The True Believer

"A living Christianity is necessary to the world.  Faith must be actual, practical, existential faith.  To believe in God means to live in such a manner that life could not possibly be lived if God did not exist.  For the practical believer, gospel justice, gospel attentiveness to everything human must inspire not only the deeds of the saints, but the structure and institutions of common life, and must penetrate to the depths of terrestrial existence."

-- Jacques Maritain, "A New Approach to God" (The Range of Reason, p.100)