List of points

A son of God fears neither life nor death, because his spiritual life is founded on a sense of divine filiation. God is my Father, he thinks, and he is the Author of all good; he is all Goodness.

—But, you and I, do we really act as sons of God?

I was delighted to see that you understood what I had said to you: you and I have to work and live and die like people in love, and we will live in this way for all eternity.

God always wins. If you are his instrument, you too will win, because you will fight God’s battles.

Sanctity consists precisely in this: in struggling to be faithful throughout your life and in accepting joyfully the Will of God at the hour of death.

When you receive Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, thank him from the bottom of your heart for being so good as to be with you.

Have you ever stopped to consider that it took centuries and centuries before the Messiah came? All those patriarchs and prophets praying together with the whole people of Israel: Come, Lord, the land is parched!

If only your loving expectation were like this.

Even in our times, despite those who deny God, earth is very close to Heaven.

You wrote: “Simile est regnum caelorum — the Kingdom of God is like a treasure… This passage from the Holy Gospel has fallen on my soul and taken root. I had read it so many times before, without grasping its meaning, its divine flavour.”

Yes, everything! The prudent man has to sell everything to obtain the treasure — the precious pearl of Glory.

Talk with Our Lady and tell her trustingly, O Mary, in order to live the ideal which God has set in my heart I need to fly very high — ever so high!

It is not sufficient to detach yourself, with God’s help, from the things of this world, recognising them as the merest clay. More is needed: even if you were to put the whole universe in a pile under your feet to get closer to Heaven… it wouldn’t suffice!

You have to fly, without the support of anything here on earth, relying on the voice and the inspiration of the Spirit. And you will tell me: But my wings are stained and smeared with the clinging mud of many years.

And I repeat: Turn to Our Lady. Mary, you should say to her again, I can hardly get off the ground. The earth draws me like an accursed magnet. Mary, you can make my soul take off on that glorious and definitive flight which has as its destination the very Heart of God.

—Trust in her, for she is listening to you.

Think how pleasing to God Our Lord is the incense burnt in his honour. Think also how little the things of this earth are worth; even as they begin they are already ending.

In Heaven, instead, a great Love awaits you, with no betrayals and no deceptions. The fullness of love, the fullness of beauty and greatness and knowledge… And it will never cloy: it will satiate, yet still you will want more.

With a supernatural outlook, with serenity and peace. That is the way to see things, people and events — from the viewpoint of eternity.

And then, whatever barrier blocks your way — even if it is, humanly speaking, enormous — when you really raise your eyes to Heaven, how tiny it becomes!

If we are close to Christ and are following in his footsteps, we will wholeheartedly love poverty, privation and detachment from earthly things.

In our spiritual life, we often have to be ready to lose on earth so as to win in Heaven. This way we always win.

I was saying to you that even people who had not received baptism were moved when they were telling me, “I can well understand that saintly souls must be happy, for they look at events with a vision that is above the things of this world. They see things with the eyes of eternity.”

May you not lack that same vision, I added afterwards, so that you can respond to the special love with which the Blessed Trinity has treated you.

I assure you that if we want to, as children of God, we can make a powerful contribution towards lighting up the work and the lives of men with the divine and eternal splendour which it has pleased the Lord to place in our souls.

But “he who says he abides in Jesus ought to walk the same way He walked” as Saint John teaches. It is a path which always leads to glory. But it also always passes through sacrifice.

What a disappointment awaited those who saw the light of the pseudo-apostle, and wishing to come out of their darkness, were drawn to his light. They raced to get there. They may have left shreds of their skin along the way. Some in their eagerness for that light may also have left behind some shreds of their very souls. And now, having reached the pseudo-apostle, they find cold and darkness. Cold and darkness which will eventually fill the broken hearts of those who for a while have believed in that ideal.

It is an evil deed the pseudo-apostle has done. Those disappointed men who had been ready to give the flesh of their hearts in exchange for those glowing fires, for a breathtaking ruby of charity, drop once more back to the earth from which they had come. Down they go, with no fire in their heart, with a heart that is not a heart — just a chunk of ice shrouded in a darkness that will eventually cloud their brain.

You false apostle of paradoxes, see what you have done: because Christ is on your lips but not in your deeds; because you attract with a light which you yourself lack; because there is no warmth of charity in you, and you claim to be concerned about outsiders while all the time you are neglecting your own; because you are a liar, and the devil is the father of lies. And so, you are working for the devil, causing bewilderment to those who follow the Master, and even though you may triumph frequently here on earth, woe to you on that day which is approaching when our friend Death will come, and you shall see the anger of the Judge whom you have never deceived. Paradoxes, no, Lord: paradoxes? Never!

This is the sure way: through humiliation to the Cross; then, from the Cross, with Christ, to the immortal Glory of the Father.

How much I savoured the epistle of that day! The Holy Spirit through Saint Paul teaches us the secret of immortality and of Glory. All of us human beings yearn to live on.

We would wish to make those moments in our lives when we are happy last forever. We would wish the memory of our deeds to be glorified. We would like our cherished ideals to become immortal. And so it is that when we seem to be happy, when something consoles us in our distress, we all naturally say and desire that it should last forever, forever.

Oh the wisdom of the devil! How well he knew the human heart. You will be like gods, he said to our first parents. That was a cruel deception. Saint Paul in this Epistle to the Philippians teaches us a divine secret by which to attain immortality and Glory: Jesus… emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the Cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name which is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on earth and under the earth…

If we are to accompany Christ in his Glory, in his final triumph, we have first of all to share in his holocaust, becoming identified with him, who died on Calvary.

Don’t let yourself be distracted, don’t give free rein to your imagination. Live the life within you and you will be closer to God.

Help me repeat in the ear of this person and of that other one… and of everyone: a sinner who has faith, even if he were to obtain all the blessings of this earth, will necessarily be unhappy and wretched.

It is true that the motive that leads us (and should lead everyone) to hate sin, even venial sin, ought to be a supernatural one: that God abhors sin from the depths of his infiniteness, with a supreme, eternal and necessary hatred, as an evil opposed to the infinite good. But the first reason I mentioned to you can lead us to this other one.

You will have as much sanctity, as you have mortification done for Love.

Violent persecution had broken out. And that priest prayed: Jesus, may every sacrilegious fire increase in me the fire of Love and Reparation.

When you consider the beauty, the greatness and the effectiveness of apostolic work, you affirm that your head aches thinking of the amount of ground that still has to be covered — there are so many souls who are waiting! And you feel so very happy offering yourself as a slave to Jesus. You have a great desire for his Cross and for suffering, for Love and for souls. Without thinking about it, in an instinctive movement — which was one of Love — you stretched out your arms and opened the palms of your hands, ready for him to nail you to his Holy Cross. You were ready to be his slave — serviam — which is to reign.

I was moved by the heartfelt petition that came from your lips: “My God, my only desire is to be pleasing in your sight; nothing else matters to me. My Mother Immaculate, may I be motivated exclusively by Love.”

If I love, there will be no hell for me.

How good it is to live on God’s bounty! How good it is to desire nothing other than his Glory.

If you really want to attain eternal life and honour, you must learn in many cases to put aside your own noble ambitions.

Don’t lay so much stress on ‘my health’, ‘my family name’, ‘my career’, ‘my job’, or ‘my next step’… How annoying this can be! It would seem you have forgotten that you don’t have anything, that everything is His. How annoying this can be! It would seem you have forgotten that you don’t have anything, that everything is His.

When sometimes — perhaps without reason — you feel humiliated; when you think your opinion should prevail; when you notice that at every moment your “self” keeps cropping up: your things, your things, your things… convince yourself that you are killing time, and that what you need is someone to kill your selfishness.

I advise you not to look for praise, even when you deserve it. It is better to pass unnoticed, and to let the most beautiful and noble aspects of our actions, of our lives, remain hidden. What a great thing it is to become little! Deo omnis gloria! —All the glory to God.

In moments of disappointment, that soul said to Our Lord: “My Jesus, what else could I give you apart from my honour, if I had nothing else? If I had had a fortune I would have given it to you. If I had had virtues, I would have built up each one to serve you better. The only thing I had was my honour and I have given it to you. May you be blessed! It’s clear that it was safe in your hands!”

It is from clay I come and the earth is the inheritance of all my lineage.

Who but God deserves praise?

When you feel self-love — pride! — stirring within you, making you out to be a superman, it is time to cry out: No! In this way you will savour the joy of the good son of God who goes through life with faults, but doing good.

Sancta Maria, Stella maris — Holy Mary, Star of the sea, be our guide.

Make this firm request, because there is no storm which can shipwreck the most Sweet Heart of Mary. When you see the storm coming, if you get into that firm Refuge which is Mary, there will be no danger of your wavering or going down.