100 Questions and Answers on Matters of Faith. “I visited some hermitages on various islands, where once the poverty of these places of asceticism pointed to another logic, and I found them now renovated by the secular authorities. The buildings had been restored in external ways using modern technological methods, but their inner beauty had been lost. From being places that expressed the inner nature of the ascetic life they were now simply visual stimuli that satisfied one’s curiosity. The spiritual life is no longer a mother tongue in our country. Everything needs translating into the barren dialect of our spiritless and lifeless age.”