Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost... However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts... for they have already been given to another.

It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself.

...Gratitude transforms the torment of memory of good things now gone into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.

And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful”; and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.