Thomas Howard

When I walk into an Orthodox Church... one is immediately aware that one has stepped into the presence of what St. Paul would call the whole family in heaven and earth. You have stepped into the precincts of heaven!

That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history.

Sacraments like the Incarnation itself constitute physical points at which the eternal touches time or the unseen touches the seen or grace touches nature. It is the Gnostics and Manicheans who want a purely disembodied religion.

Hell is where everyone is doing his own thing. Paradise is where everyone is doing God's thing.