Trust in God’s Mercy!
It is not your justice but God’s mercy which is the motive of your trust. He is the God of all consolations and the Father of mercies. He does not wish the death of sinners but that they be converted and live. He came to heal the sick and to seek those who were lost. He spared the woman taken in adultery. He showed mercy to the thief crucified with him. He took upon himself our punishment. He prayed for his murderers. He now intercedes for us at the right hand of God. None of the damned was ever lost because his sin was too great, but because his trust was too small!

Oh, if only all the sinners of the whole wide world were present here! Yes, even the greatest, the most hardened, even those close to despair, I would call out to them: The Lord is kind and merciful, patient and full of love. I would show them why the Apostles call God the Father of Mercy, the God of all consolation. I would tell them that the prophet in the Old Testament even said that the earth is full of the mercy of God and that mercy is above all His works.

Oh, Mother of Mercy! You understood the Mercy of God when you cried out in the Magnificat — ‘His mercy is from generation to generation.’ Obtain for all sinners a childlike confidence in the Mercy of God!

Fools for Christ!
This life is full of obstacles, difficulties for one whose purpose is the close following of Christ. O how few start on this road of the following of Christ! And for this reason it may sometimes appear that the true Christian life is something excessive. Our poor human nature may even call it at times a stupidity to despise a pleasure for God. It is as if somebody said to us: ‘How stupid you are to deny yourselves all innocent pleasures which others enjoy without scruple of conscience. Do you only want to go to Heaven? O what a dry, uninteresting form of existence!’ To such whisperings of the devil, you must never pay attention.

The Kindness of the Priest
Want of urbanity effects no good and affability does no evil. The priest who is rough with people does injury to himself and to others; he sins, at least in ignorance, against charity, patience, poverty, humility and self-denial. He scandalizes all who see him and hear him. Hundreds of souls turn away him, from God and from religion. Thousands reject the Church and the sacraments and perish in eternity solely because they have been badly treated by a priest.

A long experience has taught me the great lesson that God leads men in a human manner by other men whom he appointed to be in His place and who should be of the same kindness as he himself was while on earth. Many a soul might be gained for the true faith and eternal life if sometimes a little more charity, a little more self-denial would be evinced, and if persons would be treated as their personal dispositions and human nature would require. It is true that it requires great virtue and experience to find always the right measure in these things, but we cannot fail much if our intention remains pure.

"The assistance of power from above is plainly visible, so that we are often humbled at seeing the great mercy and goodness of God!" -- Father Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R.

"Think always on the shortness of life and on the eternal happiness that we will enjoy in glory and contentment, which now we cannot even imagine" -- Father Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R.

"We must strive to embrace the crosses which God sends us with a willing, even joyful heart." -- Fr. Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R.