Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh
We are called to be children of God…yet no man can attain any of this through his own efforts. Neither by our own efforts or by our own desire can we become a part of the body of Christ…nor can we become partakers of the divine nature simply by our own efforts…The way in which any of this can be realized are through the sacraments of the Church [in Her Liturgical Life].
The sacraments are the actions of God within the Church in which God grants us His grace by means of this material world. It is in the sacraments [such as baptism, confession and communion] that brings us the grace which we cannot acquire by any other means,…She brings grace to us as a gift through the material substance of this world, the water of baptism, the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, and the myrrh of Chrismation…the world even though it is enslaved to corruption is itself pure and without sin. And God takes this world, the matter of this material creation, and unites it in an incomprehensible way with Himself, and this material world brings to us the grace which we are unable to raise ourselves up to.
(Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, The Mystery of Faith, 166.)
Milk & Honey 
Ah yes. A sharpening of paradox around the question of whether the ‘world’ is corrupt or ‘pure in itself’; but a nobly stated and ennobling vision of grace through the sacraments. I knew Bishop Anthony at the Cathedral in Ennismore Gardens in London in the old days; indeed he received me into the Orthodox church. He carried spiritual space around with him rather as a fertile planet carries an atmosphere.
Great blog – glad I stumbled across it.
Martin