Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex, Remember Thy First Love

 

"I think that, as priests and pastors, if we are to do our job properly, we must have our time alone with God and we must live our own personal tragedy first, and speak to Him from our own heart. Then we will have a word of consolation for everybody we meet. And that is the task of the priest: to console his people, to bring a word of consolation. 'My priests, my priests, console my people,' says the Lord through Isaiah the Prophet [Isaiah 40:1 (LXX)]. The task of the priest is to be a comforter of souls. But we cannot give a word of comfort unless we ourselves have been comforted. In the beginning of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul says, 'Blessed is the God of all comfort who comforteth us to be able to comfort those who come to us with the comfort by which we are comforted ourselves.' He uses the words ‘comfort’ and ‘consolation’ nine or ten times. And it is not easy to be able to administer such comfort to the people unless we have our time with God."

- Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex, Remember Thy First Love