“You don't like the Goths?" "No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!" "Persecution?" "Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever." "I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased." "That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is!”

“Then he raised his voice in a prophet-like challenge that I knew would live with me forever: "Don't ever give up in freedom what we would never give up in persecution!”

“We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.”

“I was captivated by the thought: what if persecution is the normal, expected situation for a believer? And what if persecution is, in fact, soil in which faith can grow?”

“Of course, I could holler Religious Persecution. Not that it would do any good. But it's something I happen to know quite a bit about, seeing as Religious Persecution was my assignment in Social Studies that time we studied Man's Inhumanity to Man. The idea was to write a two-thousand-word report proving how everybody has been a shit to everybody else through the ages, and where did it ever get them? This is supposed to improve us somehow, I guess.”

“Let us not forget: we are a pilgrim church, subject to misunderstanding, to persecution, but a church that walks serene, because it bears the force of love.”