Teva: First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time for this interview and for sharing your thoughts with the readers of the St. Nina Quarterly. Like many Orthodox Christians, I was first introduced to you through your books, The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way. Can you share with us how you came to Orthodoxy?

Am I not free?— 1 Corinthians 9:1
God persuades, He does not compel; for violence is foreign to Him.— Epistle to Diognetus vii, 4

What Shall We Offer?

In an Orthodox hymn used at Vespers on Christmas Eve, the Virgin Mary is seen as the highest and fullest offering that our humanity can make to the Creator:

There is a story told in the Gerontikon, the sayings of the desert Fathers, about a visitor who goes to see three monks. And they talked all the afternoon. Suddenly the visitor realizes that the sun has set. “It is time for vespers;” says the visitor, “it is time for us to pray together.” And the monks answered, “But we have been praying together all the last four hours.” Prayer, in their experience, was not just occasional but continual; not just one activity among others, but the activity of their entire lives. It was a dimension present in everything else that they did. St. Gregory of Nazianzos says, “Remember God more often than you breathe.” Prayer, ideally, should be as much part of us as our breathing.