Often in a church I have thought that while there is scant hope for me, I can ask God to strengthen the holiness of all these good people here that man, that woman, that child… and I do so. In St. Anne’s Basilica it struck me in the middle of a white-robed priest’s French service that possibly everybody in that stone chamber, and possibly everybody in every other house of prayer on earth, thinks this way. What if we are all praying for one another in the hope that the others are holy, when we are not? Of course this must be the case. Then-again possibly-surely it adds up to something or other? – Annie Dillard, from For The Time Being