Athens, November 29, 2013
"These letters were written not as a collection,” reads the extensive foreword written with great love for the elder, cited in part below.
“The reader recognizes the hard spiritual struggle people have in everyday life, perfectly known to everybody, but in which every person sees something painfully his or hers. The elder worked precisely with this everyday life and with every specific case "with sensitivity and love".
"When you read the words of Father John, you notice that something has startled inside you and it is getting warmer. You have such feelings when you visit a cell where a saint lived: you can touch with your eyes the same items that the saint touched himself, and a kind of wonderful peace settles inside you, the turmoil of this life goes away, rough pride subsides somewhere. And you feel that on this very side this certain man experienced the Grace of God and something is overfilling inside you because of this encounter—you do yet not deserve this "something”.
