On the Church and Salvation

Everyone who separates himself from the Church is like an adulterous wife and becomes a stranger to the promises given to the Church. He who falls away from the Church loses the reward promised by Christ. He is a stranger, useless, an enemy of the Church… The salvation of a man who stands outside the Church would be possible only if someone had survived the flood who was not in Noah’s ark.

Guard and keep the true Orthodox faith, for only the Orthodox Church preserves the faith and traditions of the ancient, apostolic and undivided Church. Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia

He who separates himself from the Church… condemns himself; that is precisely why the Apostle Paul says that after the first and second admonition we should turn away from such people.

Any person separated from the unity of the Church, however praiseworthy his life may be, will not have eternal blessed life precisely because of that one lawlessness — separation from unity with Christ — and the wrath of God will come upon him.

It is not a place that saves a man, but his own good will. Adam, our first father, fell into sin even in paradise, while righteous Lot kept his godliness even in Sodom.

Outside the Church there is no salvation: the house of God is one, and no one can be saved anywhere but in the Church… Everyone who separates himself from the Church becomes a stranger to the Church’s promises. He who breaks the peace and concord of Christ acts against Christ.

The episcopate is a unity in which each takes part separately and all together; so too the Catholic Church is one and undivided, and therefore it must be joined into one whole by the mutual bond of the hierarchs.

Where the Church is, there is the Holy Spirit also… Therefore whoever has no share in her (the Church) is not nourished from the most pure fountain flowing from the Body of Christ, which makes us partakers of eternal life.

There is one body, made up of many members. The one body of the Church the Apostle calls Christ, because He is the head of this body.

Only one who lives the life of the Church will understand and feel what the Church is. The outside observer sees only her surface; the spirit, the power and the glory of the Church remain invisible and incomprehensible to him, because he himself lives without the spirit. Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia

Acquire a peaceful spirit, and others around you will be saved.

All the good things a man delights in in this world are only tiny drops compared with the joys of the inexhaustible fountain in which the blessed rejoice and delight in heaven.

More wretched than the wretched is he who sacrifices the eternal blessedness to come in heaven for the present, momentary earthly life.

It is impossible to cross the sea without a ship. And the holy Church of Christ is in this world what a ship is on the sea. The Master (Governor) of this spiritual ship is God the Father, the helmsman His Only-begotten Son, the fair wind the Holy Spirit; the oarsmen obedient to God are the apostles and their successors, the shepherds and teachers of the Church. Those on deck are all Orthodox Christians. The keel and the strength of the ship is right faith in the Holy Trinity; its stern and bow, and also its rudder, represent the true dogmas of the faith, the divine commandments, the traditions of the Church and the decrees of the apostolic and church Councils. The mast is the precious and life-giving Cross of Christ, by which everything in the Church is united and made firm; the sail is love, the anchor hope. This spiritual ship, that is, the Church, carries the true Orthodox from the various ends of the earth across the sea of this world into the Kingdom of Heaven. Though the sea is rough and fierce waves rise up (which represents persecutions and martyrdoms), the ship does not sink. However many enemies and persecutors rise up against the holy Church, she will never be overcome, for she is made firm according to the word of the Lord: “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

A Christian must set the salvation of his soul as his one and chief aim, and everything else as means to reach that aim. All earthly affairs, however important and great they may seem to us, are petty occupations. The first and most important of all our works must be our salvation.

Those who hope to save their souls outside the Church are bitterly mistaken. Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia

Those who count themselves Orthodox yet reject the Church and her canons are greatly mistaken; the spiritual life of the Church is incomprehensible to them, because they do not reach its depth. Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia

Between the present, earthly glory and the future, heavenly glory there is the same difference as between a dream and waking life.

It is natural to man to strive after blessedness, or, as it is sometimes called, happiness. Only happiness is a momentary blessedness, while blessedness is an eternal happiness. The way to blessedness runs through keeping the divine commandments.

From the time of the apostles and afterwards many heresies have forced their way into the Church… but the Church has remained undivided and undefiled and will remain so for ever, while the workers of abominations will without fail be cast out of the Church.

I bear witness before God and the people. They (the heretics) have themselves cut themselves off from the Body of Christ, from the supreme throne on which Christ laid the keys of the faith; the gates of hell — the mouths of heretics — have not prevailed against it until now, nor will they prevail for ever.

The Kingdom of Heaven will not come unless we create the Kingdom of Heaven within us. The same can be said of the fiery Gehenna. For many people hell has already come.

The confession of faith teaches us the oneness of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, so that you may shun the foul heretical assemblies and abide always in the Holy Catholic (Universal) Church.

You cannot accomplish the work of salvation without Christ, and Christ will not accomplish it without you.

As the wish to eat does not kill hunger, as the wish to drink water does not quench thirst, and the wish to trade will not make you rich, so the wish for salvation alone will not save you.