Oh, strange Orthodox Church … Church of contrasts: at the same time so traditional yet so free, so ritualistic … yet so alive. Church where the gem of a prize, the Gospel, is preciously preserved, sometimes under a layer of dust … but who knows how to sing like no other the joy of Easter.
—Father Lev Gillet

Of these contrasts recalled by a great spiritual Orthodox contemporary, Archimandrite Lev Gillet (better known by his literary pseudonym “a Monk of the Eastern Church”), the status of Orthodox women provides a particularly astonishing example.