"On this Feast of Feasts, when the hearts of the faithful strive with love to God and to neighbor, my soul is grieved about the Athonite monastics, who have been deprived of the joy of communing the Holy Mysteries and of the consolation of attending the Church [services]. Let us forget the quarrel: it is not for us to judge about the Greatest of Holies – the Name of God, and by doing so to incur the wrath of the Lord on the Motherland; the trial must be cancelled, all monastics must be settled in different monasteries, they must receive back (following the example of metropolitan Flavian) their monastic habit and they should be allowed to serve [the divine services]."
Pascha, April 15, 1914