Small Steps into the Kingdom Quotes

“Many of the Church Fathers make a comparison between physical and spiritual sickness. They ask who would not rush to see a doctor and ask for the appropriate medicines if they were afflicted with some disease. It is with this same urgency that we should desire to find healing of soul. Confession brings us a peaceful conscience for which we should all long.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Even the demons know the truth of facts: that Christ is God Who was incarnate, crucified and resurrected, and that He will come again to judge the living and the dead. But knowing these facts does not lead them to repent of their evil. Our calling as Christians is not to fill our heads with facts in order to impress others or win arguments; it is that we may strengthen our understanding of what God reveals to us in order to know Him more deeply.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“However sinful individual members of that Body may be they cannot remove this sanctity because it is not dependent on us, but comes from God.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Our calling as Christians is not to fill our heads with facts in order to impress others or win arguments; it is that we may strengthen our understanding of what God reveals to us in order to know Him more deeply.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“We are instructed to love one another even as our Creator loves us, to be one even as God is One.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Christ did not establish something called Christianity, He established the Church.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Saint John of Damascus teaches us that repentance can be summed up as returning from the devil to God. We should know that demons work to attract us away from God, that our sins are like serpents nipping at our hearts, pulling us into the devil’s embrace. Repentance is a sword that cuts off the heads of these serpents; we must not let the demons use our pride to persuade us to drop this mighty weapon. We stand in the heat of battle whether we choose to fight or not, and confession is a gift from the One Who has already won the war and now offers us a taste of His victory.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“But earlier I mentioned that sometimes we feel daunted at the prospect of admitting our sins before our priest. We are ashamed of our sins and worry that he will think less of us. In fact part of our healing is the growth of our knowledge of ourselves and this requires a level of humility that can grow when we confess our sins. But we must never imagine that our priest ever thinks badly of us for what we are confessing: in fact the opposite is true. A good father confessor will only grow in love for us at the depth and honesty of our confession as he recognises the great faith that prompted us to bare our soul. But we do not do this just to anyone. Saint Basil the Great warns us not to reveal our sickness just to anyone, it does not benefit us to show our physical wounds to someone that is not equipped to help us and neither should we reveal our sins to those who cannot bring us release. But we must not see confession as some mechanistic system that guarantees us forgiveness. God knows our sins in greater depth than our own memories can recall and it is important for us not to hide anything out of shame. But also confession requires that we commit ourselves to struggle against our sins. The opportunity to talk in depth with our priest about our inner state can itself be of great value and provides an opportunity to reflect on how we are living and how we can fight more courageously against sin in the future. Confession cleanses us but it does not protect us from sinning again. We must not only speak the words but feel a genuine sense of remorse over what we have done. The Fathers describe a need for us to weep over our sins, to genuinely purge ourselves of evil.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Saint John Chrysostom teaches us to think of the Church not as a court of law but as a hospital: not a place of judgement but one of healing. The sacraments are like medicines for the soul and confession is the instrument by which we treat the sickness. It might be better to refer to it as the sacrament of repentance rather than confession since, as we shall see, confession is only one part of what takes place. Let us first consider the authority Christ gave to the Church to administer His forgiveness and then we will reflect on something of the experience and reality of what the sacrament brings.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“In baptism we believe that God acts on us, the font is represented as a womb from which a new person emerges (born again). The cleansing of baptism is a reality, in it God washes us clean of our sins, and as Saint Paul says we put on Christ (Gal.3 v27).”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“We believe in a God Who is not distant, He draws near to us and wants us to experience Him. The whole of creation is filled with His life and presence: Saint Justin Martyr called this logos spermadicos, which means God poured Himself out into every part of the universe. But in our sinful state we turn away from God, we refuse His love and we shut ourselves off from His life. In His infinite love God then went further and gave specific ways for us to discover all that we have turned away from. In the sacraments God strengthens and guides us, He cleanses and unites us to Himself and to one another. The sacraments are a necessary means of healing and restoration of our whole being.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Although our bishops are loved and treated with great respect the Church does not teach that any bishop is infallible. The collegiate nature of the Church is expressed through councils where consensus is reached through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This leads us to the question of the Pope of Rome and his claims to make infallible judgements about doctrine.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“Many of us come to Orthodoxy having read good books about great spiritual athletes and it is easy to form romanticised expectations about what the clergy should be like. If we come to church with unrealistic ideas the devil may use them to disappoint us and convince us that things aren’t good enough and that we should look elsewhere. We must remember that the demons will do everything in their power to prevent us from becoming part of Christ’s Church and our own lack of discernment can be a dangerous pitfall. The grace of the priesthood is a real and wonderful blessing but it is given to men of flesh and blood. The devil will delight in telling us how unworthy the priest is: but rest assured, the priest is only too aware of his own unworthiness.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“If we continually sin and refuse to repent then we are wilfully rejecting God’s call. This is not to say those who repeatedly fall are lost, only those who, each time they fall, have no intention of getting up and trying again. We all fall and fall again. But if we deliberately reject God’s call to repent we have rejected Him.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom

“The first point to make is that there can only be one Church. Christ did not establish different bodies, but One Body, One Faith, One Baptism. The Church is the Body of Christ which, though often wounded, cannot be broken into separate parts. The Church is not a human institution like other worldly organisations, it does not belong to man, and man cannot do with it as he wills or change it to suit his own desires, or satisfy the fashions of his age.”
― Spyridon Bailey, Small Steps into the Kingdom