When the Lord lived on earth His humble appearance in the flesh hid from people's eyes His actual Divine majesty. It was only after His Ascension and the coming down of the Holy Spirit that the Divinity of Christ became manifest to the disciples and apostles. Something similar happened to me in regard to Staretz Silouan. In his lifetime he was so simple and accessible that for all my veneration for him, my awareness of his godliness, I still was not altogether conscious of his greatness, and it is only now many years later during which I have met no one like him, that I begin belately to appreciate the very real greatness of the man whom God’s providence led me to know so intimately.