To Metropolitan Saba Esper

It is a word of thanks that I send to you first, to Sayyedna Alexander, and to the brethren priests for accepting me among you as one of you in your beautiful Church. I have spent fifty days there, during which I felt at home, as you had told me in your familiar voice. I also thank the lay brethren in whom I saw our country which awaits to see them in it. My meetings with them, in what we said and what ambition was evident in them, were a great consolation for me. Most of the brethren who had left for this country have maintained the awareness of the regeneration that made them shining pearls of effective love that does not seek its own. This is the ambition of the Holy Spirit to “keep what was committed to us”, that is to help them preserve this awareness within them, first for the continuous consolation, and then to be always moved by the Holy Spirit towards what He wants from them for the sake of His glory and the glory of His Church. Until there is no more travelling, the preserving Church alone, in this foreign land, is able to be a homeland that bears witness to Antioch’s ingenuity in orthodoxy and faithfulness.