List of points

You have to act like a burning coal, spreading fire wherever it happens to be; or at least, striving to raise the spiritual temperature of the people around you, leading them to live a truly Christian life.

Freely, according to your own interests and talents, you have to take an active, effective part in the wholesome public or private associations of your country, in a way that is full of the Christian spirit. Such organizations never fail to make some difference to people’s temporal or eternal good.

We have to stand out boldly against those “damning freedoms” — those daughters of licence, granddaughters of evil passions, great granddaughters of original sin — which come down, as you can see, in a direct line from the devil.

Children of God — like yourself — cannot be afraid of living in the professional or social surroundings which are proper to them. They are never alone!

—God Our Lord, who always goes with you, grants you the means to be faithful to him, and to bring others to him.

As a child of God, with his grace in you, you have to be a strong person, a man or woman of desires and achievements.

—We are not hothouse plants. We live in the middle of the world, and we have to be able to face up to all the winds that blow, to the heat and the cold, to rain and storms…, but always faithful to God and to his Church.

Plots, wretched misinterpretations, cut to the measure of the base hearts that will read them, cowardly insinuations… It is a picture that, sadly, we see over and over again, in different fields. They neither work themselves, nor let others work.

Meditate slowly on those verses of the Psalm: “My God, I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons. Because zeal for thy house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me.” And keep on working.

The Master has said it already: if only we children of the light were to put at least as much effort and obstinacy into doing good as the children of darkness put into their activities!

—Don’t complain. Work, instead, to drown evil in an abundance of good!

A Catholic man or woman can never forget this key idea: we have to imitate Jesus Christ in every sphere of society, without rejecting anyone.

The children of God are present and give witness in the

world to draw others, not to be drawn by them. They should spread their own atmosphere, the atmosphere of Christ, not let themselves be won over by a different atmosphere.