Welcome to the Orthodox Church Quotes

“Beauty must mean something. God must know something about how beauty works on the human heart. He must have made us that way.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“A scholar attracts by his knowledge, a wealthy man by riches, a handsome man by beauty, an artist by his skill. Only love attracts all human beings. The attraction of love is unlimited. And educated and uneducated, rich or poor, skilled or unskilled, beautiful or ugly, healthy or sick, and young or old—all want to be loved. Christ spread his love on everyone, and lovingly drew all to himself. With his great love he encompassed even the dead, long decomposed and forgotten by men.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“Though we deserve your wrath, you instead always give us compassion.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“Thinking and talking about God is not communion with God. Only prayer is prayer.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“when we're suffocated by the world's distractions, it can be easy to avoid God. But we're also quite capable of spending our time pondering the great questions instead of dealing with God. Thinking and talking about God is not communion with God. Only prayer is prayer. Both worldly distractions and theoretical cogitating can be used to avoid the challenge that ultimately faces each of us: that we are called to enter a direct, personal relationship with God,”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“Orthodox spirituality recognizes delusion as a genuine danger (plani in Greek, prelest in Russian). The sure sign of someone far gone in delusion is a refusal to consider that she might be wrong.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“Are we able to see that deeper “reality"? Much of the work in spiritual growth is along that line; we are always trying to adjust our perception so we can see the “real" reality, trying to crash through our habitual assumption that we are alone in this world, that God is too busy to notice what we're doing, and that if he's watching at all, it's "From a Distance."* The kind of “realism" icons bring helps correct our perception, bringing it into accord with the presence of God throughout all creation,”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“The connection, for those on the path of theosis, is love. The most telling of spiritual disciplines is how we relate to other people. It's a marvelously handy spiritual discipline, too, because other people are just about everywhere you look. God puts others in our lives not only for our joy and comfort but also to irritate and provoke us, so that our flaws rise to the surface where we can recognize and deal with them. Love is not easy. If you think you love everybody, you're probably not letting them get close enough. * In Orthodox usage, a "theologian" is not a person who writes about theology, but a person who has experienced God's presence directly in prayer, perhaps even seen his Light, the Uncreated Light that existed before the world was made. "If you pray truly, you are a theologian," said Evagrius Ponticus, aD 345-399 (Treatise on Prayer, 61).”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“if the Bible was meant to say anything, it was meant to say it within a community,”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“It’s perhaps easier to understand this when we remember that the relationship between us and God is not simply one of power, not a question of who is in control, but a relationship of love. And love has a powerful—we might say irresistible—effect. When you feel that someone really loves you, you’re strongly drawn toward that person; you feel like a flower opening to the sun. It feels like we choose with our whole hearts to move toward that love. But what if God made us that way? Maybe we are programmed to respond like that to love, and couldn’t resist it if we tried. But if you try to imagine rejecting such love and turning away from it, it feels like you’re fighting against your free will, your deepest longing.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“The reason my husband and I became Orthodox was that our mainline denomination was energetically revising its theology; church leaders were teaching that Jesus wasn’t born of a virgin, he didn’t do any miracles, and he didn’t rise from the dead.†† After some reading, visiting churches, praying, and a whole lot of talking, we decided to join the Orthodox Church.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“our worship sometimes sounds over the top (“Save us, O Virgin,” “You are our only hope”), but we know what we mean. Mostly, we mean, “Pray for us.” We don’t mean that Mary has the power to grant eternal salvation, that she was created differently than other humans, or that she supplied some additional saving factor at the Cross. It doesn’t mean that she can (or would) do anything independently from the will of her Son.¶ I think that’s where things went wrong in Western Christianity. A thread of devotion took shape that saw Mary as an independent operator, with her own allotment of power.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity