"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." - St. James 1:27
"What makes man an Orthodox is not only the persistence on the external aspects of tradition, but the experience of its inner life, which is the ascetic method - purification, illumination and theosis. This method, these stages of spiritual life are the foundation of the dogmas, the basis of ecclesiastical art, but also the creative cause of the ethos and customs of our people; because this theology saturated our forefathers prior to our westernization. For this reason we must struggle to keep this inner aspect of tradition, the method of Orthodox piety, through which we are healed. Then we are truly zealots of patristic traditions. For, even if we have the best intentions; outside of this ascetic, therapeutic method, we run the risk of becoming enemies and adversaries of Orthodoxy." - Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktis