... At our birth we inherited Adam's nature. It is even possible to live the fallen state, which is a terrible deviation from the Father's love, as if it were the only reality for a human being. In the world today we are plunged into the atmosphere and the culture of the Fall. We live in comfort, and very often we are ashamed to confess our faith, to admit that we are Christians.
Do not place too much confidence in the higher education you received in this world. The civilisation we live in is a culture of fallen humanity.
After two world wars - and wars are a sin par excellence - the comtemporary world has lost the grace of the Holy Spirit. And it is impossible to understand Christ as God without the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, to believe that this man, is the Creator of the cosmos, is beyond us. To believe that God Himself was incarnate, that He calls us to be with Him eternally - that is what is missing in many of our contemporaries, especially among intellectuals.
What does salvation mean? Does our body have to die so that we can enter the kingdom of Christ? How can we develop our capacity to live according to Christ's commandments, according to the Holy Spirit? Only one thing counts: to keep the tension of prayer and of repentance. Then death will not be a rupture, but a crossing to the Kingdom, for which we will have prepared ourselves by communion in the Body and Blood of Christ, by prayer, and by the invocation of His name: "Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy upon us and upon thy world."
(Archimandrite SOPHRONY Sakharov - Words of LIFE, Stravopegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, Essex, 1998, p. 15)
