List of points

Be clever, spiritually clever. Don’t wait for the Lord to send you setbacks; go out to meet them with a spirit of voluntary atonement. — Then you’ll receive them not so much with resignation (an old-sounding word) as with Love — a word which is forever young.

Turn to Our Lady — the Mother, Daughter and Spouse of God, and our Mother — and ask her to obtain more graces for you from the Blessed Trinity: the grace of faith, of hope, of love and of contrition. So that when it seems that a harsh dry wind is blowing in your life, threatening to wither those flowers of your soul, they will not wither… and neither will those of your brothers.

As long as I don’t lose You, no sorrow will be a sorrow at all.

Jesus will refuse a word to no one, and his words bring healing, they console, they bring light.

—This is what you and I have to remember at all times, especially when we find ourselves tired and weighed down by work or opposition.

What a beautiful prayer for you to say frequently, that one of our good friend praying for a priest whom hatred for religion imprisoned: “My God, comfort him, since it is for you he suffers persecution. How many suffer, because they serve you!”

—What a source of joy the Communion of Saints is!

Insults hurt so much, even though you want to love them.

—Don’t be surprised: offer them to God.

You were very hurt at being slighted! That means you are forgetting too easily who you are.

When we think we have been accused of something unjustly, we should examine our behaviour, in God’s presence, cum gaudio et pace — calmly and cheerfully; and we should change our ways if charity bids us, even if our actions were harmless.

—We have to struggle to be saints, more and more each day. Then let people say what they like so long as we can apply the words of the beatitude to their utterances: Beati estis cum… dixerint omne malum adversus vos mentientes propter me — Blessed are you when they slander you for my sake.

Someone — I don’t remember who, or when — once said that the hurricane of slander always rages against those who are outstanding, just as the wind beats most furiously on the tallest pines.

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.

It is not possible to do good, even among good people, without running into the holy Cross of gossip.

In silentio et in spe erit fortitudo vestra — in quietness and in trust shall be your strength… This is what the Lord assures to those who are his own. Keep quiet, and trust in him. These are two essential weapons in moments of difficulty, when there doesn’t seem to be any human solution.

Look at Jesus in his Holy Passion and Death: suffering borne without complaint is also a measure of love.