Priest Alexander Kruglov the last war. Priest Sergiy Kruglov: The reasons for dechurching are within ourselves. Wolf in sheep's clothing

BOOKSHELF

“As in science fiction films, an unprecedented and invisible war has come to Russia, which, without pity, strikes deadly blows in the heart of Russia. ...Now it is often said that our economic, social and demographic losses after the brutal "perestroika" reform of Russia exceed the consequences of the Great Patriotic War. And all this without bloody bombardments, without atomic explosions, without invasion by troops, without punishers ... " (Priest Alexander Kruglov. The Last War. M: Enlightener, 2004).

It would seem that father Alexander Kruglov speaks about obvious and trivial things. But, nevertheless, his book gives the impression of an alarm, a call: “Rise, sleeper!”, Look around, finally realize that the Last War is already on earth. This war is fundamentally different from all the wars that have flooded the history of mankind - “the wild Horde demanded only tribute and slaves, but not divine worship of itself. She didn't need our immortal souls. Now the time is different. Again we are divided, but this time the ruthless enemies of Russia came just for our restless souls ... "

Father Alexander Kruglov's book is not a historical or political study, its genre can be defined as "the word of the shepherd" - these are thematically organized sermons, united in chapters, the very name of which speaks of the traditional nature of the genre. "Jericho", "Samson and Bartimaeus", "The Procession from Jericho to Jerusalem", "Burning Sheaves", "The Mysterious "Holder", etc. The history of Russia is viewed through the Biblical story, everything that happens today is revealed in the light Apocalypse and ancient prophets. And in this light, "everything hidden becomes clear" - what we are experiencing in our day, receives a clear definition - "the mystery of lawlessness in action."

A deep bow to the priest for calling everything by its proper name, traces the subtlest connections between events and draws a self-evident conclusion: "peacetime" after the Second World War, the time of "local conflicts" is simply a "sluggish" World War III .. The silent occupation of the entire Christian world can hardly be considered unintentional. ... America faces the same problems. Its white population is already approaching the point where it can become oppressed by its black and Hispanic representatives, as recently happened to the white population in South Africa. Similar events are taking place in Europe…”

The most important thing about the book is that it breaks stereotypes of thinking. One of them is “all evil is from America”, the second (and this is even more important and topical) is “Orthodox patriots will save Russia”. I do not know the biography of father Alexander Kruglov, but he is clearly well aware of the realities of our patriotic movement. From the history of this movement of the last two decades, the author of The Last War draws a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: it is the patriots who can prepare the coming of the "man of lawlessness." Why? In answering this question, the priest makes a deep pastoral diagnosis of the spiritual state in which many patriots have been in recent years. “Cunning evil from the very birth of the patriotic movement slyly hid itself in the most patriotic milieu.

There is a split personality. In the circle of his own, this is a patriot of patriots ... but at the right moment a certain “switch” works in the head, and a sincere brother instantly becomes just as sincerely a sworn enemy ... "

Father Alexander explains why such substitutions occur: “Warfare with demonic people - the focus of the “mystery of lawlessness” - is the lot of a few chosen ones of God, giants of the spirit, who pacified the infirmity of their flesh with many labors and great sorrows. Their stern hostility is not for everyone who has only learned to read forbidden books... Often, patriots who frivolously tasted the mystical fruit of secret knowledge begin unbearably painful torments from constant fears, nervous and mental overloads - "circles of hell"!

What is happening with our patriotic movement, according to Father Alexander, especially clearly confirms that in our time it is possible to be saved only by protecting yourself with constant prayer, and without losing real church life. One has only to replace them with the fight against the forces of evil, as this fight turns against the fighters themselves. This is one of the main features of the last war - to deceive a person, plunge him into self-deception, so that through this he can deceive others.

Of the entire almost 800-page book, the 22nd chapter, which is called "Koschei the Immortal", is especially successful in terms of the presentation of the material (the form of addressing the reader). Through the plot and images of the famous Russian fairy tale, our past, present and future become clear. “Ivan Tsarevich is a collective image of the Russian people. The reason for the constant defeats of Ivan Tsarevich was his spiritual ignorance. Each time, engaging in battle with the enemy, he fought not with the real Koshchei, but with his dreamy image. So, Russia has always had many enemies, but many of them only distracted from the main thing. The main one who kills to death!”

About the future, the author says this: “From time immemorial in Russia, there were stories about a war between the insidious monster Koshchei the Immortal and the simple-hearted Ivan Tsarevich ... finally, the prince was killed. For greater fidelity, Koschey cut his body into small pieces and scattered them in all directions. Apparently, he felt that this would not end well for him anyway. And I wasn't wrong. In the legends, Ivan Tsarevich was resurrected ... In the same way, every time the revival of Russia defeated by the enemy takes place. At first, seemingly long-dead parts of the kingdom gather invisibly. This is the first miracle. The invisible and almost unbelievable resurrection of a lost people. The holiness of faith gradually revives the souls of people dead from sin... In the same way, a sudden revival of the destroyed Russian kingdom can happen.

The conviction expressed already on its first pages runs through the whole book: “We must single out for ourselves two simultaneously occurring processes - the spiritual degradation of the majority of representatives of the ruling class and a fairly significant part of the people and the maturation of even a few, but who remained faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church . The outcome of catastrophic events depends on those few who, by their loyalty, sacrifice and fearlessness, transform the rest of the fallen society.

The optimism of the conclusions sounding at the end of the book "The Last War" may seem paradoxical to a non-believer. After all, before this, the infernal subtleties of the ideological, psychological, mystical war being waged against us are described - all of them can plunge into despondency, fetter the soul with fear.

But, as you know, the source of the greatest fear and despondency is when the enemy is not visible, not recognized, not named. And when “the secret has become clear,” when the enemy does not have the opportunity to come “like a thief in the night,” when they are preparing to meet him, then it remains to remember the words of the Lord: “Do not be afraid, little flock!” and, most importantly, do not withdraw into your loneliness, but seek unity with Christ's host.

“Simultaneously with the enemy invasion, another process is going on, which, although it has not yet become a turning point in the fate of Russia, but many things, apparently, are inclined towards it. ... In the language of military science, on the Russian land there is a gradual formation of two irreconcilable armies. On the one hand are all the sworn enemies of Christ and Russia. They are generously fed by world evil, they are dynamic, cheeky, well-fed. On the other hand, the building of the bright Christ's army is underway. It is built and protected until the time of the inevitable decisive battle, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His army is usually low-key, more modest in appearance and physicality. All our strength lies in the great treasure - the Orthodox faith. And our strength is made perfect in weakness!”

L.SAMARINA

Priest Sergiy Kruglov did something that was simply unthinkable in normal times: he met with a Protestant heretic, asked him how things are with biblical studies in Russia, what are the prospects for the language of the Church, what is tradition and ritual, and then published this interview on the Pravmir website. I personally cannot imagine that any pastor who lived in antiquity, say, the Apostle Paul or St. Athanasius the Great, would go to a heretic in order to understand the essence of Christianity, and then begin to distribute a record of a conversation with him among his flock.

Possession of heretical literature was punishable by death

The disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian, Hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna, said that when his teacher saw the local heretic Kerinth in the bath, he ran out into the street with the words: “Let’s run, lest the bath collapse: there is Kerinth, the enemy of truth.”

And the apostle John commanded his spiritual children not only not to talk to heretics, but not even to greet them. His 2nd Epistle says: "Whoever comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house and do not greet him." According to interpreters, here the apostle warns Christians against communicating with heretics - docets.

The "Decrees of the Apostles" says: "Run, we say, fellowship with heretics and be strangers to peace with them."

True shepherds and spiritual fathers forbade not only conversations with unbelievers, but also the reading of their writings. Saint Isaiah the Hermit said: “Having found a heretical book, do not allow yourself to read it, lest your heart be filled with deadly poison.”

Ecumenical councils adopted resolutions on the burning of heretical books. At the First Ecumenical Council, in whose meetings such great people as St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and St. Spyridon of Trimifuntsky took part, it was decided to put to death those who would be convicted of keeping the writings of the heretic Arius. And those who would dare to defend the teachings of Arius, the fathers decided to send them into exile or imprisonment.

And these are not excessive precautions. The fact that heretical teachings terribly darken the mind and soul is known firsthand by those anti-modernists who are forced to read the articles of modernists.

Communicating with heretics and reading their writings can lead to truly tragic consequences. Even St. Anthony of Radonezh was terribly injured while defending the Church from the attacks of one schismatic. When he was still a layman, he once came to visit a schismatic. He began to attack the Church. The Monk Anthony began to defend her. At some point, the schismatic declared that there were no incorruptible relics. These words of his sunk into the soul of the Monk Anthony, and the demons began to furiously kindle the doubts that had arisen in him.

Things got to the point that he began to demand from one monk to reveal to him the relics of the right-believing Prince Konstantin of Murom and his children. And when he refused to do this, he declared that there were not relics, but dolls covered with a veil. And this is what, according to the words of the Monk Anthony, followed after this: “Anger, vexation at everyone and everything took possession of the heart; in the spirit of non-peace, terrible languor, melancholy, blasphemous thoughts not only on relics alone, but on all that is holy. I felt that the enemy had taken possession of me, that I was perishing. And it is good that the Lord, through one priest, revealed to His chosen one the incorruptible relics of the Blessed Prince Gleb, the son of the Blessed Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. After this, the Monk Anthony came to his senses, otherwise he would have perished in the whirlpool of heresy.

Wolf in sheep's clothing

And what does the priest Sergiy Kruglov do? He goes to a conversation with the heretic Protestant Mikhail Kalinin, not with the aim of turning him to the path of truth, but in order to get answers from him to such questions: “What is tradition, in your opinion, why is the rite?”, “How do you What do you think, what are the prospects for the language of the Church?”, “What has become valuable for you from Orthodoxy?”, “How, in your opinion, is the situation with biblical studies and translations of Holy Scripture in Russia today? What translations do you use?”, “What is your view on the current state of the Church (both Protestant and Russian Orthodox) in Russia, on its relationship with society?”. Moreover, from the last question it is clear that the priest Sergiy Kruglov believes that the Protestant heretical community is part of the Church - this is the heresy of ecumenism.

And the Protestant Kalinin talks for a long time about the Church, about how he relates to the Synodal translation of the Bible, through whom he came to understand the "Ladder" of St. John of the Ladder. That is, the priest Sergiy Kruglov and the portal "Orthodoxy and the World" put a heretic, mired in a satanic distortion of the truth, as a judge over Orthodoxy, over the fathers and over the Church. This is an incredible humiliation of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of which Christ is the head. After that, how can the editorial staff of Pravmir and the priest Sergiy Kruglov be considered Orthodox people? They simply mock us and what is sacred to us.

The true shepherd - St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) - did not go to Catholics and Protestants for admonition, but called them soul-dead people in communion with the devil: “You say:“ Heretics are the same Christians. Where did you get it from? Is it possible that someone who calls himself a Christian and knows nothing about Christ, through his extreme ignorance, will decide to recognize himself as the same Christian as heretics, and will not distinguish the holy Christian faith from blasphemous heresies! True Christians argue otherwise! Numerous hosts of saints received the crown of martyrdom, preferred the most severe and prolonged torment, prison, exile, rather than agree to participate with heretics in their blasphemous teaching. The Universal Church has always recognized heresy as a mortal sin, has always recognized that a person infected with the terrible disease of heresy is dead in soul, alien to grace and salvation, in communion with the devil and his death.

Attempts to unite with heretics - betrayal of Christ

When Priest Sergiy Kruglov asks another question, he says that the Holy Spirit acted through both Orthodox and heretics: “The language of theology is the language of high poetry. Psalms of David, hymns of Simeon the New Theologian, poems by Milton and Dante, Pushkin's "Prophet" and verses from Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago", sermons by Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh and Father Georgy Chistyakov, diaries of Father Alexander Elchaninov, Father Alexander Schmemann and Father Thomas Merton, poems by Charles Peguy, Thomas Eliot, Timur Kibirov, Sergei Averintsev, Olga Sedakova and so on - all this is nourished by one Spirit, and all this is the language of the Church.

Dante is a Catholic, Milton is a Protestant, Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh, Priest Georgy Chistyakov and Priest Alexander Schmemann are modernist heretics. The Holy Spirit could not work through them. Only Satan could work through them.

When Priest Sergiy Kruglov asks another question, he calls the falling away of Catholics from the Church through heresy (as it really was), the separation of the two churches due to political and cultural ambitions: perceived the fact of the split of the Churches, seeing it only as a sin: Christ created one Church, and people split it, following their political, cultural, ethnic ambitions and selves. Today, knowing that the Lord is trying to make for us, if not candy, then saving medicine out of all our sin, I think about it a little differently, not so unambiguously: in the end, although from the confusion of languages ​​​​at the Tower of Babel the dispersion of a single humanity occurred, peoples and tribes, having lived in dispersion, realized a certain potential invested in them by God, each of them accumulated some unique wealth, and now people born in these peoples and traditions can share it, while simultaneously living the experience of accepting the “other”.

It can be seen from the text of the question that Priest Sergiy Kruglov hopes that the Orthodox Church will be united with the associations of Catholics and Protestants, and that the Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants will bring to the created united community all the wealth that they have accumulated over previous centuries. That is, this priest considers all the heresies accumulated by heretics to be wealth, and believes that we need to be enriched with them. In fact, as soon as such a union occurs, the Orthodox Church, having absorbed heresies, will fall away from Christ and turn into a false church.

Here is what Archimandrite Lazar (Abashidze) wrote in the article “Easter without the Cross, or once again about ecumenism”: “Ecumenism will remain a destructive force in relation to the true faith, no matter how you approach it. This is an obvious evil, and a subtle and insidious evil, craftily seducing, killing saving faith, an evil that affects the soul imperceptibly, but paralyzes the most important centers of a Christian's spiritual life. We affirm that any religious communion with heretics, attempts to unite with them while remaining silent, covering up differences, the dogmatic irreconcilability of the teachings of Orthodoxy with the teachings of any heretics and other faiths, and similar double-minded, hypocritical behavior that teaches Orthodox people to hide the most important the basis of their faith, the essence of their entire spiritual life - that the Truth is only in Orthodoxy and nowhere else - all this is a betrayal of Christ, a departure from the True God! We, Orthodox Christians, firmly believe and have no doubt that the Truth is only in Orthodoxy.”

Alla Tuchkova, journalist

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“I came to Russia, as in science fiction films, unprecedented and Invisible War, which mercilessly strikes deadly blows in the heart of Russia ... Now it is often said that our economic, social and demographic losses after the brutal “perestroika” reform of Russia exceed the consequences of the Great Patriotic War. And all this without bloody bombardments, without atomic explosions, without invasion of troops, without punishers ... ”It would seem that father Alexander Kruglov speaks about obvious and even from the frequency of repetition, imposed in the teeth, but meanwhile, his book gives the impression of a tocsin, an appeal : “Rise sleeping!”, look around, finally realize what is happening in the world and in your country, and try to review your whole life in the light of this sober awareness: it began and is already on earth Last war. This war is fundamentally different from all the wars that have flooded the history of mankind - “the wild Horde demanded only tribute and slaves, but not divine worship of itself. She didn't need our immortal souls. Now the time is different. Again we are divided, but this time the ruthless enemies of Russia came just for our restless souls ... "

The book of Father Alexander Kruglov is not a historical or political study, its genre can be defined as “the word of the shepherd”, these are thematically organized sermons that are combined into chapters, the very name of which speaks of the traditional nature of the genre. "Jericho", "Samson and Bartimaeus", "The Procession from Jericho to Jerusalem", "Burning Sheaves", the Mysterious "Retainer", etc. - the history of Russia is viewed through the prism of Biblical history, everything that happens today is revealed in light of the Apocalypse and the ancient prophets. And in this light, "everything hidden becomes clear" - everything that we experience in our day is clearly defined - "the mystery of lawlessness in action."

A deep bow to the priest for calling everything by its proper name, traces the subtlest connections between events and draws a self-evident conclusion: "peacetime" after the Second World War, the time of "local conflicts" is simply a "sluggish" World War III ... Hardly can the silent occupation of the whole of Christendom be considered unintentional... America is facing the same problems. Its white population is already approaching the point where it can become oppressed by its black and Hispanic representatives, as recently happened with the white population in South Africa. The tragedy of America can be even more terrible, the same events are happening in Europe ... "

This statement demonstrates that we seems to be the most important thing in the book - stereotypes of thinking break down. One of them is "all evil comes from America", the second (and this is even more important and topical): "Orthodox patriots will save Russia." I do not know the biography of father Alexander Kruglov, but he is clearly well aware of the realities of our patriotic movement. From his entire history of the last fifteen or twenty years, the author of The Last War draws a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: it is the patriots who can prepare the coming of the "man of lawlessness." Why? In answering this question, the priest makes a deep pastoral diagnosis of the spiritual state in which many patriots have been in recent years. “In patriotism, they received such a narcotic delight from unity with the “mystical spheres”, which they could not think of before ..., cunning evil from the very birth of the patriotic movement slyly hid itself in the most patriotic environment. It also became the main destructive force. And the destroyers themselves most often did not realize this ... The thirst for the sharpness of sensations of chosenness and danger attracts to forbidden secret knowledge, electrifying an exhausted soul ... a split personality occurs. In the circle of his own, this is a patriot of patriots ... but at the right moment a certain “switch” works in the head, and a sincere fellow instantaneous a minute ago becomes just as sincerely a sworn enemy.

Father Alexander explains the reason why such substitutions occur: “Warfare with demonic people - the focus of the “mystery of lawlessness” - is the lot of a few chosen ones of God, giants of the spirit, who pacified the infirmity of their flesh with many labors and great sorrows. Their stern hostility is not for everyone who has only learned to read forbidden books... Often, patriots who frivolously tasted the mystical fruit of secret knowledge, from constant fears, nervous and mental overloads... unbearably painful torments begin - "circles of hell"!

What happened and is happening with our patriotic movement, according to Father Alexander, especially clearly confirms that in our time it is possible to be saved only by protecting yourself with constant prayer, and without losing real church life. One has only to replace confession and communion, the daily fulfillment of the prayer rule and the strict observance of Sundays and holidays by the struggle against the forces of evil, as this struggle turns against the fighters themselves. This is one of the main features last war- to be able to deceive a person, plunge him into self-deception, so that through this he can deceive others.

Of the entire almost eight-hundred-page book, chapter twenty-second, which is called "Koschei the Immortal", is especially successful in terms of presenting the material (form of address to the reader). Through the plot and images of the famous Russian fairy tale, our past, present and future become clear. Let us quote the main provisions from this chapter: “Ivan Tsarevich is a collective image of the Russian people, who often exterminated themselves in the darkness of spiritual blindness. Only blindness can explain, for example, the bitterness of bloody princely and national strife, revolutions and perestroika” - this is about the past.

About the present: “The reason for the constant defeats of Ivan Tsarevich was his spiritual ignorance. Each time, engaging in battle with the enemy, he fought not with the real Koshchei, but with his dreamy image. So Russia has always had many enemies, but many of them only distracted from the main thing. The main one who kills to death!”

About the future: “From time immemorial, there were stories in Russia about the war between the insidious monster - Koshchei the Immortal and the simple-hearted Ivan Tsarevich ... finally, the prince was killed. For greater fidelity, Koschey cut his body into small pieces and scattered them in all directions. Apparently he felt that this would not end well for him anyway. And I wasn't wrong.

In the legends, Ivan Tsarevich was resurrected ... In the same way, every time the revival of Russia defeated by the enemy occurs. At first, seemingly long-dead parts of the realm gather invisibly. This is the first miracle. The invisible and almost unbelievable resurrection of a lost people. The holiness of faith gradually revives the souls of people dead from sin... In the same way, a sudden revival of the destroyed Russian kingdom can happen.

Book Last war, despite the fact that there are many pages in it that chill the soul with horror - from the description of those savagery and cruelty that are happening now, and from assumptions about the even greater bitterness of people that is coming - nevertheless, on the whole, it can be called optimistic. In the sense in which the Apocalypse is optimistic.

The conviction expressed already on its first pages runs through the whole book: “We must single out for ourselves two simultaneously occurring processes - the spiritual degradation of the majority of representatives of the ruling class and a fairly significant part of the people and the maturation of even a few, but who remained faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church . The outcome of catastrophic events depends on those few who, by their loyalty, sacrifice and fearlessness, transform the rest of the fallen society. The book is constantly present, albeit unnamed, the image of Kitezh-grad: “The visible, living in space and time, the flesh of the Russian kingdom tragically perished, but its soul, spiritually one with the Eternal Kingdom, was preserved inviolability. The invisible and mighty tsarist spirit of the people of Russia still maintains a fragile state balance in the modern world.”

Optimism of the conclusions that sound at the end of the book Last war, for a non-believer, it may seem paradoxical - after all, before that, hellish subtleties of the ideological, psychological, mystical war being waged against us are described - all of them can plunge into despondency, fetter the soul with fear.

But, as you know, the source of the greatest fear and despondency is when the enemy is not visible, not recognized, not named. And when “the secret has become clear,” when “the enemy does not come like a thief in the night,” when they are preparing to meet him, it remains to remember the words of the Lord: “Do not be afraid, little flock!” and, most importantly, do not withdraw into your loneliness, but seek unity with Christ's host.

“Simultaneously with the enemy invasion, another process is going on, which, although it has not yet become a turning point in the fate of Russia, but much seems to be inclined towards that ... In the language of military science, two irreconcilable armies are gradually forming on Russian soil. On the one hand are all the sworn enemies of Christ and Russia. They are generously fed by world evil, they are dynamic, cheeky, well-fed. On the other hand, the building of the bright Christ's army is underway. It is built and protected until the time of the inevitable decisive battle, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His army is usually low-key, more modest in appearance and physicality. All our strength lies in the great treasure - the Orthodox Faith. And our strength is made perfect in weakness!”

From the Editor: Book about. Alexander Kruglov can be purchased in Moscow at the store of the publishing house "Ark" (Nikolskaya Lavka, Savelovsky per. 8 (M "Savelovskaya", tel. (095) 689−11−00), in St. Petersburg by tel. (812) 336− 21-98, 938-23-35, as well as at the Orthodox book exhibition "Palm Week" opening next week (Moscow, All-Russian Exhibition Center, pavilion 69, purple line, booth N8 of the publishing house "Ark").

"I came to Russia, as in science fiction films, unprecedented and Invisible War, which mercilessly strikes deadly blows in the heart of Russia ... Now it is often said that our economic, social and demographic losses after the brutal "perestroika" reform of Russia exceed the consequences of the Great Patriotic War. And all this without bloody bombardments, without atomic explosions, without invasion of troops, without punishers ... It would seem that father Alexander Kruglov speaks about obvious and even from the frequency of repetition, obsessed in the teeth, but meanwhile, his book gives the impression of a tocsin , the call: "Rise sleeping!", look around, finally realize what is happening in the world and in your country, and try to review your whole life in the light of this sober awareness: it began and is already on earth Last war. This war is fundamentally different from all the wars that have flooded the history of mankind - "the wild Horde demanded only tribute and slaves, but not divine worship of itself. It did not need our immortal souls. Now the time is different. Again we are in division, but this time ruthless enemies Russia came just for our restless souls ... "

Father Alexander Kruglov's book is not a historical or political study, its genre can be defined as "the word of the shepherd" - these are thematically organized sermons that are grouped into chapters, the very title of which speaks of the traditional nature of the genre. "Jericho", "Samson and Bartimaeus", "The Procession from Jericho to Jerusalem", "Burning Sheaves", the Mysterious "Retainer", etc. - the history of Russia is viewed through the prism of Biblical history, everything that happens today is revealed in light of the Apocalypse and the ancient prophets. And in this light, "everything hidden becomes clear" - everything that we experience in our day, receives a clear definition - "the mystery of lawlessness in action."

A low bow to the priest for calling everything by its proper name, traces the subtlest connections between events and draws a self-evident conclusion: "peacetime" after the Second World War, the time of "local conflicts" is simply a "sluggish" World War III .. The silent occupation of the whole of Christendom can hardly be considered unintentional... America is facing the same problems. Its white population is already approaching the point where it can become oppressed by its black and Hispanic representatives, as recently happened with the white population in South Africa. The tragedy of America can be even more terrible, the same events are happening in Europe ... "

This statement demonstrates that we seems to be the most important thing in the book - stereotypes of thinking break down. One of them is "all evil comes from America", the second (and this is even more important and topical): "Orthodox patriots will save Russia." I do not know the biography of father Alexander Kruglov, but he is clearly well aware of the realities of our patriotic movement. From his entire history of the last fifteen or twenty years, the author of The Last War draws a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: it is the patriots who can prepare the coming of the "man of lawlessness." Why? In answering this question, the priest makes a deep pastoral diagnosis of the spiritual state in which many patriots have been in recent years. “In patriotism, they received such narcotic delight from unity with the “mystical spheres”, which they could not think of before ..., cunning evil from the very birth of the patriotic movement slyly hid itself in the most patriotic environment. It also became the main destructive force. most often the destroyers were not aware of this... The thirst for the sharpness of feelings of chosenness and danger attracts to forbidden secret knowledge, electrifying the exhausted soul... a split personality occurs. a kind of "switch", and a sincere brother of the instant a moment ago becomes just as sincerely a sworn enemy.

Father Alexander explains the reason why such substitutions occur: “Warfare with demonic people - the focus of the“ secret of lawlessness ”is the lot of a few chosen ones of God, giants of the spirit, who pacified the infirmity of their flesh with many labors and great sorrows. Their harsh hostility is not for everyone , who only learned to read forbidden books ... Often, patriots who frivolously tasted the mystical fruit of secret knowledge, from constant insurance, nervous and mental overload ... unbearably painful torments begin - "circles of hell"!

What happened and is happening with our patriotic movement, according to Father Alexander, especially clearly confirms that in our time it is possible to be saved only by protecting yourself with constant prayer, and without losing real church life. One has only to replace confession and communion, the daily fulfillment of the prayer rule and the strict observance of Sundays and holidays by the struggle against the forces of evil, as this struggle turns against the fighters themselves. This is one of the main features last war- to be able to deceive a person, plunge him into self-deception, so that through this he can deceive others.

Of the entire almost eight-hundred-page book, chapter twenty-second, which is called "Koschei the Immortal," seems to be especially successful in terms of presenting the material (form of address to the reader). Through the plot and images of the famous Russian fairy tale, our past, present and future become clear. Let us quote the main provisions from this chapter: "Ivan Tsarevich is a collective image of the Russian people, who often exterminated themselves in the darkness of spiritual blindness. Only blindness can explain, for example, the bitterness of bloody princely and national civil strife, revolutions and perestroika" - this is about the past.

About the present: "The reason for the constant defeats of Ivan Tsarevich was his spiritual ignorance. Each time, engaging in battle with the enemy, he fought not with the real Koshchei, but with his dreamy image. So Russia has always had many enemies, but many of them only distracted from the main thing. The main one is the one who kills to death!

About the future: "From time immemorial in Russia there were stories about the war between the insidious monster - Koshchei the Immortal and the simple-hearted Ivan Tsarevich ... finally, the prince was killed. For greater fidelity, Koschei cut his body into small pieces and scattered them in all directions, Evidently he felt that this would not end well for him anyway, and he was not mistaken.

In the legends, Ivan Tsarevich was resurrected ... In the same way, every time the revival of Russia defeated by the enemy takes place. At first, seemingly long-dead parts of the realm gather invisibly. This is the first miracle. The invisible and almost unbelievable resurrection of a lost people. The holiness of faith gradually revives the souls of people dead from sin ... In the same way, a sudden revival of the destroyed Russian kingdom can happen.

Book Last war, despite the fact that there are many pages in it that chill the soul with horror - from the description of those savagery and cruelty that are happening now, and from assumptions about the even greater bitterness of people that is coming - nevertheless, on the whole, it can be called optimistic. In the sense in which the Apocalypse is optimistic.

The conviction expressed already on its first pages runs through the whole book: “We must distinguish for ourselves two simultaneously occurring processes - the spiritual degradation of the majority of representatives of the ruling class and a fairly significant part of the people and the maturation of the few who remained faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church The outcome of catastrophic events depends on those few who, with their loyalty, sacrifice and fearlessness, transform the rest of the fallen society. The book is constantly present, albeit unnamed, the image of Kitezh-grad: "The visible, living in space and time, the flesh of the Russian kingdom tragically perished, but its soul, spiritually united with the Eternal Kingdom, was preserved inviolability. The invisible and mighty royal spirit of the people of Russia and still maintains a fragile state balance in the modern world."

Optimism of the conclusions that sound at the end of the book Last war, for a non-believer, it may seem paradoxical - after all, before that, hellish subtleties of the ideological, psychological, mystical war being waged against us are described - all of them can plunge into despondency, fetter the soul with fear.

But, as you know, the source of the greatest fear and despondency is when the enemy is not visible, not recognized, not named. And when "the secret has become clear," when "the enemy does not come like a thief in the night," when they are preparing to meet him, then it remains to remember the words of the Lord: "Do not be afraid, little flock!" and, most importantly, do not withdraw into your loneliness, but seek unity with Christ's host.

– When a person first comes to the Church, some external things come to the fore for him, the ritual side, and this is natural - a person is integrated into church life, church discipline. And in the future, when a person has been in the Church for a long time, what should come to the fore?

Priest Sergiy Kruglov. Photo: Anna Galperina

– Some believe that now it is natural for such a person to sort of “line up” with church discipline, that now the law is not written for him. Such a view of the life of a person in the Church is characteristic of those who look at the Church with an external view, so to speak, as an organization.

For an organization, indeed, the charter and certain rules are of paramount importance. I remember how one lady made claims to the Orthodox Church: “I lived part of my life in the Baltic states, how good it is there – you go into some Catholic church, the rules of conduct hang there, read it - and everything is clear. You will come to us – you don’t know where to step, how to behave, no rules and order.”

Formally, she is right, but the rules of conduct hang in a public place, in a museum or in an office - you need to read them and behave accordingly. And when you come to visit someone, there are no rules of conduct in the corridor on the wall – you came to a family, to a living human home.

At a party, the main thing is different, first of all, you need to ask yourself the question: “Why did I come here? And who am I - a relative of the inhabitants of this house, a close friend, a neighbor who came to ask for matches, a plumber who came on a call, or maybe a beggar who came to beg? .. ”A person may not immediately find a simple answer to this question , but to ask them - I think it is very important.

First you need to understand why I come to the Church. And then, to realize that God is the Father, and people are children. And the Church is the home where this family lives. Naturally, in the house where the family lives, it is not customary to hang up rules of conduct; the visitor must first get to know the owners, and then establish some kind of living relationship with them. This is a completely different plane of being - not public, not formal, but personal, alive.

Therefore, when they say that a person who comes to the Church needs, first of all, and only rules, then this is a view of the Church as a social organization, something external to me, who has come. And the Church is a family.

– That is, the rules in the family develop naturally?

– Of course, the person does not notice them either. Every house has some rules - it is not customary to spit on the floor, walk in dirty shoes, be late for dinner. For example, my wife says that a strong family is one in which everyone gathers at the appointed time for dinner and eat soup from a tureen. The tureen as a symbol of the family - not on the run grabbed something, but a table service is placed, and the whole family gathers at the table, not only satiates, but also communicates.

Each family has its own rules, but, firstly, they are not hung on the wall, and secondly, they are not the most important thing. The most important thing is love and relationships between family members - husband, wife, children, old grandmother, cat - everyone who lives in this family.

Therefore, when a person comes to the Church, he needs to pay the main attention to this particular plan of personal relationships. Actually, about this, about love for God and love for one's neighbor, the commandment speaks.

I recall the story of the righteous Job: Job asked God painful, furious, full of suffering questions. And God, the living Lord, appeared to him, Who did not directly answer any of his questions, but began, on the contrary, to ask His questions. But Job was happy because he saw God personally.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann says that when the Lord appears, He often does not give direct answers to our questions, but takes us by the hand and leads us into that plane of being where questions disappear by themselves. So here - if a person understands that he did not come to an office, not to a museum, not to some public place, but, first of all, to a family, that it is not so much the rules that are important here, but the relationship, then the question itself, with whom we started a conversation: “What should I do next when I grow out of diapers?”, leaves.

At the very least, both the hysterical, disturbing aftertaste and the aftertaste of formalism disappear from this question, and it becomes an ordinary everyday question - here I am growing, I live, something will happen further, behind a new bend in the road. The tone changes.

– What to do if a person's life in the Church turns into such a cycle of actions that are performed automatically, and a person cannot get out of this cycle?

– When a person’s relationship with God, with neighbors, with the Church takes a “not their” place in our life, then, of course, everything turns into some kind of mechanical cycle, a carousel: confession, communion, life from one calendar cycle to another, from fasting before fasting, from fasting to fasting.

What do I mean by "not my place"? The world is hierarchically arranged by the Creator, that is, every thing in it must take its place - it is then that it is beautiful, then it is useful, it is full of meaning and rejoices that it fulfills God's plan for itself. Everything rejoices - the sun rejoices, shining and warming, the butterfly rejoices, this poplar fluff rejoices, which flies right this minute and climbs into our eyes. Because they fulfill the will of God, fully realizing themselves. This fluff and his flight is full of meaning, his life is a real adventure, full of joy.

This cannot be said, unfortunately, about you and me, and about many people who are often discouraged, depressed and feel “out of place”. What is a fallen world? This is a world in which things are out of place - roughly speaking, a world in which they constantly try to hammer nails with a glass. When things fall into place, then the world becomes beautiful, comes in order, it becomes joyful and exciting to live in it.

And of course, the most important thing that is out of place in a fallen world is the person himself. A lot of things are out of place in a person: brains, soul, desires, will, and so on. And the whole path of a Christian, all Christian asceticism, is devoted to somehow straightening a person.

The relationship of a person with God, with the Church and with neighbors is the most important thing in Christianity. When these relationships are out of place, when they occupy some kind of unnatural position, then the whole life of a person turns into some kind of bad cycle. And here there are different distortions - to the right and to the left. The Holy Fathers say that one must follow the royal path, the middle one. Any excess will not lead to anything good.

– And what are these distortions, how are they characterized, what does a person do wrong?

– Firstly, there is (speaking in the context of our topic) a bias when the Church occupies an applied place in a person’s life, when a person uses the Church as a public organization, an interest club, a place for making wishes, a national tradition, and so on. There are many examples of this. For example, the slogan "I am Orthodox because I am Russian."

Or, I remember, once a young couple came to the temple, which literally travels to holy places for months. But not because these young people love the saints, but because they are begging for a child. Desire, of course, is good, but the Church in this respect has an applied meaning for them. They wear consecrated icons, pray at the relics, visit monasteries and elders, and so on. But it can be seen from them that as soon as the need disappears - they have a baby or they are disappointed in his search - their desire to stay in temples and holy places may well dry up ...

Such people consider churchness to be just some side part of their lives, they adapt the Church to their everyday needs. Here I live, I consider myself Orthodox, because I am Russian, baptized, my great-grandfathers lived like that, we have Holy Russia. Therefore, I bake Easter cakes on Easter, dive into an ice hole on Epiphany, watch a patriotic Orthodox channel on TV, wear a cross, and once a year I come to confession. I am baptizing a child, the child must have a measured icon, a spoon or, as they recently showed me, an Orthodox rattle - silver, with the image of a cross. Both Orthodoxy and Christianity become just a part of my life.

How often our churchness depends on our natural human condition! Even the most favorite toy gets bored. In the end, a person’s mood may deteriorate, his stomach or tooth may ache. And when something hurts a person, he is no longer up to his favorite toys.

For this reason, as long as a person for whom the Church is just a part of life, everything is fine, he sometimes becomes interested in Orthodoxy. And then a black streak comes - worries overcame despondency, longing, illness, trouble at work, scandals with his wife ... And the model of the world that a person invented for himself and in which he imagines himself happy, fails, does not work. And then a person looks at the Christian part of his life and thinks: “What nonsense, what am I doing at all, the same thing, the same thing, but there is no result, here again everything is bad, and neither prayer nor fasting, neither communion helps ... ”To the sacramental question:“ What does this give me? - the answer is: "Nothing." And the Church is no longer needed.

And secondly, there is such a bias when a person attaches too much importance to churchness, as a rule, external, not understanding that churchness can be the basis of life, but not a substitute for life. This is especially true for people who are new to the Church.

They threw out the TV - put up the iconostasis, was a hippie - took off the fennel, wound the rosary and so on. I had that too. When I was baptized, I remember that I took out more than one box of books to the trash heap to the lamentations and cries of my wife, who remembers how I spent family money on these books (then years passed, and I would like to find this dump, return some of the books, among which there were many useful ...).

A person pays hypertrophied a lot of attention to the Church, discarding everything else. Such people are fond of external attributes. As one of the church authors aptly noted, for them everything in the Church is sacred indiscriminately - and the throne, and the candle, and the Gospel, and what Aunt Klava, the cleaner, said.

Such a person tries to replace everything in his life - family, friends, creativity - by going to church and reading the holy fathers. And at one fine moment he suddenly notices that the Church seems to have filled my whole life, I spend days and nights in the temple, but something is missing. Something in the soul...

It's actually very good when the soul begins to itch, to hurt, which means it comes to life, wakes up. For some reason, we believe that when we are uncomfortable, it is necessarily bad. On the contrary, the inconvenience awakens. We know, for example, that one of the most uncomfortable moments in our lives is when someone starts waking us up: “Get up, you’ll be late!” This person who wakes you up, even if it is your beloved wife or mother, you just want to kill at this moment, but he is doing a good deed - awakening us to life.

I sometimes imagine what happened to Lazar when the Lord awakened him from death. I don't think it was just a pleasant experience. To go from death back to life is a shock, a stress.

And this is what I think: when the soul of such a church-going person begins to itch, when something is missing, and the wheel of church-goingness seems to be spinning as before, this does not mean that church-goingness has become unnecessary, that the canons and rites and sacraments have lost their meaning. , this does not mean that one should be disappointed in the Church, it means that a new stage of life has simply begun.

An older child looks: my children's room, which seemed like a whole world, suddenly became somehow small. And it seems that everything that I know and love is here - a teddy bear, toys, but I want something else. It happens, of course, that when a child becomes a teenager, he is ashamed of his toys - God forbid, one of my friends will come and see that I still have an old teddy bear on the couch. This is how some former neophytes who have become “Starophytes” relate to their former earnest fulfillment of prayer rules, fasting, regular attendance of services ...

But there is hope that later, when time passes, when a teenager who was a baby becomes an adult, he will again come to look for this teddy bear. A grown child will understand that he needed this bear in childhood to feel comfort, protection, a glimpse of the Kingdom of Christ here on earth. A kingdom that is joy, meaning, love and peace. Everything we read about in Clive Lewis's Narnia stories. There is hope that, having ascended a new stage of life, a churched person will look at the period of his new leadership in a new way and discover new meanings in its attributes.

– In a normal Christian life, with spiritual growth, does the new not cross out the old, but change the attitude towards it?

– It’s good for that normal smart person who, having moved from neophyteism to “old-phytism”, retained love for the period of his neophyteism and what accompanied this time, and did not discard this church-likeness as something unnecessary - things are good, they will come in handy again. Now one can often observe debates on the Internet, in the Orthodox press about burnout, dechurching. Sometimes I think that there is no “de-Churching” at all, it’s just that people are alive, growing, experiencing difficulties and troubles in their life path.

A person left childhood and became a teenager, then an adult. And he is able, even after going through the temptations and trials of "burnout", to understand that he still needs churchliness. If in childhood the sign of the cross saved me from childhood fear, why can’t the moment come when it will help me again, protect me from the fear of an adult? It has become a part of my life. The cross that I wear on my chest is part of my body. How do I throw it away? It's like cutting off a finger as it's useless. Moreover, the sacraments of the Church - confession, communion. If a mechanical attitude has appeared, this does not mean that confession and communion have become unnecessary. This means that my attitude towards them needs to be revised.

Once a married couple came to me, a husband and wife want to get married, but they are not scheduled. The wife agrees to sign, but the husband fears that this is not his first marriage: “This is all a formality, why sign, I was already married, burned myself.” I say: “Sorry, if you didn’t get one marriage, this does not mean that marriage is not needed at all. If a person was poisoned by low-quality pizza, this does not mean that now there is no need to eat at all. This means that you need to learn how to cook a good, tasty pizza. That's all".

It's exactly the same here. If a person suddenly stops experiencing something so inspired and blissful when he comes to confession and communion, this does not mean that he no longer needs it. It is still unknown what exactly he experienced there before. If a person had sufficiently deep, truly Christian experiences, then, of course, he would not dismiss confession and communion as unnecessary, and would not say: "I'm burnt out in this regard."

More - but at the same time not more important than us. In the Church, the most important thing is God and man, personality. The gospel is important, but it is just a book. And if God, as a parent, is faced with a choice of whom to save: the Holy Scripture, a book, or a person, His child, then, of course, God will choose a person. He went to the cross for the sake of man.

But, nevertheless, one must grow up to the Gospel, to understand it, in order to become oneself. Therefore, when people talk about dechurching, burnout, one must understand that both dechurching and burnout are an ordinary temptation, ordinary problems of a person who begins to grow up or changes his attitude towards something, who is beset by previously unseen difficulties, sorrows, changes. .

– Why do these problems begin, what are the reasons for our inability to go through these stages of growth?

– I think that one of the reasons is our split, some kind of schizophrenia: here we are churchmen, and here we are secular. That is, many things in the Church did not become our personal things. For example, a person comes to the temple, he is bored at the service, because he does not understand anything. A canon is sung, for example, or the Gospel is read, and he just stands there. He knows that this is how it should be, he does not in any case think of running away from here, he overcomes everything, but does not understand anything.

Many say: "Let's serve in Russian, we will translate the service, and everyone will understand everything." But even then, not everyone and not everyone will understand! Firstly, a person may not have enough education to understand the realities that are spoken of in church prayers. There are difficult things written. For example, in order to understand the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, even in Russian translation, great efforts are needed - one must read the Holy Scriptures, know the images that are described there, and so on. And secondly, it often happens that church prayers are someone else's experience, the experience of the saints who wrote these prayers, but not yet my experience. Beautiful words, wonderful, holy, but not yet mine.

A person comes to church, hears, for example, the words in the canon of repentance: “Pack one who has returned to sin, like a dog on his vomit,” or: “Like a pig lies in feces, so I serve sin,” cries and says: “That’s for sure about me". Not because he could not say so about himself, for example, in childhood, that he had never met a pig before. As a child, he at least read the fairy tale "Three Little Pigs" and saw Piggy on TV. But a person is touched by this image to the depths of his soul, he says “this is about me” just when he himself experienced this, knows the mechanisms of sin in himself, knows how sin acts in himself.

When a person really understands what confession is, when he truly repents, this is an attempt to change his life. When the sweet shell from the bitter pill of sin begins to dissolve, when all the romance of sin passes, peels off like paint from a cheap Chinese toy, then sin really hits the liver, and a person can no longer live with sin. It is dark in the eyes, a person does not see the white light from sin, but cannot get rid of it, because sin has become a habit, a habit, an addiction.

And then a person understands what confession is - everyday, over and over again, the struggle with the disease in oneself, the persistent use of medicine, without which one cannot survive. And then confession becomes a part of a person's life. And there is no longer any talk of "burning out" of his attitude to confession.

– That is, when we list the same sins at confession every time, this does not mean that it is wrong, these little things are actually the most important thing?

– Of course. And even if you list them at every confession. Sin is sick. And there is a sore that is very difficult to cure. We read the books of the Holy Fathers, they went through all this on their own, and everyone, as one, says that the fight against sin is a very difficult matter. We thought: we’ll go to confession once, and that’s it: we’ll stop lying, envying, judging, and so on.

– If you haven't killed anyone, then you can live in peace.

– Yes, yes, and all of a sudden it will pass by itself. A person thinks that it is possible to get rid of sin quickly, in one fell swoop. And then he said in confession once, a second, a third, a fourth - it doesn’t help, and he decides: “I have already been to confession five times, but the sin keeps repeating. Yah! I have become dechurched, I have a burnout… Confession does not help me…” Here you need to tune in to a long serious work. When a person tunes in to this, agrees to this within himself, then the Lord immediately says: “I am with you.” And work begins.

Therefore, everyday, routine, calm life is the most exciting adventure that a person experiences.

And the same with communion. If a person is close to Christ, Christ, God and man, is important to him in his own life, if he understands how much the Lord loves us, who He is in our life, what He has done and continues to do for us, then the person simply wants to be with Him and appreciates every opportunity to run to the sacrament.

And then all these doubts: “Oh, but will the father allow me?” or: “I am not worthy” - as if you will ever be worthy of God! .. - just empty words. These are words from the category of external relations, and the real relations are established by Christ Himself: "Take, eat, this is My Body and My Blood, this is everything for you, come."

After communion, it is not always comfortable and blissful, sometimes it is both bitter and difficult. I am sometimes asked: “Why do I go out after communion, I felt good for 5 minutes, and then I sinned again, and again it’s hard? I ask in response: “And what kind of grace did you need? Feeling, forgive me, high, or what?

Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is union with Christ in order to live with Him. And life is life, often beautiful, but never easy. It can be so difficult for me to go out into the world after communion because I no longer go out alone, but with Christ. And we go out with Him - to work, to serve.

When you are on your own, free as the wind, you are not responsible for anything. And after communion, a person comes out loaded, he carries Christ. Can you walk through the crowd with a bowl full of water without knocking it over? This is a famous image from a Buddhist parable, but I would like to make a Christian addition: carrying a cup is not just a refined spiritual exercise, because over there your neighbor is dying of thirst, waiting for you with this cup as his savior. You must convey Christ to him - it is clear that it is hard for you ...

And then another stage comes, another stage, when you realize that in fact you are not carrying Christ inside you after communion, like a cardboard box - a parcel, but Christ Himself, it turns out, walks beside you and helps to act ... Not instead of you - but with you.

– Can a person always be in good shape, always serve the world?

– Of course, there are fatigue, despondency, illness, sorrows. And the person again thinks: “Oh, fathers, I prayed so hard, everything was so good, but now I can’t, everything is boring, disgusting, sleep attacks. It’s all burnout, dechurching.” It's not burnout, it's just fatigue, it will pass.

Of course, it is difficult to get up every day on an alarm clock, wash your face, brush your teeth, maintain some certain order and rhythm of life. There are various means to maintain the order of life, one of them is the rule of prayer.

It is impossible to imagine a mortal person who is constantly in the same degree of spiritual tension - every day he has a huge rule, he reads the psalter, canons, akathists for eight hours, and absolutely, absolutely never feels tired ...

I remember Mother Teresa's famous book of letters and diaries. It would seem - Mother Teresa, how many people she saved, the famous ascetic, prayer book, saint ... When I read her letters, I saw there the same thing that I met with Simeon the Theologian, Isaac the Syrian, Simeon Athos, Joseph the Hesychast, many saints and ascetics, ancient and modern: not just weeks or months, but years of what is called the “dark night of God-forsakenness”.

She constantly writes in letters to her spiritual father: “I have lost faith, it’s very hard for me, I don’t see God, I don’t feel Him, I live through strength, I’m dying, I’m painful, I’m sad.” Nevertheless, she continued to do her job, continued to fulfill her monastic vows, saved the sick and outcasts around the world, and did not depart from Christ.

And with us, with me in particular, it felt a little sick somewhere: “Oh, I probably have cancer, a fatal disease, the end of the world, now I’ll die! ..” It’s like Jerome’s “Three in a boat, not counting the dog ": the hero found in himself all the diseases, except for puerperal fever. So it is here: “Oh, we have a burnout, we have a dechurch!” The Church is 2000 years old, all this “human, too human” in the Church has been, and is, because people, in principle, in a certain respect are the same at all times, their mortality is the same, their infirmities.

Yes, Christ overcame this infirmity and death by His death and resurrection - but we must master both, so that eternal life becomes ours too. And exactly in this order: first death, in its various manifestations, followed by resurrection, not vice versa.

Dechurching? How often do we consider our own neuroses, our own psychological states, the peculiarities of our own way of life and a wrongly organized life, to be de-churching, loss of faith, and so on. In fact, sometimes it is enough just to change the way of thinking, the way of life, and everything will calm down. No, I do not deny that all this can be very difficult, and I treat the experience of this kind of suffering in different people with both compassion and respect. But what I'm talking about has its place.

The wonderful English veterinarian James Harriot, in a series of stories about his animal patients, recalls how he treated a lady's dog. He lived in the countryside and treated mainly cows, pigs and horses, but there was a rich lady who had a beloved dog. He constantly came to inspect this dog, which they cherished, in the rain they didn’t take him out into the garden without a blanket and overfed him with all sorts of puddings, cakes, and so on.

And so the doctor, seeing that the dog was in danger of dying from obesity, decided to cure her and took the dog away from this lady, saying that the patient should be placed in a clinic. The lady, groaning, agreed. Harriot did not put the dog in any clinic, but brought it to his home. A pack of dogs wandered and fed in the yard, and so the doctor put this fat dog in the middle of the pack and left. They run around, jump, fight for a bowl among themselves, play. The dog lay down for a day, on the second day he began to show interest, on the third he tried to poke his head into the bowl, of course, they didn’t let him in, they immediately kicked his withers. A week later, in the fight for this bowl, in games with dogs, he again became a healthy, happy dog.

Just like this dog, we sometimes need to change our way of thinking. A person whines, mopes: “I feel bad ...” And then he finds himself in such conditions where he has to move. And then a person sees what was superficial and what was true. There are cases when it is simply enough for a person to lose the opportunity to go to church often - he left somewhere and that’s all - and he already considers it a blessing to attend a service, travels 200 km to stand in the church for at least half an hour.

A person who has eaten too many cakes sometimes finds it useful to compete for a crust of bread or for some simple, healthy food. There are normal everyday life, normal healthy food that we eat three times a day, the work that we do every day, the normal rhythm of life - and this is good, you can also enjoy it. Chesterton, a singer of everyday Christian life, wrote about this in his essay “The Shining of Gray”.

The Church is what it was, it is, and we ascend from step to step, constantly changing, growing. And our understanding of the Church, our church experience, our church feelings, are also changing and growing with us.

– Perhaps the role of the priest, pastor in the leadership of "growing" Christians is important?

– Important, yes. But here are my thoughts... It is easy to get carried away with the word "leadership", because it is very difficult to really grow to become a real leader. Being a leader means being a father. But being a father is different. There is a father whose wife has just given birth, and he is already drunk under the window with a bottle of champagne and shouts, rejoices. He already feels like a father, already in a circle of friends with whom he sits and celebrates, gives advice like a father, proud to the point of impossibility. But really, what kind of father is he? He hasn't even held a baby yet. And there is a father who really lived a long life with children, they grew up, he raised them and he himself changed in many ways next to them.

Someone thinks that since I was ordained a priest, put on a cross, it means that now I am immediately a spirit-bearing elder. It is very difficult to refrain from the role of a leader... And vice versa, I know priests who even suffered from their flock, because they did not want to be leaders, they tried to teach their parishioners about freedom and responsibility. Not everyone likes it - you better carry me in your arms, tell me what to do.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, for example, was not fond of talking during confession. It is one thing to name sins, to be able to isolate them, to try to get rid of them, but to start psychotherapeutic conversations every time is a completely different matter. As someone wisely pointed out, such conversations differ from confession in that they begin with the words "situation" or "problem."

Of course, there are leadership problems, but they are not global and not total. If a person really needs something, then the Lord always sends him. Here two people come, one for some reason gets what he is looking for, and the other does not. What's the matter here? Maybe one got a bad leader? One met a good father, and the other met an evil father?

Maybe so. But I know people who met just golden priests, they really fell into an atmosphere of holiness, but nothing changed in their lives. Holiness is like grace, like oil. Pick up a stone from the street, water it with oil, but it will not be saturated.

And others, on the contrary, came across inexperienced or unscrupulous priests, and despite this, they did not let go of the Gospel and tried not only to quote it or memorize it, but to live by it. These are people with a sober view of life, with an understanding that a lot of sin is poured into the grace around us, as the Monk Nilus of Sinai said: “That is why those who fell fell, because they did not understand how both smoke and grace abide in one heart.”

And if this problem of leadership arises - poor leadership, lack of leadership, or, conversely, hypertrophied leadership: “Now I will marry you to this or that. Where did you go? For fitness? Did you take the blessing? - then one person, realizing that something does not suit him, begins to look for where to go further, higher, and the other is disappointed and gives up.

But what pleases me most of all is that even when a person gives up, despairs and leaves the Church, this is not yet a final diagnosis - life is all ahead. As in Dostoevsky, a man lay down on the road and said: “I don’t want to go to the Kingdom of Heaven.” I lay down for a thousand years, got up and went, I got tired of lying down, after all, life is eternal. The fact that life is eternal is very pleasing, because everything that is truly vital and from life will stand and will live, and all nonsense will dry up and fall off, including disappointment with this improper church leadership.

– But are we all called to holiness? Or, after all, the stone will not be saturated with oil?

– Holiness is not an order or some kind of maxim that God requires of us, they say, whether you like it or not, but be a saint. This is not a school lesson in physical education: even though you are the most frail nerd and bespectacled, you must jump over the goat, because everyone must jump over the goat. Of course not.

Holiness is the genes of God that are in us. In some they are more developed, in others not yet very much, but they are there. That is, we were born, and we already have them, they work. Therefore, it is natural for a person to respond to the voice of Christ, it is natural for him to be with Him, this is a normal state. Another thing is that sometimes the path to Christ is complicated by something, and some things in the Church can repel one from the search for holiness. But holiness is given to all of us, it is a natural human condition.

This state is severely disturbed - something that we cannot even realize and understand happened at the moment of the fall. The Fall is an ambiguous phenomenon. The man quarreled with his father, slammed the door - there was a gap. But there is also a blessing in this gap - a small child became a teenager, he began his own path, and then God followed him to also become a man and be with him.

Of course, the Fall has so much distorted the natural state of a person, so much distorted the genes of holiness in him, that it is very difficult for a person not even to achieve again, but simply to understand that he needs to become himself, to become a man. But for the union of man and God, nothing is impossible.

– And if a person has come to such an indifferent state, to the state of the "dark night of God-forsakenness", should he still continue to try to live in this night, to seek God?

– The word "should" does not fit here. It is impossible to force a person, but you can somehow make him understand that if he wants to survive, he must take certain actions. Not because someone forces, but because that is the nature of things. Fortunately, human beings have organs of understanding. In order to save a person, we must believe that there is something in him for which God gave His life. And a person is able to understand you, is able to accept the best, sooner or later to hear you.

I know wonderful people who have been clinically depressed for years. The doctors advise them one thing, the priest another, nothing helps, and the person suffers, but in spite of everything he tries to somehow hold on. What keeps him afloat? Those same genes of God, which we have already commemorated here.

And the same is true in the church life. A person sometimes understands that simply surrendering to some kind of rhythm is saving. But even then, somewhere inside, in the depths of the soul, there must be an understanding that this is being done for the sake of a living meeting with Christ. Should I go or not go to communion? Prepared, not prepared, I want to, I don’t want to, why force myself? But in the depths of your soul you feel that if you don’t force yourself even a little, then there will be complete disintegration.

Maybe there is no need to show violence at all - for example, he planted tomatoes in a garden and let them grow, why would they need to tear off their stepchildren, water them, and so on? As a result, we will grow an unprecedented miniature baobab, and we will not wait for tomatoes. Because education is a limitation.

Another thing is “to the doctor, heal yourself” - if you dare to educate someone, you must start with yourself. Good teachers and good parents always start with themselves. Children are very good at reading lies. As you are, so will your children be.

In short, human life is a mystery. We understand a lot in this life, every now and then we try to deduce various laws, theories, formulas - how to avoid a mechanical attitude to church life, how to avoid this and that. But at the right moment, everything flies out of my head.

And yet life lives on. This is the most amazing thing. It would seem that neither from our fallen world, nor from its determinism, nor from anything does it follow that life should continue. Where does a person who has fallen into the abyss of worldly troubles and despair suddenly get hope? Why is spring coming again when, judging by what we've done to the planet, it shouldn't have come? How does a sick baby born to an alcoholic parent turn out to be the famous composer Beethoven? Life lives, it is a real miracle.

The evidence for the resurrection of Christ is all around us. And people who have suffered illness or suffering, who have looked at life from the other side, from the hellish side, are well aware of them. They understand that they didn’t notice anything before - routine, the wheel is rolling, burnout, and now they look: life is beautiful, full of miracles, light and life.

Actually, this is what happened with the saints - how much suffering and injustice they endured, until they realized that life is a miracle. And there is no getting used to a miracle, and there is no burnout from it.