Attendance at Divine Services and frequent reception of Holy Communion is vital to the development of an Orthodox conscience. Of this, St. John of Kronstadt writes:

“The Divine Liturgy is truly a heavenly service on earth, in which God Himself, in a particular, immediate, and most close manner is present and dwells with men ….There is on earth nothing higher, greater, more holy, than the Liturgy; nothing more solemn, nothing more life-giving.”

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk observed:   “The Christians of old frequently received communion as the cause and food of immortality, wherefore even up to our own time the Holy Church daily exhorts us to ‘draw near with fear of God and with faith’. At the present day people have neither, as the facts abundantly prove; only once a year, and even then almost under compulsion, do they approach the Table of Immortality ….  Men hasten joyfully to banquets, but to this spiritual and most Sacred Table to which Christ invites them they come under compulsion.”

Orthodox America Vol 1 Issue 6