"Forgive me if I disturb your peace of mind. But why not ask yourself today, without wasting time deciding whether you have received little or much, whether you have been given the wonderful but awkward, great but dangerous vocation to serve humanity as a member of the Abrahamic minorities?
"If we are to understand the potential force of these minorities, we must realize the value of each man however 'average' he may be. It would be easy to discount such a man, who is neither a great saint nor a great sinner, incapable either of great cowardice or great courage. He wants to live in peace with his own family. We are tempted to apply to him the terrible words of the Bible: he is neither cold nor hot. God will spew him out of his mouth.
"If it is true that the average man is not made for heroism or martyrdom, it is also true that his daily life is made up of sacrifices and acts of anonymous heroism.
"The taxi driver in a small provincial town who provides for the education of his eight children. The clerical worker's wife who performs miracles of organization to add to her husband's salary what they need for their two children and the third one on the way. The girl who does not marry but adopts eleven nephews, who are the children of her two brothers. . . . In the Middle Ages this was called 'white martyrdom.' We could give endless examples of it.
"These are the people whose sacrifice is their daily grind. Are there others who could take on the problems of the larger human family? The average man lives monotonously: the same house, the same faces, the same voices, the same worries. These others give themselves without stint. They accept the burden and they do not remain anonymous.
"It would be stupid and unjust to despise the average man, who is after all in the majority. We should try to form an alliance between him and the front-line fighters. We should recognize, truly not just as a tactical maneuver, the value of anonymous heroism, white martyrdom.
"If we give him his due, the average man will readily see for his part that others might have a different vocation and see also that there might be ways in which he could help the work of these minorities. If he is understood, informed, listened to, and roused to peaceful violence, this average man could play a vital part."
