life.

Paradox: sanctity is more attainable than learning, but it is easier to be learned than to be a saint.

A change! You say you need a change!… opening your eyes wide so as to take in better the images of things, or almost closing them because you are short-sighted.

Close them altogether! Have interior life, and you will see, in undreamt-of colour and relief, the wonders of a better world, of a new world: and you will draw close to God…, and know your weakness…, and be deified… with a deification which, by bringing you nearer to your Father, will make you more a brother of your fellow-men.

Ambition: to be good myself, and to see everyone else better than I.

Conversion is the matter of a moment. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime.

There is nothing better in the world than to be in the grace of God.

Purity of intention. You will have it always if, always and in everything, you seek only to please God.

Enter into the wounds of Christ Crucified. There you will learn to guard your senses, you will have interior life, and you will continually offer to the Father the sufferings of our Lord and those of Mary, in payment of your debts and the debts of all men.

Your holy impatience to serve him does not displease God. But it will be fruitless if it is not accompanied by a real improvement in your daily conduct.

To rectify. A little each day. — This must be your constant concern if you really want to become a saint.

What depths of mercy there are in God's justice! For, in the judgments of men, he who confesses his fault is punished: and in the Judgment of God, he is pardoned.

Blessed be the holy Sacrament of Penance!

'Put on the Lord Jesus Christ', says Saint Paul to the Romans. It is in the Sacrament of Penance that you and I put on Jesus Christ and his merits.

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.

The power of your name, Lord! As a heading to my letter I had written, as always, 'May Jesus watch over you.'

And he replies: 'The "May Jesus watch over you" of your letter has already helped me out of more than one tight corner. May he also watch over all of you.'

'Now that our Lord is helping me with his usual generosity, I will try to respond by being even more "considerate" in my ways.

So you told me. And I had nothing to add.

I wrote to you and said: I'm relying on you: you'll see what we can do…!' — What could we do, except rely on Him!

A missionary. — You dream of being a missionary. Another Francis Xavier… And you long to conquer an empire for Christ. Japan, China, India, Russia… the peoples of the North of Europe, or America, or Africa, or Australia?

Stir up that fire in your heart, that hunger for souls. But don't forget that you are more of a missionary 'obeying'. Geographically distant from those apostolic fields, you work both 'here' and 'there': don't you — like Xavier — feel your arm tired after administering baptism to so many?

You tell me, yes, that you want to. Very good: but do you want to as a miser longs for gold, as a mother loves her child, as a worldling craves for honours, or as a wretched sensualist seeks his pleasure ?

No? Then, you don't want to.

What zeal people put into their earthly affairs: dreaming of honours, striving for riches, bent on sensuality. Men and women, rich and poor, old and middle— aged and young and even children: all of them the same.

When you and I put the same zeal into the affairs of our souls, we will have a living and operative faith: and there will be no obstacle that we cannot overcome in our apostolic undertakings.

To you, who like sports, the Apostle's argument should appeal: 'All the runners at the stadium are trying to win, but only one of them gets the prize. You must run in the same way, meaning to win'.

Recollection. Seek God within you and listen to him.

Encourage those noble thoughts, those holy desires which are awakening in you… A single spark may start a conflagration.