“We must be not just aware of what our Church teaches and does — we must be trying to saturate ourselves in it. St. Seraphim, in his spiritual instructions, says that the Christian must be “swimming in the law of the Lord” — and this doesn’t mean just making the Church a little part of one’s life; it means going deeper and doing more. Of course, we start a little at a time. If you have been going to church just on Sundays, you can begin to go to the Vigil on Saturday night, and to feast-day services. If you’ve been trying to keep the fast of Great Lent, you can begin to go to more of the very moving services of Lent — the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, the Praises of the Mother of God.  And another very important thing: You should be reading spiritual books. St. John Chrysostom goes so far as to say that a Christian who doesn’t read spiritual books can’t be saved. Why? Because the world, whose spirit we absorb unconsciously many hours a day, is so strong that we will almost automatically follow its ways unless we are consciously filling our minds and hearts with Christian impressions. “

‘Orthodoxy in America’