“At the tower of Babel, a ziggurat temple, the world’s people sought to bring God down and make Him take up residence in the tower where they could ritually control and manipulate Him.” (Father Stephen De Young)
“Enforced prayer produces only hypocrisy, makes man listless even in the fulfillment of his duties, a slave to ritual, leading to Pharisaism and an insincere offering to God of an established rule.” (St. John of Kronstadt)
“Love and Liturgy must not and cannot be separated. Love without the Liturgy has no context, no point of reference, no real meaning; but the Liturgy without love is nothing but empty ritual and hypocrisy.” (Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou)
“A…way our communities of faith contribute to shallow faith is by failing to provide meaningful rituals—or, when rituals exist, failing to provide a clear sense of their meaning and importance.” (David Kinnaman)
“Our religious rituals help us or hurt us. They help us tremendously when we participate in them as a means to draw closer to and enter into union with Christ. They hurt us subtlety and greatly when we forget their purpose is to bring us to Christ and we become more enamored of the rituals themselves instead of Him.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
#FatherStephenDeYoung #StJohnofKronstadt #ArchimandriteVassiliosPapavassiliou #DavidKinnaman #SacramentalLivingMinistries
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