List of points

I understood you very well when you ended up saying: “Quite honestly, I haven’t even made the grade of being a donkey — the donkey that was the throne of Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. I’m just part of a disgusting heap of dirty tatters that the poorest rag-picker would ignore.”

But I told you: all the same, God has chosen you and wants you to be his instrument. So your wretchedness — which is a genuine fact — should turn into one more reason for you to be thankful to God for calling you.

When human beings have work to do they try to use the right tools for the job.

If I had lived in another century, I would have written with a quill pen: now I use a fountain pen.

But when God wants to carry out some piece of work, he uses unsuitable means, so that it can be seen that the work is his. How often you have heard me say this!

So you and I, who are aware of the massive weight of our failings, should tell Our Lord: “Wretched as I am, I still understand that in your hands I am a divine instrument.”

God has a special right over us, his children: it is the right to our response to his love, in spite of our failings. This inescapable truth puts us under an obligation which we cannot shirk. But it also gives us complete confidence: we are instruments in the hands of God, instruments that he relies on every day. That is why, every day, we struggle to serve him.

God expects his instruments to do what they can to be fit and ready: you should strive to make sure you are always fit and ready.

The power of working miracles! How many dead — and even rotting — souls you will raise, if you let Christ act in you.

In those days, the Gospel tells us, the Lord was passing by; and they, the sick, called to him and sought him out. Now, too, Christ is passing by, in your Christian life. If you second him, many will come to know him, will call to him, will ask him for help: and their eyes will be opened to the marvellous light of grace.

You insist on doing your own thing, and so your work is barren.

Obey: be docile. Each cog in a machine must be put in its place. If not, the machine stops, or the parts get damaged. It will surely not produce anything, or if it does, then very little. In the same way, a man or a woman outside his or her proper field of action, will be more of a hindrance than an instrument of apostolate.

The apostle has no aim other than letting God work, making himself available.

The first Twelve, too, were foreigners in the lands where they taught the Gospel. They came up against people who were building the world on foundations diametrically opposed to Christ’s doctrine.

—Look: despite these adverse circumstances, they knew that they had been entrusted with the divine message of the Redemption. And so the Apostle cries, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”

We can never attribute to ourselves the power of Jesus who is passing by amongst us. Our Lord is passing by: and he transforms souls when we come close to him with one heart, one feeling, one desire: to be good Christians. But it is he who does it: not you nor I. It is Christ who is passing by!

—And then he stays in our hearts — in yours and in mine! — and in our tabernacles.

—Jesus is passing by, and Jesus comes to stay. He stays in you, in each one of you, and in me.

You told me, in confidence, that in your prayer you would open your heart to God with these words: “I think of my wretchedness, which seems to be on the increase in spite of the graces you give me. It must be due to my failure to correspond. I know that I am completely unprepared for the enterprise you are asking of me. And when I read in the newspapers of so very many highly qualified and respected men, with talents and money, speaking, writing, organizing in defence of your reign… I look at myself, and see that I’m a nobody: ignorant, poor: so little, in a word. This would fill me with shame if I did not know that you want me to be so. But Lord Jesus, you know how very gladly I have put my ambition at your feet… To have Faith and Love, to be loving, believing, suffering. In these things I do want to be rich and learned: but no more rich or learned than you, in your limitless Mercy, have wanted me to be. I desire to put all my prestige and honour into fulfilling your most just and most lovable Will.”

—I then said to you: don’t let this remain merely as a good desire.

God needs women and men who are sure and strong, on whom he can lean.

Tell him slowly: Good Jesus, if I am to be an apostle, and an apostle of apostles, you have to make me very humble.

May I know myself. May I know myself and know you.

—Then I will never lose sight of my nothingness.