7.10.2015
Nikolay Kaverin

In an interview with the liberal website “Orthodoxy and Peace”, the chairman of the Missionary Commission of the city of Moscow Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) shared his vision of modern mission among outsiders. His view of the Orthodox mission reveals a completely unbelieving person, far from comprehending the essence of the Orthodox mission. The point is that Today’s “missionaries,” of which Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) is a sad example, absolutely do not understand Why people currently do not want to become Christians, despite complete freedom of preaching, the abundance of Orthodox churches, and church literature. Because of this misunderstanding, absolutely ridiculous “missionary projects” are invented that can only push away people from the church.

In his interview with Pravmir, Hieromonk D. Pershin puts forward an unusual “missionary” postulate: “If the Church does not attract the creative class, then we will either have a lubok tradition, or we will simply be erased as an annoying, mossy, retrograde and unnecessary institution. If we do not build bridges between those who study at Moscow University, at the Higher School of Economics, who work in Russian Academy sciences, then they are worthless to us.”

Also, Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) states that “today a missionary cannot do without a high-quality higher education. The example of Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev is probably the most convincing confirmation of this.”

Let us remind the respected chairman of the Moscow missionary commission that Orthodoxy has always spread primarily through communication with ascetics - living carriers of the Holy Spirit, who showed Orthodoxy with their lives, and captivated people with the divine grace abiding in them, which was immediately captured by the heart Orthodox man, and not through high-quality higher education, “missionary” speeches on the radio “Echo of Moscow” and the TV channel “Do///d”, lectures, brochures, leaflets, sermons at stadiums, rock concerts, and other far-fetched, and therefore lifeless missionary projects. Orthodoxy has its own traditional and time-tested method of missionary work: this preaching first of all with your Christian life, preaching with your life in the Spirit, which is the only thing capable of attracting young people to the church who are looking for genuine spirituality and who do not accept any “genetically modified” falsehood; this is the beauty of our traditional Orthodox Church Slavonic worship, which, being a beauty not of this world, is capable of elevating the worshiper to another world, and most importantly, demands the return of what is lost modern man- ability to contemplate; these are monasteries and the correct monastic life, and in private life - asceticism and inner prayer.

When external begins to prevail over internal, then there are simply delusional dreams of churching the student and teaching corporation of the Higher School of Economics, Russian liberals, cracks, hipsters, gays and democratic journalists, listeners of the radio stations “Echo of Moscow” and “Do///dya”, where the famous missionary worker and spiritual mentor come from Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) regularly broadcasts his anti-Russian views to the city and the world. But efficiency There are 0% of such “missionary” sermons among the creative liberal class. There is only one reason: Russian liberals and the Creaks do not need Christ, but the destruction of Russia and the Orthodox Church.

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) in his interview postulates the following vision of mission: “Mission is possible at all times, from the apostolic times to the limits of history. For us living in Russia, such evidence of the truth was the iconography of St. Andrei Rublev, who captured in colors those secrets of the coming Kingdom that were in the heart St. Sergius Radonezhsky. The beauty of Rublev’s “Trinity” did not prove, but rather revealed the reality of the existence of God for Father Pavel Florensky, one of the most profound thinkers of the 20th century, who was executed on Solovki. And his words are worth listening to. The goal of Christian mission is to meet us with this beauty, “fall in love” with her, and then we ourselves will figure out how and what to change in ourselves in order, in the exact formulation of Clive Lewis, to allow this joy to overtake us.”

This Kuraevsky postulate of the new “missionary of falling in love” does not withstand any serious criticism. Is it really Fr. The hieromonk is unaware that falling in love passes as quickly as it arises, and very often turns into its opposite: hatred and contempt to the previously adored object of your youthful crush?

The same is true with faith: it is probably possible to preach the Gospel in such a way that this preaching will not lead people to true faith. Formally, it is possible to convey the Gospel and the teachings of the Church to a very large number of people, but having no root in the heart - when temptations multiply, tribulation or persecution occurs because of the word - they are immediately tempted (Matt. 13:21). Such faith, built on sand, is easily accepted and just as easily evaporates. Such faith is weak and short-lived. In times of trials, which sooner or later come, it evaporates, giving rise to murmur and bewilderment in a person.

A person’s faith is tested in temptations, illnesses, sorrows and hardships. Such tested faith constitutes that foundation on the rock that cannot be shaken (Matthew 7:24-25). Only true faith teaches us to overcome temptations and endure sorrows without complaint, and only in the light of such faith does a person discover the meaning of the suffering he endures, and of life itself.

Bearers of the Christian mission are obliged live what they preach. That's what everyone did Orthodox ascetics, by the example of his life attracting huge masses of people to the Orthodox faith. They retired to deserts and forests, prayed to God, and the people, feeling in them the unfading grace of the Holy Spirit, reached out to such God-inspired people who loved God for spiritual advice, for the pure word of the Truth of Christ. They were ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their faith and their ideals. There could be no talk of any higher education among our ascetics. Unfortunately, there is no such obvious thing. Hieromonk Demetrius and other modern missionaries do not understand.

The saddest thing is that people who call themselves “missionaries” often do not have within themselves what they are trying to convey to others . That is why they do not have such intelligible, convincing, understandable, simple and seasoned words as the holy fathers possessed. The word "new missionaries" has no power.

The methods of today's post-missionary agitators are completely outdated. Most of these would-be missionaries, in our opinion, unrealistically present and convey to their electorate a picture of the spiritual relations of today's world. They are trying to establish a dialogue with non-church people, naively trying to “fall in love” with secondary aspects of the Orthodox faith that do not have deep connections with the Christian faith in its essence. Not the icons of Andrei Rublev and not the treatises of Pavel Florensky, but only prayer to God in hopeless life situations and patient enduring of sorrows makes a person’s faith as solid as stone.

Let us give a couple more examples of the vigorous missionary activity of Hieromonk Demetrius.

In Japan, on July 28, 2015, an international scouting gathering took place - Jamboree, which is organized by the World Organization of the Scout Movement. More than 30 thousand people from all over the world took part in the event. Orthodox scouts from Russia also arrived at the Jamboree, including our famous would-be missionary Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin), by the way a member national council All-Russian Scout Association.

Let us recall that just the day before, on July 27, the Boy Scouts of the USA, part of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, lifted restrictions prohibiting the employment of representatives of non-traditional sexual orientation. Now sodomites and perverts can become volunteers, advisors, and also occupy other leadership positions in this organization.

The notes of Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) about this event on the portal “Orthodoxy and the World” are full of sentimental missionary optimism, most likely indicating that Father Dimitri this time managed to successfully convert a huge number of boy scouts and scouts of various orientations to the Orthodox faith, and at the same time and Harry Potter fans from Hong Kong:

“Today we equipped the Russian Cultural Center, all day long we distribute booklets, postcards with reproductions of the Rublev Trinity and the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God... (But what about the commandment of Christ: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine.”(Matt. 7:6)? - Note auto.). My joy is that they invite me to different venues - and, I hope, we will talk about Harry Potter with the people of Hong Kong, with the guys from the CIS, about how the Gospel was refracted in this seven books to lead us to the God of the Love of the Cross... So, Japan, night , cicadas, “It’s Snowing” performed by Sergei Nikitin and Vladimir Vysotsky “Ballad of Love” echoes over the quiet Jamboree.”

Let us recall another “missionary performance” by Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin). According to the website Patriarchia.ru, “On April 6, 2014, at the memorial synagogue on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, on the initiative of the Moscow Jewish Community House, the First Moscow Interfaith Easter Marathon “Traditions of the Holiday. A taste of the holiday. Holiday music." At the opening ceremony, Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) told those present about religious traditions, about the symbolism of the Easter theme, i.e. outlined his teaching about Easter, specially adapted for the “marathon”. The marathon program includes lectures on the traditions and customs of Easter, master classes on cooking Easter table, concerts, exhibitions, excursions."

Priest Kirill Mikhailov very aptly commented on this unusual missionary-ecumenical action of Father Demetrius:

“Not everything is going well with the missionaries. What are the shocking statements of Protodeacon A. Kuraev, splashing out like a cornucopia! Now it seems that it's gone Spring Fever a disease called missionary itch.

When Orthodox Christians prayed at the all-night vigil on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the chairman of the Missionary Commission at the Diocesan Council of Moscow, Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) opened... the Easter marathon... on the initiative of the Moscow Jewish Home. Where could an Orthodox missionary open an “Easter marathon”? It’s hard to believe, but it was in a synagogue, in the one on Poklonnaya Hill...

But maybe we are mistaken, and the missionaries’ actions are not indifferent to the basics Christian faith, and divine zeal for the conversion of adherents of Judaism? Maybe Father Dimitri (Pershin) is trying to imitate the Apostle Paul, who preached the gospel of Christ in the synagogues of the Jews? However, there is a significant difference: the apostle did not organize marathons and did not talk about delicacies with music - probably because he found a little more important topics for your conversations. The marathon program includes lectures, master classes on preparing the Easter table, concerts, etc. The Apostle Paul's preaching in synagogues could be accompanied by very intolerant actions and words. So in the Corinthian synagogue “Paul was compelled by the spirit to testify to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. But as they resisted and slandered him, he shook out his clothes and said to them: Your blood is on your heads; I am clean; From now on I go to the pagans"(Acts 18:5-6). No one will treat you to matzo as part of the proclaimed marathon for such words. It is unlikely that the chairman of the Moscow Missionary Commission was inspired by such holy zeal of the Apostle Paul.”

And at the end of 2015, the chairman of the Missionary Commission under the Diocesan Council of Moscow, Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin), again decided to catechize the Jews, this time right in the synagogue. In an article published on December 26 on Pravmir, “Rebbe Zinovia - with love... Wherever the governor leads,” the Moscow cleric-missionary himself admits: “I don’t want to disappoint anyone, they really gave us matzah. It was good matzah.”

Reminisces on his blog public figure and political scientist Boris Yakemenko:

“In 2009, in Seliger, within the framework of the All-Russian Educational Youth Forum “Seliger”, the next “Orthodox Shift” was held, to which about 1,400 people arrived. In the midst of my shift, they called me from one church department and said that Pershin wanted to come to the shift and give lectures...

And this is where things started to get interesting. Pershin demanded... 15 thousand rubles for a lecture (the lecture of the most significant and eminent lecturer at the Seliger Higher Secondary School was paid at the rate of 3,000 rubles per academic hour, that is, 6,000 per lecture - this is if the lecturer demanded payment). Of course, Pershin was refused. Here we need to take into account one more important circumstance. All the clergy who worked and performed on shift, including Fathers Vsevolod Chaplin, Dimitry Smirnov, Hegumen Sergius (Rybko) and the priests of his church, Hieromonk Macarius (Markish), the late Father Daniil Sysoev and many others (including priests from the regions, sisters from the sisterhood in name Ignatius of Stavropol) acted and worked for free (!), never putting forward any conditions or demands. The Muslim mullah whom I invited for the Muslim delegation also categorically refused money.

In the entire history of “Orthodox Shifts”, only two people issued price lists and strictly monitored their observance - Kuraev and his “disciple” Pershin.

...Although Pershin was not “the most significant lecturer,” on the contrary, “according to the laws of hospitality,” it was necessary to offer him the highest existing rate. He agreed with displeasure, since there was nowhere to retreat. After that, I looked at the topics of the lectures, of which there were many, and their titles were very avant-garde (I remember one “Missionary Cats”)...”

* * *

The “new missionaries” are very sad that there are few young people in our churches (previously Hieromonk Dimitri held high position in the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs). However, this sadness is in vain: today’s young people will sooner or later still find themselves in the church, but not through dubious “missionary” opportunisms in worship and relaxations in traditional church asceticism (missionary-oriented hieromonk Dimitry Pershin at one time argued that the canons of the Orthodox Church marital relations are not prohibited during fasting; ), not through “missionary liturgies” and “missionary leaflets” distributed in churches to believers and passers-by on the street, but will find themselves in the church when the Lord Himself visits them with sorrows, illnesses, adversities, the death of loved ones... Only under such circumstances is an indissoluble prayer born man's connection with God: « I cried out with all my heart to the generous God, and when he heard me..." , and only under such circumstances does a person understand from his own experience that without God there is no way for him in life.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not say: come to me, all you good fellows and beautiful girls, glamorous TV stars, rockers and bikers, liberal crackers and hipsters... but “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”(Matt. 11:28). It’s very easy to simply lure (“to fall in love” in the words of Kuraev-Pershin) a young man into a church, but it’s also easy for this person to leave the church forever after a while (see: Mark 4: 16-17), because it will simply become impossible for him there boring: a young (and not only young) successful person will be more willing to go to his subcultural party instead of church to drink beer and try other “youth” entertainment: “Everything is tip-top! This day is ours! Why do I need a church? And even these “stupid” and incomprehensible church prohibitions on premarital love! How to “live”?

Let's quote the words Archimandrite Raphael (Karelina) about modern “missionaries”, specifically about Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, whom Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) uses as an example of effective missionary activity:

“People like Kuraev have a blurred Orthodox mentality, they themselves do not understand what they believe in, and therefore they attribute their doubts not to their own alienation from the spirit and letter of Orthodoxy, but to philosophy, so that their ideological confusion and moral nihilism would look elitist. In my opinion, a group of such skeptical theologians want to create a rationalistic and humanistic Christianity. It seems to me that Kuraev is popular precisely because he expresses the liberal spirit of modernity, i.e. satisfies the intellectual passion of the audience, in addition, he is original and sprinkles his speech with paradoxes. For shallow people, this arouses interest and is perceived as thoughtfulness, as new intellectual discoveries and insights.”

The trouble with all our post-missionaries of the Kuraev brand is precisely that they, naively believing that they are converting the masses of our unbelieving fellow citizens to God, are in an illusory delusion and in their missionary projects they are fighting against long-extinct phantoms. And most importantly, in their post-missionary pride they forget, or do not want to understand, that even if it is possible to do something to attract people to the Church, then only by his example of Christian life, and not a sugary “fall in love” that disappears like smoke from the face of fire during a real meeting with sorrows, life’s difficulties, illnesses, deaths of loved ones... And the main thing is that ultimately only God Himself turns people to the Truth and any human efforts more often than not always remain in vain: “Unless the Lord builds a house, those who build it labor in vain”(Ps. 126:1).

The desire to integrate into the world and modernity, to replace the spiritual, unearthly, Divine Church with an earthly community - a community, where ordinary carnal wisdom will understand everything, everything is accessible and comfortable, and even fun and joyful (about the joys of Orthodoxy and “falling in love” with it, barkers post-missionary workers never tire of shouting at all crossroads, while at the same time deliberately hushing up as something indecent such unpleasant and “inconvenient” topics as death, illness, ordeal, etc.), where there will be nothing ascetic, overly tedious, even hints of personal feat, first of all, the feat of prayer, in general “strain” (of the Cross) - this is post-missionary, or missionary decadence.

Now the tireless workers of the mission, for the sake of the success of their dubious “missionary” projects, are ready to adapt themselves and the entire Church to the elements of this world, to any human weaknesses, passions, to the Higher School of Economics, to the listeners of “Echo of Moscow” and other vices. The mission for these people becomes an end in itself, and Orthodoxy is perceived by these “missionaries” exactly to the extent that it is able to integrate into the world and modernity, into liberal system values. The Church, according to their concept of “aggressive missionary”, must aggressively invade all areas secular society and subcultures, including even anti-Christian structures and institutions.

Let us recall the words of the spiritual ascetic and missionary of the twentieth century, Fr. Seraphima (Rose): “Orthodoxy is alive precisely because it shines for others and has no need to establish a “missionary department.”

Holy Fire

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The essence of which boils down to the idea that during the period of Lent, Christian spouses can calmly enter into intimate communication, since there is nothing reprehensible in this. In truth, it should be noted that Hieromonk Dimitri himself is not the original author of such an idea, since all his arguments are just a reduction of the thoughts expressed by priest Daniil Sysoev back in 2006. I must admit right away that I deeply respect both clergy and in no way consider them unorthodox. It’s just that the thesis that runs like a red thread in their public statements is somewhat strange and alien to church tradition: Lent is reduced exclusively to food abstinence, a kind of pre-Easter diet; marital abstinence is not identified with fasting in general, but is recognized as a commendable, but voluntary feat , whether during the period of Maslenitsa, or during the period of Holy Pentecost.

As a basis, two canonical rules are given: the 3rd rule of St. Dionysius of Alexandria and the 13th rule of Timothy of Alexandria. Meanwhile, in these rules there is not a word about the Holy Pentecost and how to observe it in married life. The Rule of Saint Dionysius retells the words of the Apostle Paul about married life from his First Epistle to the Corinthians, which we will consider below. And the rule of Timothy of Alexandria answers specifically asked question, on what days of the week it is necessary to abstain from copulation with each other. As you know, the Church has three liturgical circles: daily, weekly and annual. So, it is precisely in relation to the week, and not the year (all long fasts relate to the annual circle) that the question is asked, therefore the answer mentions only Saturday and Sunday, although we know that the tradition of the Church, which is not limited exclusively to the prescribed canons, highlights marital abstinence Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (Saturday afternoon). By the way, in the rule of Timothy of Alexandria it is carried out interesting idea: abstain by consent, but on some days it is “necessary to abstain” - there are days that are higher than our wishes.

And here are the words of the Apostle Paul: “Do not withdraw from one another, except by consent, for a time, to practice fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you through your intemperance” (1 Cor. 7:5) . A very careful reading of these words already shows that the Apostle Paul equates the concepts of marital abstinence and fasting in general. Namely: “do not shy away from each other,” that is, have a common bed until the time comes “to practice in fasting.” Here it is clearly seen that in the phraseology of the Apostle Paul, the exercise of fasting involves avoiding each other in the sense of a separate bed. If this is fasting at all, then this is also marital abstinence, and if there is no abstinence, then there is no fasting. Of course, a separate bed is a voluntary matter, which is what the apostle says: “by consent,” one can continue mutual cohabitation during Lent, only such a Lent is no longer fasting. Therefore, in Rule 69 of the Holy Apostles, fasting is mentioned in general, and not just food fasting, as Fr. Daniel and Fr. Dimitri. The Apostolic Rule reads: “If anyone, a bishop, or a presbyter, or a deacon, or a subdeacon, or a reader, or a singer, does not fast on the Holy Pentecost before Easter, or on Wednesday, or on Friday, except for the hindrance of bodily weakness, let him be cast out . If he is a layman, let him be excommunicated.”

In this regard, we can say a few words about fasting in general.

Abstinence from both modest foods and marital intercourse has never been considered by the Church as an end in itself. Abstinence has always been a means to learn to control one’s nature, to conquer hidden mental and physical passions in it for free communication with God. We are called to be free, but freedom implies responsibility for the choices it makes. And that means freedom is more difficult than slavery. After all, it’s easier to say: “I’m used to living this way,” “This is my principle,” “This is my passion,” than to freely manage your life. The meaning of fasting is not in itself to abstain from something (you don’t have to abstain - this is everyone’s free choice), but so that our spirit finally learns to manage our mental and physical life. And here it turns out that a food diet alone is not enough, because the bodily side of a person is represented not only by his stomach, but also by his genital area, and it is not only hunger that seeks to command us. What is the point in abstaining from certain foods if carnal passions during fasting turn out to be in no way diminished, on the contrary, they dictate their conditions in the same way as at any time of the year? Bodily intercourse presupposes carnal pleasure. And I can still understand Father Daniil Sysoev as a married man, but how does Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) generally imagine, I apologize for the harshness of expression, the compatibility of Lent and orgasm? This is no longer fasting, as we said, but a pre-Easter diet. In characterizing such an attitude towards spiritual life, I would like to recall the apt expression modern theologian, said to the Protestant idea of ​​salvation: “Straight to heaven, straight to heaven, just lift up your legs.”

One of the main arguments in favor of marital relations during Lent, as a rule, is the following - let’s quote it with a phrase that can often be heard: “Stop deceiving yourself, no one has lived abstinently for a long time, we must honestly admit that we can’t live for a long time without intimate relations impossible". This is the position of a myopic person who, having fallen into the mud and stained his glasses, through them sees everyone else in the same gray-dirty color (by dirt we do not mean intimate relationships, as blessed by God, but intemperance, reaching the point of insatiability). This, by the way, was the thinking of Emperor Nero, who, according to the testimony of the ancient Roman historian Suetonius, “was firmly convinced that there is no chaste person in the world and at least something pure, and that people only conceal and cleverly hide their vices: therefore, those who confessed to him his debauchery, he forgave all other sins.”

One of my friends former bandit, having come to faith and the Church, he said: “Before, I couldn’t even imagine that without intimate communication with girls you could live at least a few days, much less endure Lent. Well, I thought, this is what those who no longer have any male ability left do. Now I perceive everything completely differently.” And it’s not to say that this person has already become completely church-going, but he understood the most important thing - in order to go to God, you need to work on yourself. Therefore, abstinence does not pose an insurmountable problem for him.

For my part, as a married person expecting the birth of a third child, and also as a person living in the world (which means that the temptations of the world do not bypass me), I want to say that observing fasts does not pose an excessive difficulty. There would be a desire.

Another thing is that no one should ever be forced to abstain. The Church is not an institution of prohibitions, but the Church is the path on which one can come to true freedom. If someone cannot overcome the weaknesses of his own flesh, cannot go through the path of fasting without stumbling, then the Church does not reject such a person. But it’s one thing when a person realizes his weakness, repents of it at Confession, and the Church will gladly accept him. It’s a completely different matter when a person is set up in advance to indulge his weaknesses, taught to take it for granted: “Don’t strain yourself, you already live well.”

This idea, in our opinion, follows an idea that has long been in the air, which can be expressed as a kind of motto of modern society: without sex, life will not be complete. However, marriage for sex will sooner or later end in disappointment. Do not be deceived, the flesh is insatiable and unreliable - either we will learn to curb it, or it will demand new, sophisticated pleasures, being fed up with what it just had. After few years life together spouses get used to appearance each other, and if they have not found mutual heartfelt unity, their flesh will inevitably fail, because it will flare up in kindling towards another, more attractive person. The Jewish scribes easily got out of this situation, using the rule: if someone sees a woman more beautiful than his wife, then he can let his wife go and marry this woman. But alas, Christianity turns out to be much more ascetic. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior said: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: “You shall not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5: 27 - 28). In the Kingdom of Heaven, the achievement of which the Lord commanded us to strive for, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30), therefore, from ancient times, the Church has raised Christians to the idea precisely expressed by Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer, “that marriage should be about the Lord, and not from lust."

Let us repeat once again that there are special situations when, due to spiritual weakness, one of the spouses is not able to bear the entire fast, looks at the opposite sex, and can lead to direct sin. In this case, it is better to break the fast than marital fidelity. Such weaknesses are cured by patience, prayer and participation in the Sacraments of the Church. But if weakness is recognized as the norm, then it means there is no need to move forward, because everything is fine anyway, you can stay in place.

In my opinion, the innovative thoughts emerging in the media over the past ten to fifteen years are related to one modern church problem - the problem of mission, or rather the problem of finding the form and methods of a true mission. One of the missionary tasks of today is to appeal to the Church not only the elderly or youth, but above all the youth. As you know, young people do not accept ancient stereotypes, moral reading, or established dogmas. And how can one combine the youthful desire for freedom, joy and enjoyment of life with that obscure and inaccessible thing that Christ Himself described as the narrow path?

It seems to me that there are two possible paths open to the missionary here. The first is the path of endless adaptations and playing along. In order to win a person over, the missionary justifies everything that he is accustomed to and has attached his heart to. You have to attend rock concerts, sing along and dance along in the hope that someone will convert. In certain cases, this is justified, but only to one limit, when church life unexpectedly begins to change to please people close to the church. It’s bad when missionary oikonomia gradually becomes church akrivia (that is, when condescension to the weakness of non-church people eventually becomes the rule church life). Another missionary tries to break what he thinks is an established stereotype in order to offer a new, simplified image of salvation. This is how fasting without marital abstinence appears, a pre-Easter diet that is much easier to accept.

There is a second path for the modern missionary. No, this is not at all the path of criticism and censure of what young people who have not yet come to the Church live. Usually, missionaries who have chosen the first, broad path, reduce the second path to a primitive, sweeping criticism by poorly educated believers of the rules of life for non-church people: a person enters a church, he is immediately shoved away, he goes to confession for the first time, he is already forbidden to read fiction books. Such an identification is deeply incorrect and unfair, because sweeping criticism is not missionary, and therefore it is not the way at all. The genuine, albeit narrower path of missionary work is an image of the beauty of church life, an image of the joy that is characteristic of spiritual life, this is inspiration for that work on oneself, which ultimately leads to true freedom. And to do this, the missionary himself needs to live what he is going to talk about, and his personal inspiration, sincerity and openness will undoubtedly resonate with young people.

Let’s imagine a coach, an athlete, who, wanting to recruit students, comes to teenagers and says: “Live as you want, drink, smoke, but just come to my gym sometimes.” I don’t rule out that some teenagers will become interested and start studying. It’s bad if he starts saying to those who have been visiting the section for a long time: “You know, in the ancient sports rules I read that there is no need to strain so much, training can be reduced by four times, let’s abolish many exercises altogether” - one thing is clear that the level of this section will drop sharply. The second approach is that the coach will show teenagers who are not yet interested how healthy and interesting it is to train, work on oneself, participate in competitions, and although sometimes suffer defeats, move forward again and again, and for those who are already engaged, will say: “You are great in what you have already achieved, but this is not enough yet, let’s move forward together.”

A real missionary is not one who hides the difficulties of Christian life, much less one who tries to bring Christian life to the level of the surrounding life, but one who skillfully shows how interesting and joyful it turns out to be - to develop willpower in oneself, to learn to overcome one’s own passion, to reveal the image of God in oneself. Not giving in to difficulties, but courageously overcoming them is the path to independence and freedom. There is a parable about how, during the construction of Chartres Cathedral (and construction lasted for several decades), three hard workers carried identical wheelbarrows of stones from morning to evening. And somehow they were asked the same question: what are they doing? The first one, sighing, said: “I carry this damned work.” The second said sadly: “I earn my living.” And the third one suddenly answered joyfully: “I’m building a beautiful cathedral.” The three of them performed the same hard work, but only one was happy. This is the task of the missionary - to show the joy of spiritual work, through which a majestic temple for God is erected in our hearts.

Head of the information and publishing sector of the Department of Youth Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, senior lecturer at the Department of Biomedical Ethics of the Russian State Medical University.
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What kind of chimera is this man? What an unprecedented thing, what a monster, what chaos, what a field of contradictions, what a miracle! Judge of all things, senseless earthworm, guardian of truth, cesspool of doubts and errors, glory and rubbish of the universe.

How to answer the questions: “Why should an Orthodox Christian play sports? When will there be a disco?”, and even “What is marital love?” How to make sure that such questions do not occur to a teenager at all in an Orthodox camp.

There is a bitter joke that the main obstacle on the way of young people to the temple is the Orthodox Christians themselves. Too often our mistakes turn out to be fatal for those who hoped to find salvation in the Church, but met there with indifference or legalism...

The Pskov-Pechersky Holy Dormition Monastery was noted in the history of Russian holiness by the miracle of the Assumption. The date of its foundation is considered to be August 15/28, 1473, when the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, excavated in the mountain by St. Jonah Shestnik.

He was thinking about entering a theological seminary, and received the blessing of Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov), to whom Deacon Andrei Kuraev, who was at that time the Patriarch’s assistant, helped him get to confession.

From the third year he also studied at the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian, where Andrei Kuraev became the dean of the philosophical and theological faculty.

In 1996 he began publishing in the Radonezh newspaper.

In 1997 he entered graduate school at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University.

Since 1997 - senior lecturer at the Department of Bioethics.

In 2000, when the Department for Youth Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was formed, Mikhail Pershin, with the blessing of Archbishop of Kostroma and Galich Alexander (Mogilev), Chairman of the Department, headed the commission on spiritual and moral education and missionary work of the All-Russian Orthodox youth movement.

December 26, 2006 by decision Holy Synod included in the delegation for the III European Inter-Christian Assembly on the theme “The Light of Christ shines on everyone; Hope for renewal and unity in Europe”, which took place in Sibiu (Romania) September 3-9, 2007.

On April 19, 2008, he was ordained to the rank of priest.

On April 24, 2008, in the Epiphany-Anastasia Cathedral of the city of Kostroma, Archbishop Alexander (Mogilev) of Kostroma and Galich was tonsured a monk with the name Demetrius in honor of St. Demetrius of Rostov.

Since 2009 - member of the “Association of Orthodox Experts”, expert of the Orthodox magazine “Thomas”.

In 2009, he joined the editorial board of the new textbook “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” (editor-in-chief - Andrey Kuraev).

Activity

In 2006, he became one of the initiators of the creation of the Sretenie television company and has since been its permanent editor-in-chief. Since December 23, 2011, he has headed the Missionary Commission under the Diocesan Council of Moscow.

Heads the information and publishing department of the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate; director of the center for biblical and pathological research (program for supporting young scientists of the All-Russian Orthodox youth movement); Deputy Chairman of the Brotherhood of Orthodox Pathfinders.

Expert of the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, senior lecturer at the Department of Biomedical Ethics of the Russian State Medical University, member of the editorial board and editorial board for writing a textbook and teaching materials on the training course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” for high school.

Criticism

In 2009, the hierarchy issued a warning and recommended Fr. Dmitry to refrain from speaking in the media. Thus, in an open letter, the Chairman of the Department for Youth Affairs of Archbishop Alexander (Mogilev) of Kostroma and Galich wrote: “In order to avoid misunderstandings, you are blessed to refrain from public speeches in the press in the future, or to carry them out only with my direct blessing, subject to agreement with me on the texts of speeches . We must treat our public statements with special responsibility in order not to give an opportunity to those who are looking for a reason to hurt the Church. Unfortunately, practice has shown that you do not yet have sufficient maturity to make competent public appearances in the media.”

In 2009, in Seliger, within the framework of the All-Russian Educational Youth Forum “Seliger”, the next “Orthodox Shift” was held, which was attended by about 1,400 people. In the midst of my shift, they called me from one church department and said that Pershin wanted to come to the shift and give lectures...

And this is where things started to get interesting. Pershin demanded... 15 thousand rubles for a lecture (the lecture of the most significant and eminent lecturer at the Seliger Higher Secondary School was paid at the rate of 3,000 rubles per academic hour, that is, 6,000 per lecture - this is if the lecturer demanded payment). Of course, Pershin was refused.<…>All the clergy who worked and performed on shift, including Fathers Vsevolod Chaplin, Dimitry Smirnov, Hegumen Sergius (Rybko) and the priests of his church, Hieromonk Macarius (Markish), the late Father Daniil Sysoev and many others (including priests from the regions, sisters from the sisterhood in name Ignatius of Stavropol) acted and worked for free (!), never putting forward any conditions or demands. The Muslim mullah whom I invited for the Muslim delegation also categorically refused money.

In the entire history of the “Orthodox Shifts”, only two people issued price lists and strictly monitored their observance - Kuraev and his “student” Pershin.

...Although Pershin was not “the most significant lecturer,” on the contrary, “according to the laws of hospitality,” it was necessary to offer him the highest existing rate. He agreed with displeasure, since there was nowhere to retreat. After that, I looked at the topics of the lectures, of which there were many, and their titles were very avant-garde (I remember one “Missionary Cats”)...”

Publications

• // “Tatiana’s Day”, December 15, 2003
• Questions test control in the discipline "Biomedical Ethics". M., GOU VUNMC Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, 2003, 32 pp.
• Deacon Mikhail Pershin. Mission in the era of globalization: strategy of the Church. Article one // Alpha and Omega. 2007.
• “Status of the embryo” // “Man” magazine. Scientific journal (VAK), No. 2, 2007, pp. 98-108.
• Multimedia textbook (CD) for medical students. “Bioethics today. Lectures, articles, educational and teaching aids", M.: State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education RGMU, M., 2005. "Recommended by the Educational and Methodological Association for Medical and Pharmaceutical Education of Russian Universities as a multimedia teaching aid for students of medical universities."
• Seminar classes on the course “Biomedical Ethics”. For students of medical, pediatric, medical and biological faculties. Educational and methodological manual. Issue 2. M., 2007, 116 pages.
• Educational and methodological manual for teachers in the discipline of biomedical ethics for medical and pharmaceutical universities. 2010, M.: GBOU VPO RNIMU im. N. I. Pirogova

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Excerpt characterizing Dimitri (Pershin)

He smiled and extended his hand to her.

For Prince Andrei, seven days have passed since he woke up at the dressing station of the Borodino field. All this time he was in almost constant unconsciousness. The fever and inflammation of the intestines, which were damaged, in the opinion of the doctor traveling with the wounded man, should have carried him away. But on the seventh day he happily ate a slice of bread with tea, and the doctor noticed that the general fever had decreased. Prince Andrei regained consciousness in the morning. The first night after leaving Moscow it was quite warm, and Prince Andrei was left to spend the night in a carriage; but in Mytishchi the wounded man himself demanded to be carried out and to be given tea. The pain caused to him by being carried into the hut made Prince Andrei moan loudly and lose consciousness again. When they laid him on the camp bed, he lay for a long time with his eyes closed without moving. Then he opened them and quietly whispered: “What should I have for tea?” This memory for the small details of life amazed the doctor. He felt the pulse and, to his surprise and displeasure, noticed that the pulse was better. To his displeasure, the doctor noticed this because, from his experience, he was convinced that Prince Andrei could not live and that if he did not die now, he would only die with great suffering some time later. With Prince Andrei they were carrying the major of his regiment, Timokhin, who had joined them in Moscow with a red nose and was wounded in the leg in the same Battle of Borodino. With them rode a doctor, the prince's valet, his coachman and two orderlies.
Prince Andrey was given tea. He drank greedily, looking ahead at the door with feverish eyes, as if trying to understand and remember something.
- I don’t want anymore. Is Timokhin here? - he asked. Timokhin crawled towards him along the bench.
- I'm here, your Excellency.
- How's the wound?
- Mine then? Nothing. Is that you? “Prince Andrei began to think again, as if remembering something.
-Can I get a book? - he said.
- Which book?
- Gospel! I have no.
The doctor promised to get it and began asking the prince about how he felt. Prince Andrei reluctantly, but wisely answered all the doctor’s questions and then said that he needed to put a cushion on him, otherwise it would be awkward and very painful. The doctor and the valet lifted the greatcoat with which he was covered and, wincing at the heavy smell of rotten meat spreading from the wound, began to examine it scary place. The doctor was very dissatisfied with something, changed something differently, turned the wounded man over so that he groaned again and, from the pain while turning, again lost consciousness and began to rave. He kept talking about getting this book for him as soon as possible and putting it there.
- And what does it cost you! - he said. “I don’t have it, please take it out and put it in for a minute,” he said in a pitiful voice.
The doctor went out into the hallway to wash his hands.
“Ah, shameless, really,” the doctor said to the valet, who was pouring water onto his hands. - I just didn’t watch it for a minute. After all, you put it directly on the wound. It’s such a pain that I’m surprised how he endures it.
“It seems we set it up, Lord Jesus Christ,” said the valet.
For the first time, Prince Andrei understood where he was and what had happened to him, and remembered that he had been wounded and how at that moment when the carriage stopped in Mytishchi, he asked to go to the hut. Confused again from pain, he came to his senses another time in the hut, when he was drinking tea, and then again, repeating in his memory everything that had happened to him, he most vividly imagined that moment at the dressing station when, at the sight of the suffering of a person he did not love, , these new thoughts came to him, promising him happiness. And these thoughts, although unclear and indefinite, now again took possession of his soul. He remembered that he now had new happiness and that this happiness had something in common with the Gospel. That's why he asked for the Gospel. But the bad position that his wound had given him, the new upheaval, again confused his thoughts, and for the third time he woke up to life in the complete silence of the night. Everyone was sleeping around him. A cricket was screaming through the entryway, someone was shouting and singing on the street, cockroaches were rustling on the table and on the icons, in the autumn a fat fly was beating on his headboard and near a burnt tallow candle. big mushroom and standing next to him.
His soul was not in a normal state. A healthy person usually thinks, feels and remembers simultaneously countless objects, but has the power and strength, having chosen one series of thoughts or phenomena, to focus all his attention on this series of phenomena. A healthy person, in a moment of deepest thought, breaks away to say a polite word to the person who has entered, and again returns to his thoughts. The soul of Prince Andrei was not in a normal state in this regard. All the forces of his soul were more active, clearer than ever, but they acted outside of his will. The most diverse thoughts and ideas simultaneously possessed him. Sometimes his thought suddenly began to work, and with such strength, clarity and depth with which it had never been able to act in a healthy state; but suddenly, in the middle of her work, she broke off, was replaced by some unexpected idea, and there was no strength to return to it.
“Yes, I have discovered a new happiness, inalienable from a person,” he thought, lying in a dark, quiet hut and looking ahead with feverishly open, fixed eyes. Happiness that is outside of material forces, outside of material external influences on a person, the happiness of one soul, the happiness of love! Every person can understand it, but only God can recognize and prescribe it. But how did God prescribe this law? Why son?.. And suddenly the train of these thoughts was interrupted, and Prince Andrei heard (not knowing whether he was in delirium or in reality he was hearing this), he heard some quiet, whispering voice, incessantly repeating in rhythm: “And drink piti drink” then “and ti tii” again “and piti piti pitii” again “and ti ti.” At the same time, to the sound of this whispering music, Prince Andrei felt that some strange airy building made of thin needles or splinters was erected above his face, above the very middle. He felt (although it was difficult for him) that he had to diligently maintain his balance so that the building that was being erected would not collapse; but it still fell down and slowly rose again at the sounds of steadily whispering music. “It’s stretching!” stretches! stretches and everything stretches,” Prince Andrei said to himself. Along with listening to the whisper and feeling this stretching and rising building of needles, Prince Andrei saw in fits and starts the red light of a candle surrounded in a circle and heard the rustling of cockroaches and the rustling of a fly beating on the pillow and on his face. And every time the fly touched his face, it produced a burning sensation; but at the same time he was surprised by the fact that, hitting the very area of ​​​​the building erected on his face, the fly did not destroy it. But besides this, there was one more important thing. It was white by the door, it was a sphinx statue that was also crushing him.
“But maybe this is my shirt on the table,” thought Prince Andrei, “and these are my legs, and this is the door; but why is everything stretching and moving forward and piti piti piti and tit ti - and piti piti piti... - Enough, stop, please, leave it, - Prince Andrei begged someone heavily. And suddenly the thought and feeling emerged again with extraordinary clarity and strength.
“Yes, love,” he thought again with perfect clarity), but not the love that loves for something, for something or for some reason, but the love that I experienced for the first time, when, dying, I saw my enemy and still fell in love with him. I experienced that feeling of love, which is the very essence of the soul and for which no object is needed. I still experience this blissful feeling. Love your neighbors, love your enemies. To love everything - to love God in all manifestations. You can love a dear person with human love; but only an enemy can be loved with divine love. And from this I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that person. What about him? Is he alive... Loving with human love, you can move from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not death, nothing can destroy it. She is the essence of the soul. And how many people have I hated in my life. And of all the people, I have never loved or hated anyone more than her.” And he vividly imagined Natasha, not the way he had imagined her before, with only her charm, joyful for himself; but for the first time I imagined her soul. And he understood her feeling, her suffering, shame, repentance. Now for the first time he understood the cruelty of his refusal, saw the cruelty of his break with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her just one more time. Once, looking into these eyes, say..."
And piti piti piti and ti ti ti, and piti piti - boom, a fly hit... And his attention was suddenly transferred to another world of reality and delirium, in which something special was happening. Still in this world, everything was erected without collapsing, a building, something was still stretching, the same candle was burning with a red circle, the same sphinx shirt was lying at the door; but besides all this, something creaked and smelled fresh wind, and a new white sphinx, standing, appeared in front of the door. And in the head of this sphinx there was the pale face and sparkling eyes of the very Natasha about whom he was now thinking.

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, graduate school of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology of the Russian Orthodox University, and completed his studies in the correspondence sector of the Moscow Theological Academy.

Hieromonk Dimitry (Pershin) acting Chairman of the Missionary Commission under the Diocesan Council of Moscow, expert of the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, deputy chairman of the Brotherhood of Orthodox Pathfinders, senior lecturer at the Department of Biomedical Ethics of the Russian State Medical University, member of the editorial board and editorial board for writing a textbook and teaching materials for the training course "Fundamentals" Orthodox culture" for high school. Serves at the Patriarchal Krutitsky Compound of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin): interview

TALK ABOUT YOUTH MISSIONARY

“Visiting God”: before and after

Father Dimitri, these days the Church is looking for and finding new reasons to meet with young people. Priests perform at rock concerts, young people are increasingly participating in Orthodox youth organizations, and the number of young people calling themselves Orthodox is growing. But the number of those who regularly come to church and become churches... there are an order of magnitude fewer of them. What is this connected with?
“Most of the guys our missionaries were able to attract have so far only taken the first step. They made a choice in favor of denial, realized for themselves who they definitely would not be - neither Satanists nor fascists, but still do not know who they would like to become.

Moreover, they discovered that the Church was much closer to them than they thought. On the one hand, such rock musicians as confess and receive communion here; on the other hand, believers, including priests, participate in the life of youth camps and volunteer organizations.

However, the second step is much more difficult, since it no longer affects the external surroundings, but our very inner essence, which has to be redrawn anew, discarding unusable pieces and inserting, or rather, cultivating its new dimensions - the dimensions of prayer and love. But parting with an “old soul” is not easy. On the one hand, here is the free will of man (he makes his own choice), and on the other, the mystery of Providence, which leads him to salvation.

How and whom does the Lord bring to the Church? In the Gospel of John we see that even the preaching of the best Preacher in the history of the world could not only not find a response, but also cause rejection. When Jesus said that he would resurrect those who partook of His Body and Blood, many disciples left Him, wondering: what strange words! who can listen to this! (John 6:60). He not only did not begin to “simplify” His message in Tolstoy’s style, but also asked the twelve remaining with Him: would they also like to leave? By the time of the Passion on the Cross, there were only about one hundred and twenty people on earth who were faithful to Christ; so many of them gathered for the first meeting of His disciples after the Ascension (see Acts 1:16), but it was they who became the ambassadors of the Church to the worlds of Jewish, Hellenic and Persian culture and transformed them.

So we shouldn’t count on mass appeals. Success is when at least one of your hundreds of listeners suddenly hears a knock in their heart and invites the Guest to enter.

- So, nothing can be done here? Should we just wait for the person to make a decision?
- It is absolutely necessary to do it, but what exactly is a separate question. Convince, force, achieve... - these intonations are applicable to polemics, when it is necessary to force the opponent to part with those caricatured views of Christianity with which he explains his antipathies towards it. But, on the other hand, you know what two centuries ago they called a missionary in Astrakhan province? The prober, that is, the one who “poke”: persuades, exhorts, shames and reproaches. So: one cannot reduce evidence to just probing and probing.

With all the differences in views, it is no less important to simply be close to a person who expects attention, care and support from us. And here you need to be ready to missionary the way he did, talking with people for hours without any hope that any of them would convert.

But today it is precisely in this regard that our mission is especially weak. Almost no one picks up the impulse conveyed by preachers at rock concerts within the Church itself, and it turns out that we have learned to attract people to church, but we have not learned to help them cross its threshold. It happens that young people in parishes encounter indifference, or even rejection...

And not only neophytes... There is another youth problem: children from believing families who grow up and flee from the “Orthodox ghetto.”
-This is really a problem, and here I would advise all parents to read Natalia Sokolova’s book “Under the Shelter of the Almighty.” This is a very light autobiographical confessional book, which nevertheless contains bitter pages. The author talks about how her parents, famous Orthodox apologists of the twentieth century Nikolai Evgrafovich Pestov and his wife, with all their piety, almost drove their daughter away from the Church. And years later, she herself had to solve the same problem, raising five children, one of whom later became a bishop, two others became priests, and her daughters created wonderful Christian families. The experience of not only successes, but also mistakes realized in time before they become irreparable is extremely important to us.

There are probably really a lot of these different errors, but don’t you think that they can be reduced to some main, systemic error? Correct me if this is not true, but the really serious problem we have today is that no one is helping a young person understand the connection between Christianity and his own life. Orthodoxy for him is a set of rituals and prohibitions, and not at all knowledge about God and about communication with Him.
- I think this is the main reason for many of our problems, because of which in the last century the Russian empire. For a significant part of people, and especially for young people, Christianity has turned into a set of moral, behavioral and even administrative rules, which, moreover, are often understood as the foundation of statehood.

But, according to Kant’s formulation, a person cannot be a means to any good ends. He himself is the purpose and meaning of everything that happens in the universe. And with bare moralizing “from Christianity,” a person degenerates into a function, into a thoughtless mechanism for translating rules into everyday life. The natural reaction to this is protest and refusal to follow rules that are too correct.

Long before the October catastrophe Venerable Seraphim Sarovsky spoke in a conversation with the nobleman Motovilov about the purpose of Christian life. He noted that many, including people of clergy, are sure that this goal is keeping the commandments, starting a family, working, and the like. But this is not true: the goal is much higher - it is communication with God, the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. And the commandments and moral standards are only means that purify the heart for this communication.

Very often the key word in our dialogue with young people is “no.” No to abortion. No - fornication. No Drugs. No - “fun”. No - to thoughtless careerism. All this is correct, but it turns out that we only take away, but do not give anything in return. But many people have nothing else in their lives, and now even this is being taken away... Not without hints from over their left shoulder, the Church appears to them as a “great taker,” and they instinctively shy away from it.

In my opinion, we need to start with something else - with joy. In that conversation with the elder, Motovilov still could not understand what “acquiring the Holy Spirit” means in practice. And then the Reverend prayed to himself, and Motovilov saw that his face was like the sun: it shone with the light of the eternal Divine glory, the light that the Apostles saw when the Lord was transfigured before them on Mount Tabor. It turns out that to this day Christ distributes these gifts to His disciples to the extent that they can accommodate them, and through the prayer of St. Seraphim Motovilov this eternal glory was revealed.

It would be good for us, when communicating with young people, to master those Easter intonations of the Sarov priest, who greeted everyone who came to him with the words: “My joy, Christ is Risen!” If this joy touches the heart of our interlocutor, everything else will become clear to him: how to try to live in order to preserve this joy and not lose it. Translated from Greek Gospel- this is the Good News, and it is in this, in the meeting with the God of the Cross and Resurrection, and not in the rules of a pious and impeccable life as such.

Language of prayer

- Many people perceive this as an empty ritual, a theatrical performance...
- But without prayer, the Church is not the Church. Initially, the Liturgy was understood as the “common service” (literally translated from Greek) of all praying Christians, and not just the clergy. But if they just put on the record, stood it up and left, Christianity loses all meaning. This Sacrament is infinitely higher than any emotions, it is not even empathy, but precisely communion, the communion of all the faithful with the Risen One and the One who Resurrects us.

, which we have already talked about, talked about how he served the Liturgy on a huge stump in a scout camp for children of emigrants and at first tried to simply Russify it to make it easier to understand, but this did not give anything. The words became clearer, but he did not feel the prayerful attention of those who heard and understood them. The next time he tried to explain with the children what was happening during the Liturgy, its course and symbolism. And everything changed: during the Liturgy, everyone served him prayerfully (and not just stood), although it was in Church Slavonic.

- This, by the way, shows that the mechanical Russification of worship is not a panacea...
- Russification itself will in no way save the situation. Here you cannot cut from the shoulder, as an order. First of all, worship needs to be loved. And based on this love, from this reverent sense of shrine, try to convey the meaning of what is happening in the temple to the Christians who come to it.

I also had a similar experience. In February of this year, one of our fellow trackers came up to me and gave me the film “Russian Sacrifice” - about how on March 1, 2000 in Chechnya, the sixth company of the Pskov Airborne Division was killed in an unequal battle. She died, but did not let the advancing militants, who were twenty times more numerous, pass through. The surviving paratroopers drew fire on themselves. We watched the movie and we had a question: the anniversary is in a week, but what can we do? Discuss the event? Hold a “five minutes of hatred” towards “non-natives”? Is this what the guys who died there would have wanted from us? And the answer came by itself - let's pray for them! One of the guys, who, by the way, was completely unchurched, found the names of the dead paratroopers on the Internet, others found the funeral service, and they printed it all out for everyone. And then we all got together, about forty people, and served a memorial service. We read and sang ourselves, having previously analyzed difficult passages - and were surprised at how poetic church rite prayers for the departed.

Actually, my path to the Church ran approximately the same way. Back in 1990, Deacon Andrei Kuraev came to my school. It was my senior year, however, when he offered to go to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra for Christmas, I did not refuse. But the services at the Lavra are long, and I stood with the other guys, shifting from foot to foot and dreaming that everything would end as soon as possible. Father Andrei had the patience not to get irritated, but to explain to us what was happening in the church and why. The grandmothers shushed him, but he quietly continued, although, probably, he himself would not mind ignoring our questions and praying. So: many of those guys later became priests.

A missionary has to sacrifice his reputation and even his prayer in order to help others, but to do this, the first must be neglected and the second must be loved.

Church "loneliness"

- We started by talking about preaching at rock concerts, but not all young people go to rock concerts...
- Most of listens to pop music.

And then there are those who listen to neither one nor the other. These are loners who do not come to a concert or a party. They immediately look for the Church, God. What can be done for them so that they do not go astray?
- I believe that the greatest tragedy of our Church today is that we are not ready to meet these people, because we ourselves, the people of the Church, have not accustomed ourselves to high culture.

We don't read books, we don't read thick magazines. The three thousand circulation of the educational magazine “Alpha and Omega” is a disaster. This means that we don’t even read our church publications, let alone Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn! And this means that young individual intellectuals, the very four percent who lead humanity forward, often pass us by. We are again losing that part of the youth that we already lost once in the 19th century, when they all went into the revolution.

We, the people of the Church, need to cultivate a culture of thought and learn from the experience of others Orthodox countries, for example, Greece, in whose temples there is a rich selection of literature of any level of complexity.

Young brains require investment. When we learn to move past short-term profits, stop chasing cheapness and begin to invest in those who are serious about thinking and delving into things, then our unprofitable bookshelves will turn into people ready to serve the Church, and this is infinitely more important. Moreover, it is obvious that in the long term it is these bespectacled “knowledgeables” who will determine the intellectual appearance of the country. And some of them will have the chance to teach our children. The simplest solution to the problem of the subject “fundamentals of Orthodox culture” is to bring teachers to faith, and they will take care of the rest themselves.

Yes, and in Russia there have always been and will be educated priests who are not alien to books. But, alas, for many, the issue of education and culture of thought is still on the second, if not the tenth, plane...

And personally, as a priest and missionary, could you say something to such a young man who wants to come to Church, but does not know what is needed for this? - I don’t have any universal advice. Probably the best thing to do would be to talk to the person in person. You can find answers to some questions on my blog on the Internet, through which you can contact me directly.

Perhaps I can warn about two temptations that lie in wait for us in matters of faith. Often we expect some kind of special holiness from the Church, we are afraid to enter there, fearing to find ourselves next to the pillars of piety. But as soon as we overcome this embarrassment, the same evil spirit gives us a reason for disappointment: oh, before our eyes the priest ate a sausage sandwich. Well, everything is clear now: they are the same sinners here as I am. That's all, and never set foot in church again... Avoid extremes: the first and most important Christian virtue is sobriety.

And one more thing: don’t despair! Remember the story from the Acts of the Apostles? It tells about the eunuch of the Ethiopian queen, who read the prophet Isaiah on the road and could not understand, although he tried very hard. God did not leave him, but sent the Apostle Philip, who not only explained to him the meaning of the prophecies, but also baptized him there. We are not alone. God hears our questions and answers them.

In love and freedom

- What do you think the Church should do today to make its work with young people more effective?
- First of all, the need to create a directory directory for youth ministry is long overdue. It should have three categories: those organizations that are established by the Church, such as the All-Russian Orthodox Youth Movement or the Brotherhood of Orthodox Pathfinders (BOP); those that were created as public organizations, but position themselves as Orthodox (military-patriotic clubs, scouts, and so on); and completely secular organizations that also need to be worked with. With the blessing of the Chairman of the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs, Archbishop Alexander of Kostroma and Galich, we are already collecting information for such a publication.

For example, there is such an organization in Moscow - “Circle”. For many years now, children who are completely far from the Church have been helping an orphanage together. I should bow at their feet! But the parishes neighboring the orphanage do not even know about their existence. Well, why not invite the guys to visit, invite them to chat, drink tea, and finally learn from them? We are called to seek common ground, reasons to help others and communicate with them.

There are also very unexpected and successful missionary solutions in intra-church organizations. Thus, over the past years, BPS has proven the effectiveness of its methodology. In the West, seven to eight percent of children are covered by the scout system, but among politicians, entrepreneurs and scientists, up to eighty percent are former scouts. These numbers speak for themselves. And the fact that in Orthodox pathfinding this technique is churched gives us another opportunity to take care of the future.

But there is also a temptation here: after seeing such an effective experience, it is easy to decide that the easiest way is to force everyone into one mold. Will it turn out that we will begin to create an Orthodox Komsomol?
- But here the experience of freedom is more than in demand, the beginnings of which we are also trying to instill in the Brotherhood. For me, the word “democracy” is not a dirty word; on the contrary, it is precisely this form of organizing life that is most effective these days. BPS unites a variety of organizations from different regions, offering them not educational and administrative templates, but mutual assistance and resources. We do not have any single policy that is imposed on everyone around us.

Moreover, we consider one of our most important tasks to teach our pathfinders to think independently, make choices and take responsibility. Christian life is a spiritual warfare, and everyone is called to fight for their inner freedom.

This is the “programmatic” level of interaction between the Church and various youth organizations that I consider necessary. If only because if secular officials decide to “build” our Orthodox youth for their own needs, then we will have something to oppose them with. We need to participate in youth policy, but on our own terms, to ensure that the state takes into account the interests of our youth, to include our own holidays and events in the calendar. Otherwise, our youth are simply forced to ensure attendance at events that are completely alien to them. Such cases have already happened. And the problem here is not at all with the officials, but precisely with our readiness to exchange our guys for show.

This makes the Church another “resource”, in in this case— youth. But as is known, the transformation of the Church into an agency Orthodox confession It didn’t end well for Russia. So democracy is better.

But since we are talking about the state and society, we cannot ignore the fact that today in society there is a very ambiguous attitude towards socio-political youth movements that call themselves Orthodox. Maybe we should ignore them?
- If missionaries ignore them, then politicians will not ignore them in any case, and these youth will become tools in their hands. Therefore, I think we should remember that God is more talented than any unscrupulous politicians, and go towards all these youth movements, relying on the Lord.

We absolutely must work with everyone who is willing to listen to us, even if they are political movements. But we need to draw a clear line: the Church does not participate directly in politics. Otherwise, we will be perceived as a political option, and our testimony as propaganda.

But what we could learn from secular movements is self-reliance. One thing really worries me. Lately, our consumerist attitude towards the Church has been gaining strength. And both outside and inside it. Everyone is already accustomed to the fact that the Church organizes concerts, visits hospitals, looks into prisons and conducts hikes. And then there's Easter and Christmas. But we somehow forget that the Church is us, all Orthodox Christians. And even those who have been visiting the church for a long time, participating in parish events, still for some reason expect that some “other Church” will operate without their personal participation, that “the priest will organize everything.”

Thus, we attract young people, but do not overload them. And this is also a mission problem. We should always have a list of things ready in which young people could reveal their talents and professional skills. For example, I now need humanities specialists with good English who could give lectures at our Krutitsy Diaspora Mission Center for students from China and Malaysia. We need athletes, instructors and counselors for summer camps...

Many projects are quite feasible, but not instead of the youth, which is beyond the capabilities of a priest, but together with them. We are still asking for money from sponsors and the state instead of learning how to earn it, including by receiving specialized grants for youth and social activity. But in Europe, for example, fifty to eighty percent of all social sphere given to Catholic and Protestant organizations. And to their credit, they work very well.

We should learn from them. The time has come to turn petitioners into a powerful social force - not political, but social, open, free and morally oriented, which will be judged by concrete deeds, and not by slogans. Let’s not be ashamed of the fact that we still don’t know how to do a lot. Let's start our journey and then we'll see. We have no other path except to the youth and with them.

And let's not give up. Unlike the cartoon hero about Prostokvashino, we are not our own children. We have a Father who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin): lecture

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin) (born 1974)-Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biomedical Ethics of the Russian State Medical University, journalist, missionary: | | .

CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN THE SOVIET ERA

The era is Soviet, the salt is Christian...

Today I would propose a topic that is quite unexpected even for me - about the Christian dimension of Russian literature in the Soviet era. And not only in those cases when the author wrote in defiance of the authorities, contrary to ideology, refusing to be a contemporary of total devastation in the minds, like Osip Mandelstam, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ilya Gabay and others who worked for the table, since the likelihood of publication was extremely low.

But also in those when the texts were created seemingly outside of direct opposition to the authorities and were even published in large editions, but at the same time they did not return readers to the precepts of 1917 (remember “And the commissars in dusty helmets will bow silently over me”? - so the early Bulat Okudzhava romanticized the revolution), but to the much more significant horizons of pre-revolutionary - and in this sense European - culture.

These include the prose of Vasily Shukshin and Boris Vasiliev, the poetry of Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Andrei Voznesensky, or an original song, for example, by Vladimir Vysotsky and Yuli Kim. And this is only a small part of the names that should be heard here.

Moreover, even seemingly completely secular-Soviet mass literature happened to be quite religious. Just the other day I had the opportunity to read the memoirs of a soldier who passed through Stalingrad. Not Viktor Nekrasov’s story “In the Trenches of Stalingrad,” but simply the memoirs of a private, Tatar, Mansur Abdulin - “160 pages from a soldier’s diary” (published in 1985).

These pages show how it is born religious feeling from an atheist. He, a miner who fought for six months before being seriously wounded, tells how he was once raised in atheism, because his father was a sincere party member, also a miner.

But after several weeks of terrible fighting at Stalingrad, this man, tabula rasa, if we talk about religious consciousness, returned to very archaic, primitive religious practices - to magic. He made himself a talisman with his own hands, shrouded in superstition (the thing “had power” if only its owner knew about it), believed in this “power” and in his destiny. In the trenches, such talismanic fatalism was endemic.

But in his attitude towards people, in his actions, Mansur was a man who laid down his soul for others. So he recalls how one day they were sent on foot across the steppe to the Don, to the front line, and the quartermasters got lost, and the battalion was left without food for several days.

When they brought the bread and distributed it, someone stole this bread from Mansur. The battalion commander cocked the gun and ordered everyone to open their duffel bags. They all opened, but one soldier did not open and lowered his eyes. At the request of the battalion commander, Mansur approached him, felt two loaves of bread in his duffel bag and said: “The stolen bread was not found.” The battalion commander was taken aback, his face changed and, very pleased - you could see it in his eyes - he put away the pistol. And the soldiers cut everything off for their robbed comrade.

But after a couple of weeks, the soldier who stole was seriously wounded in the lungs, and the author of the memoirs was ordered to drag him across the steppe to Sanrota. And he began, as we would say now, a spiritual battle: to quit or not to quit? If we gave up, we could have waited for the field kitchen, especially since the soldiers were starving for a day again. And then the wounded man regained consciousness and asked: “Mansur, shoot me... But if you can’t, leave it... I tortured you...”. But he dragged him and handed him over to the orderlies.

Then I kept remembering that a shell would explode nearby, but it wouldn’t hit him, it would explode here. As he believed, fate was protecting him, because if you do good, then it comes back to you like a boomerang. This is no longer just conscientious reflection, this is already religious consciousness, but in very primitive forms, in magical ones. It is still widespread in Russia.

But if we open the texts of Boris Vasiliev or listen closely to Tarkovsky’s films, we will see there not the principle of blind retribution, but the space of evangelical ethics and Christian hope.

And so my first question is for you: who among those present here has read “Don’t Shoot White Swans” by Boris Vasiliev?

Who watched the film? I see two hands, three.

Well, the first step that a person takes when getting to know himself is that he discovers that he is not equal to himself, that he is greater than his physics and biology.

Let's try to take this step together with Boris Vasiliev, also, by the way, a front-line soldier:

“In your work, son, try without fuss. And do as your soul tells you: the soul knows when to stop.
- Why, father, do you keep talking about the soul? At school they teach that there is no soul at all, but only reflexes.
- What is there?
- Reflexes. Well, this is when you want something, your mouth waters.
“They teach correctly,” said Yegor, after thinking. - But when you don’t want to, then why does it flow? Then, son, burning tears flow when you don’t want anything else, but are ordered. And these tears flow not down the face, but inside. And a tourniquet. Because they burn because the soul cries. Therefore, it still exists, but, apparently, everyone has their own. And therefore everyone should be able to listen to her. What, then, is she telling him?”

Think, main theme Russian literature of the Soviet era was the acquaintance of a person with his soul, with his inner world, overcoming the primitive schemes of Marxism-Leninism, which were taught from school. And through acquaintance with the soul that dwells in every person, and with the laws by which the soul lives, the reader comes to the question: where does this soul and these laws come from in me and why do I feel bad when I break them and feel good when I follow them?

Yegor in the story “Don’t Shoot the White Swans” is, of course, an image of a holy fool trying to live by the law of the highest truth in the Soviet Union. This sacrificial otherworldliness is characteristic, perhaps, only of those ancient Russian monastic ascetics, in whose honor Rus' was once called the Northern Thebaid. And although Yegor is called the Trouble-Bearer, it is obvious that he is thereby correlated with Saint Yegor (George) the Victorious.

Egor does not fit into either Marxism-Leninism or consumer culture. Just as he was crushed by the bastards of the Soviet era, in the same way, perhaps even faster and with more enthusiasm, the bastards of the post-Soviet era would have been strangled. They would strangle him for the same reasons - a person does not bend to the natural course of things. In this novel it is natural to steal, strangle, drag under oneself. In other words, to live according to the laws of the struggle for existence in a world that lies in evil. And then the man gives. And the reader, reading this text, cries somewhere, clenches his fists somewhere, and is shocked that Yegor refuses to clench his fists.

He learns very important things, learns to forgive. Moreover, to forgive not only those distant, but also those closest to him. It’s a pity that at school this is only included in additional reading, because this book teaches a child to forgive not only his friends, but also his parents, to see in them not only mistakes, but also light.

There are mistakes, and at some point the teenager begins to notice them and, naturally, respond according to the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” - you put me in a corner, and I will run away from you in protest. And suddenly here the situation reaches such a high level of comprehension when the child learns to sympathize with drinking, quarreling, and, in general, imperfect parents. By the way, the fifth volume of Harry Potter’s seven books is devoted to the same topic.

Do you remember the finale? On the one hand, our heart asks for retribution - if only these scoundrels could be imprisoned, they killed a man, if only we had been there and stood up. Remember the denouement, right? Egor, having become a forester, finds those who kill the white swans he has tamed for fun. And they kick him to death. Among those beating him are his brother-in-law, his wife’s sister’s husband, and a close friend. Yegor recognizes him. Before his death, he comes to his senses (he, barely alive, is interrogated by the investigator) and does not name this person, does not give evidence. And he leaves with this - he has forgiven!

At the end there is an amazing dialogue between them. This does not change the killer's soul. He suffered for a while, and then everything calmed down. He even killed a dog, which refused to bite Yegor. And in the end, Yegor, who did not take revenge, did not follow the law of retribution, according to the law Old Testament, according to the law of revenge, who accepted death at the hands of a loved one and not only did not resist this, but to the last fought for the truth, as he understood, is superior. This is in contrast to Shukshin’s “Red Kalina,” where the criminals are overtaken by punishment. Even if you remember the film adaptation, they were drowned.

This doesn't happen here. We are left alone with ourselves, and visualization of the person’s inner world occurs. We suddenly see in plain sight the attitude towards our parents, our children, our own life, your soul, to eternity. A person recognizes himself in these stories with his clear-eyed son, who is Yegor’s last joy, in the destinies of people who pass before our eyes. The author does not idealize his hero at all; he has some disadvantages. But somewhere deeper we see a longing for a higher truth.

I think this is the specificity of Russian civilization - a thirst for truth. Not even justice, but that truth that is above justice, above the law. This truth (another name, probably love or mercy) is the gospel, the truth of God. And when we (I mean the Church) in our time every day hear a series of tough questions addressed to us, we suddenly understand that society, people compare our actions, our actions (sometimes invented, sometimes these actions are some provocations, but they are thrown in the media) and that law, that truth by which people who call themselves Christians must live. And they see inconsistencies—hence the questions.
Grace Outside the Church

Therefore, I think it is very important to understand how to compare Boris Vasiliev and Shukshin.

Shukshin has a wonderful short story “Alyosha Beskonvoyny”. Nobody read it? Literally three or four pages. Let me remind you of the plot. It's very simple. There is a certain peasant, collective farmer Alyosha Beskonvoiny - this is a nickname, it seems. An ordinary person, but he has something sacred - this is the sixth day of the week, Saturday, when he heats the bathhouse. And that’s where he becomes himself. No matter what happens, the bathhouse is sacred.

Suddenly we read amazing things. A neighbor asks him for a loan, he needs to pay for the forest and is short of some money. Alyosha gives this money from his stash to his neighbor, and at the end of the day he draws a line with what happened that day. He had a very stormy, difficult day, and he says what a wonderful day: he didn’t quarrel with his wife, the kids weren’t sick, they even borrowed money! He became poorer, lost money. They will probably return them to him, there are normal relations there, but now he gave them away, and the day suddenly became wonderful.

Shukshin brilliantly shows how everything around and inside changes. The main thing is what is inside the person who gives something to someone at the everyday level. Not those exploits that we read about in the lives of martyrs, new martyrs, but something here, now, in our lives. He brought a bag to an old lady, or gave up his seat to a pregnant woman, and held the door to the subway. Turn signal on! Have you seen that there is now social advertising in Moscow? The mirror is depicted on the poster, a small child in a helmet - apparently an aspiring biker, and it is written: “Turn on the turn signal - save a life!” Wonderful Christian advertisement! At this level, a person came out of the cocoon, out of the shell of his own egoism, and broke through this shell towards someone. Maybe someone didn't notice, but that doesn't matter.

It is important that some joy comes into a person’s heart. The nature of this joy may have two interpretations, two interpretations. What kind of nature is this?

The first answer is completely natural and understandable, in which both Orthodoxy and Catholicism probably coincide: the soul rejoices because it does what it came into this world for - it gives, shares, somehow distributes itself. How a hand rejoices when it chops wood; the legs rejoice when they go somewhere - a person walks with a backpack behind his back, the eyes rejoice when they see space, the sky or the mountains. The soul also rejoices when it fulfills what it came into this world for, because the soul is a Christian.

Another explanation, more interesting, more profound, is given by Theophan the Recluse and other thinkers of the Orthodox tradition. They talk about the calling grace of God, about that grace that operates outside the Church. This is a real problem for theology. On the one hand, a person finds God in the Church, but, on the other hand, he comes to the Church from somewhere. This means that the meeting with God takes place outside the Church. Because in Orthodoxy there is a teaching about grace, about the glory of God, about the divine energies by which the world stands, and the existence of every creature, even, by the way, demons. Being is God's gift to them, and God's gift is action.

In the same way, there are certain energies that call a person to the Creator, convert him, touch his heart outside the Church. Actually, in them lies the hope of salvation for the pagans, for people who fell away from God, perhaps somewhere at some point, but did not completely forget about Him - for people who find themselves outside the Church. Because in Orthodoxy, salvation is always a meeting with God and some kind of justification for at least something in your life that is worthy of entering eternal life.

So, if we return to Vasily Shukshin, to this story, the words “What a wonderful day today!” they say that a truly inexplicable joy comes to the hero of the story, an unearthly joy. Perhaps this is some echo of that same gracious joy, because the Lord shines on everyone. Even people who are unaware of God can be touched by this joy.

In Russian Soviet literature we meet examples of such joy. There is a concept of some unnameable reality. Tolkien does not say a word about God in his “The Lord of the Rings,” but what happens in the book tells us that it is not by chance that all this happens there. When Frodo wants to kill Gollum in the caves of Moria, Gandalf tells him an important thing. Gandalf, we later learn, is the angel who acts in this book. But we learn this not from the book, but from Tolkien’s letters. He tells him: “Many people unworthy of life, they are alive, living. Others who deserve to live, they died, they lost their lives. Can you give them back this life? Can not? Then don’t rush to take it away.”

At the end of this story, the same Gollum, whom Frodo then pitied, saves the world by rushing at Frodo (who broke and fell), biting off his finger with the ring and falling with this finger into the abyss.

We understand that behind all this that is happening there is Providence - that which leads, helps, inspires these heroes.

Here Providence or some higher truth is present in the texts of the so-called Pochvenniks and some other authors of the Soviet era. I cannot include Joseph Brodsky among them, who was in internal emigration and in opposition to what was happening then in the Soviet Union, but he has absolutely amazing poems. Remember: “In the village God does not live in corners”? Note. The time has come for us, Christians, people of Christian culture, to look closely, listen to the voices of the 20th century and, perhaps, collect and publish a book of testimonies about God, about the Creator, prayers addressed to Him, poets and writers of the Soviet era.
No need to worship the state

Here is another excerpt from “Don’t Shoot White Swans”: “Ancient faces looked sternly from a languid corner. And the Mother of God no longer smiled, but frowned. Who has looked at her since the old woman gave up her soul? Everyone looked forward to what’s his name, modernity.” Do you hear the harmonies?

Well, of course, this is the tone of Soloukhin’s “Black Boards” - a book that was published back in 1969 and immediately set, if I may, new trend. Ancient icons, which on collective farms used to cover cucumbers, tubs of cabbage, and were used as tabletops - a convenient board, suddenly shone with ancient faces. And so, after reading the “Black Boards,” many people saw these faces and went to these villages and began to rescue them.

Now I’m not talking about black resellers and thieves. If you can call the intelligentsia the soul of the people, then this bespectacled soul of the people, the bespectacled caste, suddenly heard beauty in ancient temples, ancient icons.

People come to God in different ways. I met mathematicians and physicists who came to God because they were shocked by the beauty of the formulas, a certain harmony that is present in this world, in space. I met people who were brought by these black boards. They knew nothing, but they saw the beauty, tried to preserve it, save it, move on, look inside, saved these icons with their own hands. Many of them later became priests - those who then worked at the Tretyakov Gallery or at the Rublev Museum.

Let's say, Father Alexander Saltykov, Father Boris Mikhailov. This is their way. Some were brought in by ancient Russian texts, ancient Russian literature and Russian literature too. For some - Western philosophy.

It is worth noting that the nihilism of the 20-30s, as well as the Khrushchev era, when bricks for pigsties were taken from the remaining churches, and local residents took them to their homes, and in the seventies and eighties this nihilism is overcome from the inside. After all, no one forced it from the outside, rather, on the contrary: an icon in the house is a reason for serious showdowns. Despite the obstacles, people walked, searched, and came.

I remember when I was in third grade, next door (we lived in the South-West) there lived a girl, Sonya, who did not wear a pioneer tie (we were all pioneers then). Her dad was in prison. He was an economist and calculated the development prospects Soviet Union, came to perestroika, to an economic catastrophe, which was supposed to give rise to some kind of change in the situation. As a brave man, he did not hide his conclusions, and for this he was imprisoned. Moreover, he was a believer. And it’s unclear how his family lived then, but they didn’t break or bend. Our entire neighborhood knew that there was a child who was not a pioneer, the father was imprisoned, the family was a believer.

Here are the living confessors whom we found. I'm not talking about the priests of that era. Some of them are still alive. Little is said about this now, but it would be worth saying.

One of them, Father Alexander Men, whose memory we will commemorate on September 9, was killed in the wake of perestroika. People went against the system.

Why am I talking about this? Because now we are increasingly slipping into statism - worship of the state, cult of the state. In this slippage we see a desire to drive everyone into our Orthodoxy, into our churches. Slap them on the wrist if something is wrong, and very forcefully. A remarkable man, revered as a saint, but not glorified, Seraphim (Sobolev) - his grave is in Bulgaria - in the 1930s went so far as to call for execution for atheism. Despite the fact that the person was high life. But at the same time, in some part of his soul, his heart, he fell into this utopia.

I emphasize that his mistakes do not negate his greatness, his feat, but one cannot help but say about his mistakes. He was confident that if atheists had been shot before 1917, there would have been no revolution and no catastrophe. He wrote about this directly. I say this to mean that this kind of temptation can be such not only for ordinary people, but also for people of deep inner life.

You all probably somehow, out of the corner of your consciousness, kept track of all the fuss surrounding the trial of the scandalous group that allowed itself to commit hooliganism in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Of course, there are a lot of questions for legal side of this entire process, to why they were in custody all this time, why they received such a sentence, and about the composition that they were charged with, and about the article under which they were convicted. And about why the top officials of the state are Putin, Medvedev, and the speaker Upper House, and the Minister of Justice, and many other officials at this level - said that, probably, it would not be worth keeping them in custody or severely punishing them, nevertheless, they were in pre-trial detention all this time.

The saddest thing for me in this whole story, besides the fact that, of course, it is not the law in Russia that now determines the fate of people, but some other authorities, was this moment. The trial is going on, young people are standing with a poster “Freedom...” for these defendants, and opposite a certain warm company that calls itself Orthodox youth, in response to this they chant: “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!” So it turns inside out the most sacred words that we have, words of great joy!

Remember, St. Seraphim greeted people: “My joy, Christ is Risen!” Turn them into a cry of “Slap them harder now! Plant them deeper” - this took some effort. Oswald Spengler, a Western thinker of the early 20th century, introduced the concept of “pseudomorphosis.” This term means that culture retains its external features, but its internal content, now we would say “content,” is completely changed. That is, on the outside it is Europe, but on the inside it is a pagan, completely non-Christian world. Fascism, for example.

The origin of fascism is mysterious - Germany seems to be a great civilization, but inside it is no longer Europe at all, these are people whose brains are inside out, if they even exist! The same thing happens here. It seems that people present themselves as Orthodox, people of the Church, since such words are heard, but inside there is nothing even close. This is not even the Old Testament “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” it is something much darker and sadder.

We understand from this example how the great Christian tradition West. The Catholic Church, a great Church that gave birth to a large number of saints, suddenly in much the same way - only much longer in history we observe this process, over the course of five or six centuries - turns inside out so much that an explosion of Protestantism followed and great schism, a still unhealed wound.

But initially it was an Orthodox, Christian Church, no less great than the Churches of the Byzantine wing of the Roman Empire. That is, nothing will grow by itself, nothing will happen. Every century, every day, every moment you need to force yourself to be a Christian, to go towards this. Here we have, of course, thank God, a fulcrum - the 20th century.

Why else is it important to talk about this? Because now there is such a tendency to cross out everything that is not marked “made in church” from the cultural baggage of a Christian. Oh, is this Mayakovsky? He is an atheist and a suicide, so we won’t read him. Yesenin too. He scoffed, which means we won’t read it. This is, of course, a big mistake.
Was Vysotsky baptized?

By the way, an interesting question is whether Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky was baptized? Or not? Interesting? Me too, very much. Of course, I would like to find, I would really like to find some words, his words. Not stories about him, because you can read, listen to something that is not there. And what is undoubtedly written by his hand.

In general, I think that such words exist, they appear in many songs. But there is a text that cannot be interpreted differently. I'll read it now.

I am awake, but I have a prophetic dream.
I take pills and hope that I will fall asleep.
I'm no stranger to swallowing bitter saliva -
Organizations, authorities and persons
They declared open war on me
For breaking the silence
For the fact that I wheeze throughout the whole country,
To prove that I’m not a spoke in the wheel,
Because I'm tired and can't sleep,
For being in broadcasts abroad
Passes on my thieves old days,
Considering it my duty to apologize:
- We ourselves, without consent... Well, well!
For what else? Perhaps for his wife -
What, they say, he couldn’t marry our subject?!
What, they say, I stubbornly climb into the capitalist country
And I really don’t want to go to the bottom,
That he wrote a song, and more than one,
About how we once beat the Fritz,
About the private who falls on the bunker,
And he himself didn’t think twice about the war.
They shout that I stole the moon from them
And I won’t fail to steal something else.
And the fable is overtaken by the fable.
I can’t sleep... Well, how can I not sleep?!
No! I won't get drunk! I'll extend my hand
And I’ll cross out the will,
And I myself will not forget to dawn,
And I’ll write a song, and more than one,
And in that song I’ll curse someone,
But I won’t forget to bow to the waist
To all those who wrote that I should not dare to go to bed!
Even if the cup is bitter, I will not deceive them.

I literally found the text a few months ago. The year is not indicated there, but, as I understand it, it is written in some kind of connection, an internal dialogue with the text, which begins with the words:

I am destined to the last line, to the cross
argue until you become hoarse, followed by dumbness,
convince and prove with foam at the mouth,
that this is not the same at all, not the same and not the same,
that the shopkeepers are lying about Christ’s mistakes.

And so on. There, too, remember, about the cup that is given to the poet to drink and bring. But this line, “And I myself will not forget to fall,” written in those years, shows that for Vladimir Vysotsky, his Christianity is no coincidence. It, of course, was a cultural choice, as it once was with Mandelstam, who, being a Jew, was baptized in Lutheran Church to enter the expanses of European culture. To get out of the cultural ghetto, which, according to Sergei Averintsev, in that situation at the beginning of the twentieth century still represented Jewish literature in the Russian Empire.

Mandelstam is baptized not in the Orthodox Church, but in the Lutheran Church, so that he is not looked at as a convert who wants to earn some bonuses for himself by changing his faith, abandoning his roots. But this was the choice of Christianity as a choice of culture. Then he went further - I mean Osip Emilievich.

You can turn to his amazing suicide letters, comparable to the letters of famous confessors of the 20th century, to his poems, especially in recent years. The cultural choice he once made in every sense became for him the path and the truth and life - life dissolved by the eternity of the Resurrection.

For Vysotsky, this is also, of course, not only a cultural choice. He has prayers written literally three months before his death. Of course, you know how it burned - morphine. And a few months before his death in France, Marina Vladi admitted him to a hospital, where he was simply isolated behind bars from communication with his friends, who were largely responsible for the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, because they were the ones who brought him this “dope” from the USSR ( although here we should not forget that he was, of course, an irresistible person - when he asked for something, it was almost impossible to refuse).

And there were several days of silence in the hospital. They brought him out of withdrawal for a week, then the addiction was removed, and then he wrote a series of poems in a few days. Among them was the following text: “Whether I honor Faust or Dorian Gray, but to the devil’s soul, why did the gypsies start guessing for me, they clarified the day of death for me. Save this date, God, don’t mark it in your calendar, or take it at the last moment and change it, so that I don’t wait, so that the crows don’t cherish and so that the lambs don’t bleat pitifully, so that people don’t giggle in the shadows. Protect from them all, O God. Rather, because they have sowed my soul with doubts and fears.”

It is clear that before us is a person who literally falls into this addiction, screams, he is in pain, but he turns to God. I just emphasize that for Vysotsky this look into the sky was not something accidental; rather, it was always present, especially in last years his creative destiny.

And this is also reflected in the lyrics. In particular, in his famous song, the song about the war “There are eight of them, we are two”, there is the following stanza:

And I will ask God, the Spirit and the Son,
To fulfill my will -
May my friend always protect my back,
Like in this last battle.

There is a curious discrepancy here plural Person and singular verb form. According to the rules of the Russian language: I will ask Vasya, Petya and Zhenya so that they (there are three of them, several of them) fulfill my will. Vysotsky violates these rules. He undoubtedly knows them. And if we talk about the rules of the Russian language, standard ones, then these words are broken out of these rules, from grammar, from syntax. But from the point of view of the theology of the Trinity they are absolutely correct. “To do it.” God is threefold, but he is One God.

There are a lot of such slips of the tongue. For example, Vysotsky has a story about the camps, “Black Candle,” written in collaboration with his friend Leonid Monchinsky. The film “Fartovy” was made based on it, shown on our TV channels. But there is nothing left there that I would like to pay attention to. There is a zone, a camp, there are some heroes there. Among them there is a priest, monk Kirill, who speaks in a rather birdlike language when retelling the Gospel, but in essence he retells it correctly.

Of course, no one said that in the zones. But stylization is stylization. And there the situation is very similar to the plot of “Don’t shoot white swans.” There the thieves deprived him of his hand; his fingers were mutilated and crippled. He forgives them. And the main criminal comes to him, now they would say - a thief in law. He comes to repent, shocked that the monk did not pawn them. Of course, the question arises: what did Vysotsky write here, and what was his co-author? But they wrote this text together, worked on it together, this is known.

Thus, these horizons of meaning were not alien to Vysotsky; he came into contact with them. Another example: initially in the song “I don’t love” it was “And I don’t feel sorry for the crucified Christ.” His first wife Lyudmila heard, and she was very hurt - she is a believer. He changed it to “It’s just a pity for the crucified Christ.” In 1969.

Vysotsky corrected it not only because his wife reacted, but also because Boris Mozhaev, a writer from the galaxy of those same soil scientists who wrote about the disappearing world of the Russian peasantry, reacted very sharply to this “not a pity.” And this also goes to the question of whose opinion was important to Vysotsky. And what the Russian intelligentsia, those same sixties and seventies, breathed in those years.

It is curious that Vysotsky’s religiosity haunts not only Orthodox Christians. One author, Alexander Riman, posthumously “converted” him to Judaism. Do you know based on what? In the poem “I Communicate with Silence,” also written shortly before his death, there is the following quatrain:

Life is an alphabet: I'm somewhere
Already in “tse-che-she-shche”, -
I'm leaving this summer
In a crimson cloak.

He had crimson pajamas. Based on this, Riemann concludes that “the poet’s attitude towards life as an alphabet is not accidental, and the use of this aphorism in combination with the letters that entered the Russian language from Hebrew cannot but indicate Vysotsky’s understanding of the cosmic essence of the language of the Torah, which in recent years it has become the object of consideration by mathematicians and programmers. Scientists find in original text The scriptures encrypt there the events of world history, and some of them even try to predict the future. The Torah, by the way, prohibits this, and therefore the forecasts do not come true.”

Well, it's like some kind of curiosity.

Vysotsky undoubtedly understood the topic of Jewry, the Jewish tragedy - we know that they were also excommunicated from higher education, this began under Stalin. He has wonderful poems and songs about this.

But if we take Vysotsky’s work in its entirety, then we probably won’t find any traces of the Torah there. Neither in the worldview, nor in the system of images that he builds. But I really want to see the person as my own, at least after his death.

It is quite obvious that Vysotsky selected these letters not on the basis of their Hebrewism, if you will, but simply because they were at the end of the alphabet. These are the letters of the end, the end of the alphabet and the end of life, and he was already approaching the end, he was on the verge of death. The funeral service was held for him. The funeral service for Vladimir Vysotsky was performed by the same priest, Father Alexander, who baptized Father Andrei Kuraev a few years later.

Where was he baptized? The most common hypothesis is that in Armenia. Why in Armenia? Because in those years it was quite problematic to be baptized here in Moscow. At Taganka, two young actresses were baptized. Lyubimov was then called to the City Committee carpet. Everything was monitored, and therefore the Moscow intelligentsia left to get married and baptize children to the distant periphery. Let's say Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev got married in Georgia, in Tbilisi. Therefore, Vysotsky, apparently, was baptized in Armenia.

He was, of course, not baptized into Monophysitism, he was baptized into Christianity, especially since at that time this issue was not considered at all. Not everyone knew about the differences between Armenian and Orthodox Churches. In any case, everyone knew that the Armenian Church was as ancient as the Orthodox Church.

And now I suggest you ask me questions, because I will be quoting and reading for a long time, and maybe you have completely different questions and thoughts.

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Failure to comply with the law leads to unpredictable consequences

- Regarding the distortions. You said that distortions were made in the Church. But distortions also come from her opponents, don’t they? For example, the murder of two women in Kazan.
- This is a scary story. Still, the person did not consider himself a Christian, I really hope. Because there are quite a lot of people who commit crimes, and they justify themselves with anything.

And an ugly act Pussy Riot- not a reason to follow, that’s for sure. But it is very important to understand what does not suit us about this action. Because when we say that this is persecution, we devalue the concept of persecution. Persecution is when people gave their lives for their temple, for their faith in the camps. When we have a church event (even now, by the way, there are plans), security is nearby and it is broadcast on all channels. If this is persecution, then what is persecution?

The Pussy Riot action is hooliganism, disgrace. This is outrageous not because it is in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It would be just as outrageous if this happened, for example, in a mausoleum. Despite all my dislike for the leader of the world proletariat, this is a grave, and no one, including me, is allowed to behave inappropriately there. This is unacceptable anywhere, not in kindergarten, not in the metro, not in a synagogue, not in any chapel on the Kola Peninsula.

The freedom to swing your arms ends where the other person's face begins. If a person does not understand this, if he allows himself to go out on a podium and parade in front of others, trampling on someone’s feelings, causing pain to someone, this must be stopped. Such things can be stopped at the level of public condemnation and public attitudes. If this does not work, legal mechanisms are activated. For now, according to Russian legislation, this is hooliganism, which is punishable by a fine and administrative punishment.

If we understand that the situation goes beyond the limits, that it has become very popular to behave this way, we need to change the legislation and adopt some other norms. Like in Europe, many countries have them. No one is stopping you from doing this, but it will already be a preventive measure. That is, these people paid a thousand for hooliganism and move on, but since the law has already been adopted, the next attempt will result in much more serious consequences. If they had not been imprisoned, this could have been done. It's not possible now. Now the situation has gone beyond the legal and moral framework.

And what else is very interesting! Nobody now remembers corruption, the autumn and spring elections, but everyone is discussing the case of this scandalous group and so on.

Who benefits from this? If we think through it to the end, we get a rather unexpected answer. But if we look at the results, we get exactly this situation. And what can we do in this situation? Be yourself. Don't lose your temper. I understand - it would probably be normal if some statesmen They said: this crime must be punished severely! But we cannot afford this as Christians. Yes, there were exceptions to this rule.

For example, Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky), a great man, confessor, directly called for shooting the fascist bastard. When during the Nuremberg trials there were some discussions in the West about whether to spare Goering and others or hang them, people who had world authority spoke out in the Soviet Union.

The priest Luke was known as a great surgeon, and he said that, yes, we simply must shoot or hang these. Because their atrocities surpassed any measure of humanity. But it is very important to understand that only war sometimes forces one to step over the rule of law and even over some concepts of humanism. In the case of fascism, it seems to me that this is a completely justified reaction of the side tormented by the fascist horde. Truly a horde. Look what they did. And one can understand this reaction; here it is completely fair, it seems to me.

But I would not compare Goering or Keitel and this hooligan group. Why is this very dangerous? Because as soon as we allow ourselves, with the best intentions, to ruin someone’s life by breaking the law... We are next on the list of undesirables.

By the way, if we go back to latest events- cutting down crosses. Soldiers of the fascist army of the Wehrmacht recalled that when during the French campaign they walked through cities and villages, they could tell exactly where the SS men had been before them - in these cities and villages all the crosses were cut off. The SS was a religious sect, a pagan order, blood and soil. They had a personal hatred of Christ, they cleared everything of crosses, of any reminders of Christ, even in France, when the atrocities and horrors that were in Russia had not yet been observed.

When the Germans were still trying to play such a European war, they were afraid of the British and Americans, they were afraid to provoke them. It was already there then. And what we see now in Russia, it is clear that these are neo-pagan, satanic sects, maybe skinheads or simply sick, unbalanced people who manifest themselves and express themselves this way. The question is what served as the trigger for this aggression.

Of course, there are perversions on all sides. It is important for us to remain ourselves: the Church, Christians, and live according to the Gospel. But the Gospel still says: “Heal yourself to the doctor.” If you want to take a speck out of another person’s eye, roll out your logs. The Apostle Paul literally wrote the following about this: “It is better for us to be offended than to be offended.” We need to remember this.

Is marriage and childbearing necessary for salvation?

Many women lack maternal instinct because they become strong. There is such a point of view that a woman can realize herself only through a man, only through motherhood. What's your point of view?
- My point of view coincides with the point of view of the Apostle Paul, who clearly states that in Christ there is neither woman nor man. At a certain height, this no longer matters, and of course, childbearing is not one of the things without which one cannot be saved.

There is no such thing in Orthodoxy, and therefore the apostle writes that a wife is saved by childbearing, but it is the wife! And the same apostle writes that it is better for you not to get married if you can, and everywhere he explains that this is his personal opinion, and not what the Lord revealed to him.

In Orthodoxy, a person is just comfortable in this regard. No one tells him: you must give birth, and then raise grandchildren, and then think about your soul. And vice versa, they don’t say: give up everything, your husband is filth, children are unequivocally evil, marriage and the world are filth, go to a monastery, you will be saved there. This is all outside the bounds of tradition.

Orthodoxy has a very careful attitude towards people. Even if a person comes to a monastery (it doesn’t matter whether he is a girl or a boy), and the angels sing in his soul, tomorrow he is going to contemplate the Tabor light, but today he wants to impose a very big fast on himself. And they say to him: “Here is a shovel and a pitchfork, go to the cowshed, throw manure, you will be a novice or a novice, and think whether this is your path. You can leave at any time. You were a novice, you realized that this is not yours, go start a family.”

I know wonderful priests who began as novices, and with the blessing of the abbot, who noticed that they loved to tinker with the children who came to the monastery, returned to the world, got married, and continued their path in the priesthood. There is no discomfort or discord there. We maintained a spiritual connection with the monastery. Amazing people, devotees, albeit family ones.

And this, by the way, is a complete contrast with the sect, where tomorrow is a mantra, the day after tomorrow is fasting, three days later is the astral plane, and after 5 days is Kashchenko. This is all on the rise. Asceticism is dangerous. Fasting and prayer thin the soul, the soul becomes permeable to spiritual actions, but what spirits will come to you and how ready are you to discern spirits? Do you have the most important thing - humility?

If you don’t have it, here’s a pitchfork and a shovel, and let’s work in the barn. And the person will have time to draw conclusions. And he is forbidden to impose fasting on himself. Drink cow's milk, eat fish, go to meals, pray, take communion twice a month. This is the case in the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. But there, people still remember about monasticism and tradition - this monastery did not close.

Therefore, there is no recipe for salvation in the sense of marriage or celibacy. And the laws of soul salvation, by the way, are absolutely the same. There is neither woman nor man in Christ. Here it is.

If we talk directly about strong women and marriage problems. I understand our girls. They might be happy to get married, but who? There are almost no men left—we don’t raise our kids to be men. They don’t know which side to take the ax from, and, most importantly, they don’t know how to take responsibility.

That’s why I think that “Orthodox Pathfinders” - what I do, among other things - is some kind of opportunity for a child to become real. It’s one thing to grow on everything ready to grow in Moscow, in a concrete bag, and quite another thing to grow in the forest. You need to build a fire with your own hands and cut down a log.

This year my guys sawed through a log. We had a chainsaw in the neighboring camp, but I forbade them to take it and said: “This is a wonderful two-handed saw - they haven’t come up with anything better.” We sawed with them like this. Very helpful. It happened in Valdai. The log is the same size as this table. They made a table out of it, two logs were tied together, a log, and it turned out to be a wonderful table.

So he does it all with his own hands: he ties knots, stands on a kayak, goes shopping for groceries. Having fallen out of an agrarian civilization and becoming an urban civilization, we have not yet found mechanisms, tools, pedagogical approaches to return what we have lost with nature through pedagogy. That's why boys grow up who are not men, and girls who are not women.

And the second problem is one-child families. He only sees these little children on TV and on icons if he goes to church. He doesn't know what to do with them. They don’t have it in their family, and their neighbors don’t either. And the unknown is scary. Therefore, even when getting married, they do not give birth to children.

What can the Church do here? Remain yourself and try to give these things from the other side. Look for some solutions.

Why am I interested in the scouting movement? Because it provides a system. This is not a one-time thing: they organized a trip for us to a camp, everyone was running around us, we rested there, now we have returned to Moscow, and now we are resting here for a whole year. The church is like, you know, a carousel that entertains us. The attitude is very consumerist.

And the good thing about the scouting system is that it is based on the idea of ​​duty, service, so that you then give back. I learned how to tie knots, set up tents, and now we’re going to an orphanage, and you’re already organizing it for them. It’s not you and me, but our children who should do this. They should care about others like them.

And still very important point. I refuse to discuss anyone's pastoral spiritual advice because it is not addressed to us. Now, if this priest writes a book about what should family life and in spiritual life, then you can discuss it, but since in this case the judgment is private, personal, addressed to a specific person, I see no point in discussing it.

Thus, I refuse to give you a recipe on how to save your soul, depending on your family or non-family situation. Both there and here, as one elder said in the 4th century, the devil is the same, the man is the same, and God is the same. Both here and there the temptations and sins are the same; no one will come up with new ones. And the work is the same, and the salvation is the same.

The main task is to learn to love. They teach this in the family, and they teach this in the monastery. It's a long job. The task of adults, those who take care of children, is to think how to make them grow up as people, to be ready to give, to share, to be a support. And then there will be a system of natural selection. Atheists will die out, consumers will also follow them, and Christians will remain if they really are Christians and can teach their children something. So let's see who will eat whom, whose cones are in the forest, as the dwarf said in one film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

If you're afraid of your Taxpayer Identification Number, admit that you believe in magic

I recently came to the temple. Lately there has been such a fuss about electronic passports and all that. A kind of panic begins. How should we feel about this?
- How to manipulate your consciousness. I remember how in 1993, on the fortieth day after the murder of three monks of Optina Hermitage on Easter, we, students, went Orthodox University with our dean, Father Andrei Kuraev, to Optina to pray for the repose of the newly departed monks. There were about 15-20 of us.

And on the way back, a handsome grandfather of about 60 years old sat down on our train and told me and another young man (because Father Andrei loaded everyone else with his tales and jokes - then I understood why he did this) that on Soviet money - At that time there was still Soviet money - five-pointed stars, sixes drawn with some lines, and something else. What's in the Soviet passport - the one for which anti-government fighters are now fighting? electronic passport(!) - this is exactly the seal of the Antichrist.

He spent two hours explaining all this to us. I asked him a question: “You deny money. What do you live on?” He says: “They are buying for me.” “What about work?” - “Working is not necessary. I tell everyone stories here. I myself am almost the grandson of Emperor Nicholas II.” Nowadays it’s simply called “cheating for money,” but that’s what it was called back then. I realized this a little later. I had somehow not been susceptible to this kind of manipulation before, but after that everything became clear.

Why is this being done? To take a person away from the main thing in his life - from his soul - to all sorts of external invented horror stories. It turns out to be a pseudo-Christian Talmud: which foot to get up from, what day to do what. There is a wonderful story when in a Jewish town they string a rope between houses on Shabbat, because on Shabbat you can’t do anything, you can only do it in your own house, but you have to drag a piano from one house to another. The rope was pulled - now it is one house, and you can drag a piano in your house. But if there is no rope, you can’t. There's some behind it religious system. Very peculiar, but it exists. Of course, this is the magic into which great monotheism, biblical monotheism, has slipped, having lost this freedom in God. It's a pity.

And the Orthodox fighters against electronic cards must then honestly say: “We are not Christians, we are people of magic, we are afraid of passports. We do not read the Gospel, which says: “Do not be afraid. I have conquered the world." The Holy Fathers say: we must fear two things - God and sin. It doesn't matter in what form the information is stored. I now read from a laptop, once people read from a book, and even earlier they carried everything in their heads. It doesn't matter at all.

It is remarkable that these books about the INN, about the end of the world, about the Antichrist, who is about to come to us because of the INN, are sometimes published in monasteries or in some churches that have an INN. Fine! You can't, but we can. In one of the Ukrainian dioceses, grandmothers came to the local bishop and said: “The priest forbids us to have an INN. Without this, pensions are not paid.” “Very good,” answered the bishop. “I bless this priest to prohibit the INN, but with one condition - he pays your pensions out of his own pocket.” Everything went right away for the priest!

Do you understand? This also needs to be understood. This is a form of manipulation. First we create a problem for you, then we solve it at your expense. You buy a book from us about the end of the world and various scary stories, give us money so that at your expense we can somehow exist without passports. These fears always follow a person, trying to divert him from the fear of God, from reverence, from the love of God.

Again, read Soviet texts, even Russian texts. If we are now talking about Soviet era, Boris Vasiliev, Boris Mozhaev and other authors will be mentioned. After them, it seems so petty, insignificant, meaningless that... One of the antidotes is culture, education against these fears.

Is there culture today?

Are there currently such texts?
- Certainly. That's why I started talking. Timur Kibirov, Dmitry Bykov, Marina Zhurinskaya, Vyacheslav Butusov. And I also strongly advise you - find it on the Internet and watch the absolutely brilliant cartoon “Christmas”. Mikhail Aldashin directed. It only lasts 15 minutes, there are no words at all, only music, but - a masterpiece! Our culture, the end of the 20th century is the time when this cartoon was created. Old Russian icon painting begins to speak to us in the language of animation.

And before that, in the Soviet years, there was a cartoon “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, filmed in the Andropov years, where we meet the image of the Mother of God of Vladimir and much more. The words and music are wonderful, and wonderfully done.

What I mean is that Russia has something to say. In the era of globalization, we need not be afraid: “Oh, we’re about to be erased and swallowed.” We have our own language, a system of images. They know us, we don’t need to create this brand, it has already been created. Andrei Rublev already exists, and Dostoevsky already exists, and Tolstoy already exists, and Solzhenitsyn, and many others, and Nabokov, and Bunin. There is nothing stopping us from going further and learning to speak this language so that we can be heard.

The only thing I’m afraid of is that we might lose it ourselves: drinking, walking, getting pierced, running at various demonstrations with flags. I am now talking about those demonstrations that people attend under administrative compulsion. What also worries me very much is that I understand that the state is not very interested in educated people That's why they create problems all the time.

I really hope that this disease will not spread to the Church, because I have a certain feeling that those who are called church speakers have ceased to distinguish a certain tuning fork of culture when addressing their messages to people. Now I’m not talking about all, but about some individual cases, but there are more and more of them. And the Internet multiplies these typos by the number of users. That is, they are no longer equal to Likhachev, Averintsev, the murdered Fr. Alexandra, Olga Sedakova or Boris Vasiliev.

If we lose this tuning fork, this tonality, then it is almost impossible to return to it. Because either you breathe it, or later it will be archeology: the Chinese lived here, the Russians lived here, the Romans lived there, Byzantium was here. A very interesting civilization. Here the cemetery has been preserved, several books. Who will live here? These will be people of a completely different formation. It doesn’t matter, by the way, what kind of blood flows in their veins. Will it be ethnic Russians, or the same Chinese, or someone else.
Let's learn from the Georgians

I highly recommend everyone to go on a pilgrimage trip to Georgia and see how they have preserved their traditions. There is a lot to learn from the Georgian Church, it seems to me. They have excellent relations with the Georgian intelligentsia and with Tbilisi University and their students. All our own, all relatives. This division that we are now seeing, the split, does not exist. True, their country is different in terms of population and in general there, in the mountains, is a different world. But it's possible.

They love Russia and Russians very much, and despite all this strange politics (on both sides), the attitude towards people who come from Russia is very good. Just recently I was in Akhalkalaki, a city on the border of Armenia and Georgia. The population is Armenian, but there... I can’t say that they were so deep churchgoers, because in the Soviet years spiritual life was simply trampled down there, and now all this is not being revived quickly either, which is why there are few Armenian priests there.

Now this process has somehow begun to happen. Bishop Nicholas of Akhalkalaki serves there. He is Georgian, Orthodox Christian. He has two priests in total now. Since the local population does not really come to the temple, although there are Armenians among his flock, and they serve in Georgian, he has been inviting students from Tbilisi University for many years, placing them in some houses, sometimes in tents, and providing them with food. Don't drink, don't smoke - this is fundamental.

What students do? They are restoring temples. Ancient - X century. For us, antiquity is the 16th century, and there antiquity is the 4th-5th centuries. The 10th century is a common thing. Students of the Church help, and in the evenings, together with the bishop, they watch films, classics of Soviet and modern cinema. Every evening they analyze Tarkovsky and think about it. The Lord takes the pictures himself. He has a wonderful film about euthanasia.

In his bishop's house, open to everyone, there is a paleontological museum. In the literal sense of the word. I can show you photos. Moreover, there you can touch everything with your hands and take it, but with a return. You can’t take it home, but you can hold it. Let's say, I realized that these ancient people, who scraped skins with scrapers and cut them with flint, were very talented people - a very convenient thing is a scraper. When fate throws us into some such jungle, we can survive if we remember this Paleolithic school.

The bishop has all this in his house. Some fish that lived on our planet several million years ago have become fossilized. From fossils and pots from the 4th millennium BC to some more modern works of art.

The children are in his house all the time. It doesn’t matter which ones: Georgian, Armenian, Russian, everyone come. It's possible. There are such examples in Russia. I’m just telling you about my impressions from my trip to Georgia. I emphasize that this is not Tbilisi, this is the periphery, where everything is very difficult, everything has to be done with great difficulty.

By the way, if Russian students gather there, they will be welcomed there, but they just need to get organized in advance. So knock on our missionary commission - we will help. You can't drink or smoke - this is fundamental. Some of these students started families.

You asked about families - that’s where we need to “drive” young people! If we’re going to invite them somewhere, let’s work hard, turn the stones, put together a fence for the temple together. There you can immediately see who is capable of what and what they are ready for.

Here Father Kosma created an amazing place of communication, for which I thank him very much. We can do much more with you than we think. I propose to end on this optimistic note. Thank you!