WORCESTER — It was one of those compassionate gestures that happen all the time. Often it’s transitory, an ephemeral good deed. Not this time.

Here’s what happened: A few years back, Paul Ruane was sitting in St. Columba Church in Paxton, where he and his family worship. There was an announcement. A poor parish in nearby Worcester needed help.

So Ruane joined other parishioners and jumped in. They made Thanksgiving food baskets. He packed his daughter Jill, then an eighth-grader, in the car with a bunch of other kids and drove to St. Peter Church on Main Street here.

What they found was sobering. Most of the food ready for the poor people of St. Peter’s was not typical Thanksgiving fare. There was canned tuna. Boxed cereal. Packages of pasta. Hardly worthy of Norman Rockwell.

“The kids were in disbelief,’’ Ruane recalled. “They were asking me: ‘That’s all these people get for Thanksgiving?’ ’’

Yes, the church’s longtime pastor, Monsignor Frank Scollen, assured them. Food is scarce, even on Thanksgiving.

With that, a one-man movement was born. Ruane spent 33 years at the state Department of Correction, rising to superintendent. A 2009 heart attack presented a grim choice: retire or die. He retired. And then went back to work, earning a new title around the rectory and the parish center at St. Peter’s.

“We refer to him as our Food Angel,’’ Monsignor Scollen told me Monday as volunteers assembled hundreds of Thanksgiving food packages for distribution. “Paul comes every week to help us with food. For him, it’s not a once-a-year thing. This is a very good guy.’’

Across the years, Ruane — who used to supervise recycling for the DOC — has become a fixture at St. Peter’s and at nearby food pantries.

He also became a fixture at the produce counter at the Big Y. He scours Stop & Shop ads for the best buy on turkeys. He’s got an eagle eye for deals on pumpkin pies. He knows where to get day-old bread and bins of donated delicious apples.

The result? Some 535 families of the St. Peter’s family will go home this week with a turkey meal and all the fixings: potatoes, carrots, squash, yams, cranberry sauce, gravy, assorted fruits, and cider.

There are important lessons, too. Don’t judge the down and out because you never know their whole story. Gratitude is everywhere. People are good.

“Along the way, we all received help,’’ Ruane told me at the parish center on Monday. “Even if you didn’t realize it, you’ve had help. There will be people crying here this week because they’re so grateful.’’

A bit of full disclosure: I have known Paul Ruane all my life. We grew up together in a small town not far from here. We served as altar boys at the 7 o’clock Mass on weekday mornings before school. We were Cub Scouts in the same den led by Mrs. Burgwinkle and Mrs. Gibbons.

I see him now only occasionally — at wakes and at class reunions where he is our hilarious master of ceremonies. But I know him well enough to say this with confidence: He’s no angel.

He’s the next best thing. He’s not trying to save the world. He’s seen a need, and he’s figured out a way to fill it. And then he kept doing it — without complaint or pursuit of applause — year after year.

He didn’t ask me to write about him. I pestered him to let me do it.

“Supposedly learned people tell us that people are out there scamming the system,’’ Ruane said. “They’re alcoholics and drug addicts with their hands out. It just isn’t true. Hunger is out there every day. Good people are hurting. I can see it.’’

I sat a few desks away from Ruane when the Sisters of Presentation taught us in grammar-school religion class the importance of helping the needy and downtrodden.

“Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor,’’ we were told.

Turns out some of us were listening more closely than others.

Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.