"The Way" (I)

May your behavior and your conversation be such that everyone who sees or hears you can say: This man reads the life of Jesus Christ.

Don’t waste your energy and your time—which belong to God—throwing stones at the dogs that bark at you on the way. Ignore them.

Will-power. A very important quality. Don’t disregard the little things, which are really never futile or trivial. For by the constant practice of repeated self-denial in little things, with God’s grace you will increase in strength and manliness of character. In that way you’ll first become master of yourself, and then a guide and a leader: to compel, to urge, to draw others with your example and with your word and with your knowledge and with your power.

Get to know the Holy Spirit, the Great Unknown, the one who has to sanctify you. Don’t forget that you are a temple of God. The Holy Spirit is in the center of your soul: listen to him, and follow his inspirations with docility.

Don’t hinder the work of the Holy Spirit. Be united to Christ in order to purify yourself, and together with him experience the insults, the spit, the blows and the thorns… Experience with him the weight of the cross, the nails tearing your flesh, and the agony of a forsaken death… And enter into the pierced side of our Lord Jesus until you find secure shelter in his wounded heart.

You seek the friendship of those who, with their conversation and affection, with their company, help you to bear more easily the exile of this world—although sometimes those friends fail you. I don’t see anything wrong with that. But how is it that you do not seek everyday, more eagerly, the company, the conversation of that great friend who will never fail you?

You don’t know how to pray? Put yourself in the presence of God, and as soon as you have said, “Lord, I don’t know how to pray!” you can be sure you’ve already begun.

Et in meditatione mea exardescit ignis.—“And in my meditation a fire shall flame up.” That’s why you go to prayer: to become a blaze, a living flame giving heat and light. So, when you don’t know how to go on, when it feels as if your fire is dying out and you can’t throw fragrant logs on it, throw on the branches and twigs of short vocal prayers, of ejaculations, to keep feeding the blaze. And you will have used the time well.

You don’t know what to say to our Lord in prayer. Nothing comes to you and yet you would like to ask his advice about many things. Look: take some notes during the day of the things you want to think about in the presence of God. And then go with those notes to pray.

When you go to pray, let this be a firm resolution: Don’t prolong your prayer just because you find consolation in it, nor curtail it just because you find it dry.

Don’t tell Jesus you want consolation in prayer. But if he gives it to you, thank him. Tell him always that what you want is perseverance.

Your mind is sluggish and won’t work. You struggle to coordinate your ideas in the presence of our Lord, but it’s useless: a complete fog! Don’t force yourself, and don’t worry either. Listen closely: it is the hour for your heart.