Scorn both these evil suggestions and the wickedness of their author, who is the devil. Be very cheerful and humble yourself as much as you can. Ordinarily, God allows these things to happen to free us from some hidden pride and to engender in us holy humility.

God's affairs are accomplished gradually and almost imperceptibly and His spirit is neither violent nor tempestuous.

Use gentle methods to get whatever good you can from priests and monks who are slaves, as well as from merchants and captives. Resort to severe measures only in extreme cases, for fear lest the hardship they are already enduring in their state of captivity, joined to the strictness you might want to exercise in virtue of your authority, drive them to despair. . . . It is not light they need, but strength, and strength permeates through the external balm of words and good example.

I will always welcome joyfully any opportunity that comes my way to be of service to you

[M]ay you be more advanced in the school of solid virtue, which is practiced in an excellent way in the midst of suffering, and which keeps good servants of God in fear when they have nothing to suffer!

We are still tossed about by the disturbances of this life, which is like a stormy sea, where those who are not attached to J[esus] C[hrist] and the duties of their state, as was our dear departed, are shipwrecked.

Let us allow God to act; He brings things to completion when we least expect it.