List of points

The Cross symbolises the life of an apostle of Christ, with a strength and a truth that delight both soul and body, though sometimes it is hard, and we can feel its weight.

I understand that, through Love, you want to suffer with Christ — to put your back between him and the executioners who are flogging him, your head instead of his for the thorns, and your hands and feet for the nails. Or at least to accompany our Mother, Holy Mary, on Calvary, and to plead guilty to deicide on account of your sins… and to suffer and to love.

You tell me: I have made up my mind to go more often to the Paraclete, to ask him for his light.

—Good. But remember, my child, that the Holy Spirit is a fruit of the Cross.

The cheerful love that fills the soul with happiness is founded on suffering. There is no love without renunciation.

Christ is nailed to the Cross. And you?… Still taken up with your whims and fancies — or rather, nailed by them!

We cannot, must not, be sugar-candy Christians: on earth there must be suffering and the Cross.

In this life of ours we must expect the Cross. Those who do not expect the Cross are not Christians, and they will be unable to avoid their own “cross”, which will drive them to despair.

Now, when the Cross has become a serious and weighty matter, Jesus will see to it that we are filled with peace. He will become our Simon of Cyrene, to lighten the load for us.

Then say to him, trustingly: “Lord, what kind of a Cross is this? A Cross which is no cross. Now I know the trick. It is to abandon myself in you; and from now on, with your help, all my crosses will always be like this.”

Renew in your own soul the resolution that friend of ours made long ago: “Lord, what I want is suffering, not exhibitionism.”

To have the Cross is to have found happiness: it is to have you, Lord!

What really makes a person — or a whole sector of society — unhappy, is the anxiety-ridden, selfish search for well-being, that desire to get rid of whatever is upsetting.

The way of Love is called Sacrifice.

It’s true! When the Holy Cross comes into our lives it unmistakably confirms that we belong to Christ.

The Cross is not pain, or annoyance, or bitterness… It is the holy wood on which Jesus Christ triumphs… and where we triumph too, when we receive cheerfully and generously what He sends us.

You have come to see that, after the Holy Sacrifice, it is on your Faith and your Love, on your penance, your prayer and your activity, that the perseverance, and even the life on earth of your people, to a great extent depend.

—Bless the Cross: the Cross that He — my Lord Jesus — and you and I bear.

O Jesus, I want to be a blazing fire of Love-madness. I want it to be sufficient for me just to be present in order to set the world on fire for miles around, with an unquenchable flame. I want to know that I am yours. Then, let the Cross come…

—This is a marvellous way: to suffer, to love, and to believe.