“A person’s body is like a walled city, which has five gates.  One gate is the eyes, one the ears, one the nose, one the mouth, one the arms and legs. Every type of evil or good comes and goes through these gates.  The soul is the resident of this city, a person’s good works are its jewels and treasure. The mind…

“If God wills that we converse with one another, let it not be as the master with his servants and the servants with their master, for you set our defects before us., and we dare not inform you of what shocks us in you.  Such relations belong to worldly matters but not to spiritual, since all the faithful are equal with one…

“As we sinned and became mortal by food, Christ’s sufferings allowed us to receive atonement and immortality by food.  I pray that the bread and wine set on the table, by becoming Christ’s body and blood, may atone for us and save both the living and the dead.” –Khosrov Andzevatsi (10th century)

What heart-warming joy existed there thenceforward, and what a pleasant scene for the eyes! For a land which had not known even the name of the regions where all those wonderful divine acts had been performed, soon learned all the things that were, not only those that had transpired in time, but that of the eternity which had preceded, and those that…