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Let me insist again and again that this is the road that God wants us to follow when he calls us to his service in the midst of the world to sanctify others and to sanctify ourselves by means of our daily occupations. With that enormous common sense of his, combined with his great faith, St Paul preached that 'in the law of Moses it is written: thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn', and then he asks: 'Is God here concerned about oxen? Or does he not rather say it for us? Yes, truly for your sake it was laid down; for hope makes the ploughman plough, and the thresher to thresh, in the anticipation of sharing in the crop.'

Christian life can never be reduced to an oppressive set of rules which leave the soul in a state of exasperation and tension. Rather, it accommodates itself to individual circumstances as a glove fits the hand, and it says that, as well as praying and sacrificing ourselves constantly, we should never lose our supernatural outlook as we go about our everyday tasks, be they big or small. Remember that God loves his creatures to distraction. How can a donkey work if it is not fed or given enough rest, or if its spirit is broken by too many beatings? Well, your body is like a little donkey, and it was a donkey that was God's chosen throne in Jerusalem, and it carries you along the divine pathways of this earth of ours. But it has to be controlled so that it doesn't stray away from God's paths. And it has to be encouraged so that it can trot along with all the briskness and cheerfulness that you would expect from a poor beast of burden.

This point in another language