Jesus Caritas

I cannot say that I desire death. I used to desire it, but now I see so much good to be done, so many souls without a shepherd, that what I most want is to do a little good and work a little for the salvation of those poor souls. Still, God loves them far more than I do and doesn't need me. May his will be done. There s nothing really wrong with me, but the summer wears me down. I get feverish spells sometimes, headaches, sleepless nights. Nothing that lasts and nothing severe. It will go away when the hot weather does, in five weeks. I'm leading my usual life, but getting less work done.

Islam shook me deeply. Seeing such faith, seeing people living in the continual presence of God, I came to glimpse something greater and more real than worldly occupations. I set about studying Islam and then the Bible.

You made me feel a painful emptiness, a sadness I've never felt before. This sadness and this restlessness was Your gift. How far I was from realising it.

Let me choose this forsaken land and settle here, let me make my home among the Tuareg, as deep into the heart of the country as possible and bring Jesus to those who do not know him.

Let us be afraid of one thing only, not to love Jesus enough.

Every Christian must be an apostle, this is not a counsel, it is a commandment. My apostolate must be an apostolate of goodness. On seeing me people should say to themselves, since this man is so good, his religion must be good. And if I am asked why I am so gentle and good I must reply, because I am the servant of the One whose goodness is still greater. If only you knew how good my Master Jesus is!

If I were able, but I am not, to do otherwise than to loose myself totally in union with God’s divine will, I would want to choose for myself complete lack of success and perpetual solitude and failure in everything. This is the path of union with the lowliness and the cross of our Beloved God, which has always seemed to me desirable above all other ways.

The person who lives by faith is full of new thoughts, new tastes, new judgements. New horizons open before them and necessarily, they begin a new life.

Real faith causes every impossibility to disappear. It makes a nonsense of those words, anxiety, danger and fear. It makes us walk through life with calm peace and deep joy, like a child holding its mother’s hand.