by St. Nikolai Velimirovich
The monks once inquired of Paisios the Great: "Father, speak to us a word of salvation and how, according to God, we should live?" The elder replied to them: "Go and keep the commandments of God and preserve the traditions of the Fathers."
The tradition of the Fathers is the experience of the saints in the spiritual field, the enormous experience of nearly two-thousand years, the experience of many hundreds and thousands of holy men and women. What a very rich depository of wisdom! What kind of an immense mass of proofs of every truth of Holy Scripture! All of that wealth, all of that wisdom, all of those proofs, all of this experience the Protestants have rejected! O madness inexpressible! O, the poverty of beggars!