Cassidy’s Reviews > The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity > Status Update

“If we do not love one another, we cannot love God; and if we do not love God, we cannot make a true confession of faith and cannot enter into the inner spirit of Tradition, for there is no other way of knowing God than to love Him.”

“It is wise to remember that our enemy lies not only outside us but within… Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”

“‘I feel such a calm,’ I answered, ‘such peace in my soul that no words can express it.’
‘This,’ said Father Seraphim, ‘is peace of which the Lord said to His disciples: My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you, the peace which passes all understanding.’”

“In the early hours of 29 May the last Christian service was held in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom. It was a United service of Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for at this moment of crisis (they) forgot their differences. The Emperor went out after receiving communion, and died fighting on the walls. Later the same day the city fell to the Turks, and the most glorious church in Christendom became a mosque.”