The ordinary daily life of men in Christian culture, who work not only in the sweat of their brows, but for the love of their families, there is also love of work. When men cut wood or go to war or make love to their wives, and when women spin or wash and reciprocate that love, they are working not only to get the job done so that children will be born and grow and have clothes to wear and food to eat. They are working so that those children will one day be saints in heaven. They are working as the very instruments of God’s love to create a kind of heavenly garden here and now in the home, by which each axe becomes a violin, each loom a harp, each day a prayer, each hour a psalm. —from The Death of Christian Culture  

This quotation first appeared here in June 2016.

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The featured image (detail) is “The Angelus” by Jean-François Millet (1730). This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedicatio, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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