“No matter how hard you look for the kind, the perfect priest, the perfect
community, the perfect parish…you won;t find it! Just like you won’;t find the
perfect marriage, or the perfect husband, or the perfect family, etc. You don’t
enter the Church as if you were in a political party, where you begin to judge
and do justice, and find right and wrong. In the Church you;re on a ship with
patients who have been rescued from the sea… We are not saints, we are not
angels! Neither the priest, nor the bishop, nor the laity, we all have passions
and weaknesses, but we want to stay here, until the end… we want to be
saved from the stor’m of the sea. We stay within the church, which is the ship,
the ark of salvation!
St. Sophronius Sakharov
Translated by Dr. Nick Stergiou
