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196.1
First Point
Be convinced of what Saint Paul says, that you plant and water the
seed, but it is God through Jesus Christ who makes it grow, and brings
your work to fulfillment. So, when it happens that you encounter some
difficulty in the guidance of your disciples, when there are some who do
not profit from your instructions and you observe a certain spirit of
immorality in them, turn to God with confidence. Very insistently ask
Jesus Christ to make his Spirit come alive in you, since he has chosen you
to do his work.
Consider Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd of the Gospel who seeks
the lost sheep, places it upon his shoulders, and carries it back to
restore it to the fold. Since you are taking his place, look upon yourself
as obliged to do the same thing. Ask him for the grace needed to procure
the conversion of their hearts.
You must, then, devote yourself very much to prayer in order to
succeed in your ministry. You must constantly represent the needs of your
disciples to Jesus Christ, explaining to him the difficulties you have
experienced in guiding them. Jesus Christ, seeing that you regard him as
the one who can do everything in your work and yourself as an instrument
that ought to be moved only by him, will not fail to grant you what you
ask of him.
196.2 Second
Point
Jesus Christ, speaking to his apostles, told them that he gave an
example to them that they might do as he himself had done. He also wanted
his disciples to accompany him at all the conversions he brought about, so
that seeing how he acted, they could, in all they would have to do to win
souls to God, be guided and formed by his conduct.
This is also what you must do, since Jesus Christ has chosen you
among so many others to be his cooperators in the salvation of souls. In
reading the Gospel you must study the manner and the means that he used to
lead his disciples to practice the truths of the Gospel.
Sometimes he proposed as a happiness everything that the world
holds in horror, like poverty, injuries, insults, slander, and every kind
of persecution for the sake of justice, even telling his disciples that
they ought to be glad and rejoice when such things happen to them.
At other times he inspired horror for the sins into which people
ordinarily fall, or at other times he proposed virtues to practice, such
as gentleness, humility, and the like.
He also made them understand that unless their justice surpassed
that of the scribes and Pharisees (who bothered themselves about externals
only), they would not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Lastly he wanted the rich and those who have their pleasures in
this world to be regarded as unfortunate.
It is according to these practices and all the others of Jesus
Christ that you must teach the Christian youth entrusted to you.
196.3 Third Point
In carrying out your service to children, you will not fulfill your
ministry adequately if you resemble Jesus Christ only in his guidance and
In his conversion of souls. You must also enter into his purposes and kits
goals. He came on earth, as he himself said, only that people might have
life and have it to the full. This is why he said in another place that
his words are spirit and life. By this he meant that his words procure the
true life, which is the life of the soul, for those who hear them and,
with gladness over what they have heard, act on them with love.
This must be your goal when you instruct your disciples, that they
live a Christian life and that your words become spirit and life for them.
Your words will accomplish this:
1.
Because they will be produced by the Spirit of God living in you,
2.
Because they will procure for your disciples the Christian spirit.
In possessing this spirit, which is the very Spirit of Jesus Christ
they will live that true life which is so valuable to us because it leads
surely to eternal life.
Guard against any human attitude toward your disciples; do not
pride yourselves over what you do. These two things are capable of
spoiling all the good there is in the performance of your duties. What
have you in this regard that has not been given to you? And if it has been
given to you, why are you boasting as if you had it on your own?
Keep, then, the goals of your work as completely pure as those of
Jesus Christ himself; by this means you will draw upon yourselves and all
your labors his blessing and grace.
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