Impressive reality

I remember once in America I went to an old church. I just went to look and saw: a man was sitting with his head in his hands in a state of, as it seemed to me, deep depression. I went up to him, hugged him by the shoulders and said: "What's the matter?" He turned to me and began to cry, and then said that he had been married for twenty-five years, that he was a priest. And he found that he no longer loved his wife, and the only way out for them was to part. And if he parted with his wife, he would also part with the priesthood, because this would be the complete collapse of everything he believed in.

We talked, not very long, but really, as they say, "from heart to heart." And I advised him to go home. no more; he will stop and say to himself: I am ringing the doorbell of a strange woman. Whom will I meet? - and asks himself if he can fall in love with this woman, whom he has not seen before. He did so to me that he never expected what had happened. He stopped, discarded all the previous images, rang the bell and looked at the face who opened the door; and fell in love with her. Because he looked in the face and did not drive her away for the sake of something that was once real, but did not meet his expectations now.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh