People, .... who somehow believe in God but do not believe in the Church ordinarily say, Can it really be that God is in need of rituals? Where is the need for this formality?   You only need love, beauty, and human compassion...

 

When, on his way to see a girl, a man who is in love sees flowers, he picks them, or he buys flowers, to take to her; in no way does he see it as merely a formality. That is precisely the idea behind church ritual.

 

Love toward God naturally gives rise to beauty and the expressive humanity of ritual, apprehended as flowers brought to the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is being in love with our God and Lord and also sensing that His Body, the Church, remains and lives on earth. How could those perceptions not find expression in the external actions we call rites and rituals?

- Sergei Fudel, At The Walls Of The Church