2. Let us hasten to the Church, the House of God

The world we live in and which we love and do our best to understand—this is a world which can be gentle and yet cause us so much pain, an interesting world but one that is powerless to save us from boredom and grief; a world full of love but which can suddenly turn hostile, a world to which our heart reaches out and that contains everything that is most dear to us—our family, friends and relatives. Even so, this world is not the full and all-perfect creation which God made for us. Beyond the horizon of the visible world there is a better one, a world where there is no sickness, no night, no winter, —a world of peace. Anyone who truly wishes to can enter this world. Its doorway is the House of God, the Holy Orthodox Church.

My dear brothers, and you, my beloved sisters, look at the dome of the church with its bright cross shining under the sun. What splendid, glorious light! But these are only the visible rays of that wonderful unseen beauty that exists in the House of God. “The Lord hath prepared His throne in heaven, and His kingdom embraces all” (Psalm 102:17).

Could there be any better striving, any better path for us than the path to God? Let us hasten then to the House of God, that we may join the saints and the angels in the kingdom of purity and love, the kingdom of grace, the Kingdom of triumphant Holy Orthodoxy.