I thought about work as prayer. ... Why not? Not in the pious sense of nice, polite requests up to a capricious Godhead; rather a force, vital and alive, part of the quotidian fabric, producing — at a depth unknown to pollsters, spin doctors demographers, and other calibrators of human emotion — widespread outcomes throughout society? Innumerable small acts of generosity and goodwill, binding us closer, motivating us, giving us little boosts of hope and faith in each other. Changing the world, even.
Why not indeed? For a man who didn't see the everyday world as separate from the sacred. Who saw God everywhere, shining out from the down-to-earth and battered and untidy and defeated. Who was a commonsense saint, a saint of what could be done, not should be done, a practical saint, a saint of imperfection.
— Tony Hendra, Father Joe, © 2004, pp 202-203, Random House
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