“People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, ‘Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty and humaneness.’

“A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

“Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body, which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.”

-Sergei Fudel, Light in the Darkness