“Our spiritual life is not something bookish or that follows formulas. Everything we learn has to become part of our life and something natural to us. We can be reading about hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer, for example, and begin to say it ourselves — and still be blind to our own passions and unresponsive to a person in need right in front of us, not seeing that this is a test of our Christianity that comes at a more basic level than saying the Jesus Prayer. We have to read Orthodox books that are on our level…and we have to read them very humbly, realizing the nature of our times when worldly influences are present everywhere and affect our thinking even when we aren’t aware of it, and never dreaming that we are on any level but that of raw beginners.”

‘Orthodoxy in America’