The Way (XIII)

Why don't you give yourself to God once and for all... really... now!

If you see your way clearly, follow it. Why don't you shake off the cowardice that holds you back?

Your ideal, your vocation: it's madness. And your friends, your brothers: they're crazy. Haven't you heard that cry deep down within you sometimes? Answer firmly that you are grateful to God for the honor of being one of those "lunatics."

You write me: "The great longing we all have to see our work get ahead and spread seems to turn into impatience. When will it get under way? When will it break through? When will we see the world ours?" And you add: "The longing won't be useless if we use it in pestering and 'coercing' God with prayers. Then we will have made excellent use of our time."

Lord, make us crazy with a contagious craziness that will draw many to your apostolate.

Look: the apostles, for all their evident and undeniable weaknesses, were sincere, simple... transparent. You, too, have evident and undeniable weaknesses. May you not lack simplicity.

Apostolic zeal is a divine madness I want you to have, and it has these symptoms: hunger to know the Master; constant concern for souls; perseverance that nothing can shake.

Never be men or women generous in action and sparing in prayer.

Be men and women of the world, but don't be worldly men and women.

Be careful that in dealing with other people you don't make them feel like someone who once exclaimed (and not without reason), "I'm fed up with these righteous characters!"

"My enthusiasm is gone," you wrote me. Yours has to be a work not of enthusiasm, but of love, conscious of duty--which means self-denial.