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I BELIEVE

I believe that we all have a God-given destiny, that we are all born here for a purpose. Our first goal is to discover that purpose, to understand the law of our being. And our second goal is to fulfil that purpose. Thus we witness to the love of God and work for the benefit of others, striving to be in all things on the side of the angels.

From early childhood I had that sense of destiny and felt that I lived in Paradise, but I lost this sense when I was seven years old. I gain to understand it again only when I was twelve years old and read the Gospels for the first time. Then I had a vision of spiritual beauty, that this world is all an illusion, that beyond and behind it is hidden the only reality, which alone gives meaning to this world. I saw Paradise again, as I had in childhood.

My life has been lived out in an attempt to recover the spiritual beauty I knew in childhood and then knew again at that time. But then I wanted to gain some understanding of it with my mind. By the time that I was fourteen, I had understood that Christ was Paradise, that He alone possessed the whole Truth. By the age of fifteen I knew that the Church that He had founded was still here within the Orthodox Church and that my destiny was to serve His Church in whatever human culture He put me.

After this I became aware also that everywhere men had done their utmost in every way to pervert His Truth in His Church and that these perversions lay at the root of all divisions both inside the Orthodox Church and outside Her. The love of power and riches in preference to the love of Christ had caused all the distortions in the history of the Church. If ever there is to be unity among men, it will come only through the repentance of all Christians, both Orthodox and Non-Orthodox, their conforming of themselves to God's Will and not the will of man.

I have opposed those who prefer power and riches to the Truth of Christ. It has cost me dear, but I have obeyed my conscience. As to those who have done their utmost to destroy me, I feel no ill-will and I ask their forgiveness. I too am a sinner and my salvation is dependent uniquely on the Mercy of God.

I believe in the only Absolute Truth: the Risen Christ.

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!

Fr Andrew