Why preaching sounds false today, will a culture of discussions appear in the Church, why one should not be afraid of passion and enthusiasm, and how to use them to get to know oneself – says Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko).
I will listen to your nonsense if you have a gray beard
– Why are we afraid to be ordinary people with normal human manifestations, but are looking for some spiritual meanings in everything?
– It's easier to deal with everything. The fact is that our spiritual literature sometimes plays a bad joke on us. After all, these are all texts written by monks and for monks. And the monks of antiquity and the Middle Ages wrote those books that reflected their spiritual exercises: their level and the church, monastic context in which they lived. This is not always suitable not only for the laity, but even for the monks of our time, because quite often we have no idea what kind of spiritual exercises they were.
Here John of the Ladder writes about humility. We read with delight and rapture, but we bring our own meaning to this concept, maybe even erroneous, incorrect, dangerous. And then complaints: Lestvichnik entered depression. The ladder has nothing to do with it. He wrote his book with specific people, his contemporaries - Sinai monks. He could not even imagine that his book would be read by the laity, especially women with children in their arms or even secular priests. We do not take into account such obvious things and therefore we torture ourselves.
Archimandrite Savva Mazhuko. Photo: Facebook
And here is a huge field of work for modern publicists and theologians: to speak in normal modern Russian those experiences that make up the very essence of Christian life. If you like, this is the work of a translator from the medieval church into modern language. And in this effort, we ourselves find an adequate language for talking about these subtle topics. A modern Christian publicist should allow himself this noble service - to create the language of the gospel, understandable to the contemporary.
What I am writing about is an attempt to show that spiritual things can be spoken about in modern language. And I want to wake up the authors, who would also experiment with the language, churching the modern language. And you don't have to be afraid of this.
Speaking of language, I do not mean only literature, spoken or written speech. It is also the language of gestures, the style of communication, acceptable forms of relationships between Christians, no matter what hierarchical levels they occupy. This search is vital for us, because due to adherence to the old forms, we lose the eternally young content. We are stealing from ourselves!
How is a sermon said in an ordinary church? With those words and intonations that normal people do not say: “So let us follow the feat of the martyrs Galaktion and Epistimius, leave everything and give thanks ...” - we don’t talk like that! Today it sounds very fake! And if the intonation is false, then the content of this speech, no matter how beautiful and truthful it may be, will cause rejection in a person with a subtle instinct, because people do not tolerate lies!
Especially young people are sensitive to this. They see a strangely dressed man on the pulpit, who speaks pretentious nonsense. And they don't believe. And so they perceive the priest - like a cardboard fool.
Unfortunately, this is so. But we get attached to these forms, and this very often leads to a kind of “spiritual schizophrenia”, when you are alone here, but at home you are different. Or to the manipulations associated with the same forms: I will listen to you if you have a long gray beard, no matter what nonsense you are talking about.
There is a YouTube channel “Raising children. Orthodox view. 50,000 views - something unheard of for a religious program! Some kind of barmaley, who has ordained himself, is sitting in a schism's hat, against the background of icons, and carries such a blizzard that a minute is enough to just faint. 50,000 views! But he has a "trademark": a long gray beard, he speaks mysteriously, he is a schemer - that is, this is a promoted brand that touches the sensitive heart of the consumer.
I had a case recently. On the street a woman came up to me in the courtyard of the monastery: "Father, I have a question ..." - and then our father Pavel walks by, and he has a gray beard. And she says, “Oh, sorry! I'll ask my father!" - and immediately switched to the "real father." The scammers and imposters are very clear about the weight of these branded markers and just by exploiting these molds they are driving people crazy. And this is wrong.
How can we in the Church stop lying to ourselves and learn to talk about problems
– You begin your book The Orange Saints with a question about death, why?
– Thinking about death is a spiritual exercise, so it is natural for any believer to practice it regularly. This is fine. And to treat death correctly, and to cultivate the right attitude is also normal.
Death is to be feared. And there is no need to beat ourselves in the chest and say that since Christ has risen, it means that now we are not afraid to die. Scary.
I, too, must walk this narrow path. And Christ prayed with bloody tears that this Cup would pass by - not only crucifixion, but also death. It's very scary. You need to be ready for this. But if so many good people died - and it's not a sin for me.
The fact is that the theme of death is banished from our modern discourse very intensively. I watch, for example, a Hollywood movie, and if someone died in the movie, there will rarely be a coffin in the house. This almost never happens, it is not shown, everyone is constantly hushing up this topic, hiding: “You don’t need to think about it.”
Why not? These are absolutely natural things. My mother is a very simple person. She and I once came to the funeral of a great-uncle. Come in: "Oh! Uncle got better today! She went up to the coffin, straightened the pillow, moved her head, whisk: "Oh, today it looks fresh, it looks more fun." Now that's a healthy attitude! She is seriously collecting flowers dried from the cross into a pillow - it is necessary that there be a mortal pillow in order to put it in a coffin. This is completely normal.
And these are the patterns that teach us without words. Therefore, it is very useful for a person “spoiled” by higher education to spy on how simple people live, who, as experience shows, have more wisdom and courage than we who read Kafka and Hegel. But they haven’t read anything like that and think that Kafka is a kind of stomach disease.
– Were you not afraid to scare the reader away with the theme of death?
– If I scared away, then this is not my reader. I have my own audience. I do not claim to be universal. There are people who read. Are they interested, do they agree? Wonderful! Now there are a lot of authors, and I'm only glad about it. Priests, bishops, laity write; each has its own intonation, its own language, its own theme - and, therefore, its own audience. And we, different authors, need each other. We complement each other.
Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko). Photo: Efim Erichman
I am very glad that many priests are now writing. I remember the time when we only knew Kuraev, Osipov - that's all, and if some priest wrote on some topic, it means that I no longer need to write on this topic. I am for diversity. It is necessary that there be more Christian authors - interesting, lively and different, and that there be more discussions.
In the Church, we are just beginning to develop a style of talking about our problems. We have not yet learned to talk about our problems. This is a new undiscovered genre. True, we have mastered the “dialect of triumph” well: we have celebrations, we have achievements, holidays, saints and memorial plaques. This is beautiful and necessary, who argues? But there are problems, and only our opponents talk about problems, that is, we allowed them to do what we ourselves do not want to do. Don't want to or can't? But then you don't have to be offended by your critics.
And the way out is to stop lying to yourself and learn to talk about problems without anathemas and without praises, that is, without extremes - honestly, calmly, openly, with respect for the opponent. Until we can do it. But we must come to this - this is a matter of survival, because the degree of lies within the church has already reached a critical point.
We lie to ourselves a lot - it's dangerous. The church must regain its monopoly on the discussion and solution of its internal problems. It takes courage, creativity and, if you like, political will.
We need to discuss our problems with such honesty and high culture, so that our critics outside do not have any work to do, so that their external criticism simply pales and bashfully hides in comparison with our discussions.
- What are we lying about?
– There is a topic that touches me to the core - this is the crisis of monasticism. In the "dialect of triumph" we are used to broadcasting that monasticism is being revived in our country. But there is no revival, monasticism is in the most difficult condition. To be completely honest, there is no monasticism, or rather, it is barely glimmering, barely surviving. And something needs to be done about it, otherwise we will simply destroy it - it will disappear completely.
And there is a practical solution here. I once spoke about this at one of our Belarusian monastic conferences, and after that I was no longer invited. The output is quite simple, canonical.
Only stavropegic monasteries flourish in our country. It seems to me that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. We know about the order system among Catholics, but this system is not alien to Eastern monasticism, because in the Orthodox East in the Middle Ages each monastery was a separate order. Each monastery had its charter and fasting, and worship, and he lived in the interests of his brotherhood - he was not supposed to serve the diocese, he was not supposed to forge personnel for the episcopate, collect money for the construction of some churches, that is, the community lived its own life.
But in our time, all our monasteries canonically belong to diocesan bishops, and this is precisely what hinders the normal development of monastic communities. Because bishops are replaced, there is no unity of diocesan policy, and the bishop, being canonically in the legal field, is the master of the monastery, that is, he controls the finances and human resources of the community. He says: “Here, there is no one to serve in such and such a parish, father. You will go there to serve.
The well-being of individual monasteries rests not on a canonical structure, but on personal qualities, the decency of a particular bishop. Now he favors, but he died - another person came to his place and wanted to introduce such a charter in your monastery, or wanted to change the abbot, who inspires the entire brotherhood. And no one can do anything because the bishop is right. By definition, he is right; he has both canon law and our internal church morality on his side.
This is just one of the problems. There are problems related to the training of the clergy (I speak as a priest), and many, many other things. There are a lot of such questions. These problems are not critical - you can talk about them calmly, there is no need to blame anyone for anything.
After my speech, one of our Belarusian bishops said: “Again you are scolding us, Father Savva?” and accused me of being an enemy of the episcopate. I am no enemy. It's just that our church community has developed a habit of dividing the world into black and white. If you criticize, it means that you are an enemy of the Church and an unreliable person. But life is nuanced. Where will this spiritual color blindness lead us?
The most actual task– church-wide efforts to foster a culture of discussions with respect for the opponent. This culture does not yet exist. We are in search. But we are not going anywhere - we will come to this anyway. Sooner or later we will have to monopolize our problems. And now they are at the mercy of people hostile to the Church.
If some kind of misfortune suddenly happened, if the episode was somehow indecent, not good in our church environment, the Church should be the first to speak about this, and not Nevzorov or other critics. It is we who should be the first to talk about this - to take away their monopoly on our problems. And that requires honesty.
– And yet, despite all these problems, what inspires you in monasticism?
– I'm not sure if I'm inspired. I do not consider my monasticism some kind of feat. The day I decided to become a monk (I was about 14 years old), I just realized that this is the lifestyle that suits me the most. That's all. And I still feel comfortable with it.
I like living in a monastery. We have a very unique and fun community. It is small, but it suits me - I do not want to change anything. I like to live the way I live, and the rhythm of monastic life that we have. I'm just used to it and I don't know if it inspires me. I don't know - I just live and I like it. I take this very simply.
Photo: St. Nicholas monastery Gomel / Facebook
Our relationship with God is a way to fight
You write a lot and give a lot of talks. Are there any topics you don't like or don't want to talk about?
– Breast-feeding. That's what doesn't inspire me. Once I was asked to write a review for the Pravmir website about breastfeeding. And I, of course, took advantage of this opportunity, because for a monk who has lived in a monastery for twenty-three years, there must be some way out of his many years of experience in this area.
Of course, I am sometimes saddened by that nonsense that claims to pass itself off as an Orthodox spiritual life. It's sad, of course, but I take it with humor. As for the topics… The fact is that I am an irrational person, so I live just now. Most of the time I go out to the audience not knowing what I'm going to say. And the moment I see people's faces, something happens and I say what is being said; I just let it speak through me. Therefore, the topics are unexpected, and I myself am interested to hear what I have to say.
And now my favorite topic is this one, for example, in a day it will be completely different. Everything is changing. I just live, and I really like to live. And I usually talk about those things that excite me in this moment. I read a poem by Ezra Pound quite recently - it excited me, it does not get out of my head. In a week, maybe some other text or another meeting will stir, or some movie.
Just yesterday I was talking about the theological meaning of the film "Suicide Squad" with Jared Leto and I myself was surprised that I suddenly started talking about this film. And I think: “Oh, this is even interesting. Should I write it down, maybe?
We must live now, and I allow myself to do it. And when I communicate with people, I just live at this moment - that’s all, and I don’t set myself any super-task. I don't claim anything. I'm not some graduate theologian, or youth leader, or whatever. I just live and that's it. For some reason, people decided that they can listen to me - okay, fine. If they give you chocolate for it, even better.
– What should a monk do if he is an open, sociable person, loves young people, everything is modern, alternative. And he, for example, is “knocked on the head” for this - they say, calm down. Do you have such a contradiction?
– We again return to the fact that there is no monk at all, there is no person at all. People are always very unique. They are original: this style is suitable for someone - for someone it will be disastrous.
I like being an adult. I am 42 years old now, and I wake up every morning with gratitude: Lord, thank you for being an adult. And you don’t need to charm anyone, you don’t need to somehow occupy your niche, fight for something, prove something to someone.
I just live and, thank God, even earned some authority. But up to a certain age, I had very difficult situations, because neither our late bishop nor our late rector shared my style, and it was very hard for me, painfully hard, and this lasted for years. I even wonder how I survived in this situation at all, because I could not do anything with myself.
How much they shamed me, denounced me ... Our bishop went out to preach, and everyone habitually looked at each other, because the topic was known: "The All-Church Struggle with the Pride of Father Savva."
I'm a proud person, but I've come to terms with it. What can you do here?
But I perfectly understand why they treated it this way, I have no resentment. I understand them - they were old school people, and I'm not a gift. But, thank God, everything passed, and I am grateful to them even for the lessons they gave me.
Once again I say that this is the correct attitude - before you condemn, you need to justify. That is, if people do not understand you, they probably have some reason to believe so. But you, too, will one day be 50, 60 years old, and you will puzzle over whether it is possible to understand this youth at all ... I can already afford my own judgment, I can afford to disagree with someone, and that's great. I sincerely do not understand adults who hide their age, or try to somehow look younger, or envy children. Being an adult is great!
Photo: St. Nicholas Monastery in Gomel / Facebook
- And how to separate the situations in which you need to defend your opinion, and where, for example, you just need to obey the elder, accept the situation?
– I proceed from the fact that all life is a battle. The process of learning is a process of battle. You discover Hegel - that means you challenge him, and most likely you will lose; this is normal. The relationship between adults and children is a constant battle. Friendship is a struggle. Love is a battle. And that's completely normal. This is how the world works.
Our relationship with God is an exit to a duel, it is no coincidence that one of the deepest plots of the book of Genesis touches so much - Jacob, who fought with Someone by the river, Israel the God-fighter. But this is not a fight against hatred, but a healthy passion, like children fighting or a folder with a son. This is a healthy opportunity to feel your boundaries, to know "your shores."
Therefore, it is quite natural that someone resists your style. This is good! It's good that it resists - you have the opportunity to hone your skills, the opportunity to substantiate it, to love it even more, to feel even more that it is mine, and not someone else's, because if it is not yours, it will fall off in the process of this discussion, in the process battles, battles. But it's important, it's okay. Treat it with healthy passion. Here you are now printed - excellent! means alive!
Recently, my “Pravmir” has been published on Pravmir, and this year this is some kind of unheard-of criticism that I have not encountered before. I was constantly accused: either I am a Jewish Catholic, or I am an ecumenist, or a Renovationist, or something else, a continuous stream. And at first I was puzzled, and then I even liked it, because it reveals some interesting facets, including introducing me to myself.
Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko). Photo: Mikhail Tereshchenko
- Do they actually criticize?
“I rarely face criticism. It's a pity. I would like to be criticized on the merits, because I myself re-read my texts and see ten claims at once, or even more, which could be promoted and presented to me, but for some reason no one notices them. Maybe those smart people consider it below their dignity to read such texts, and criticize mostly some nonsense, for example: “Well, how is he quoting Nietzsche, and not the holy fathers? What is it? Where is his confessor looking?
- one can tricky question in the end? What to do if you fell in love?
– How? It's even useful, I think. I devoted a whole book to this, it is called “Love and Emptiness”. It was written as a series of essays, brought together by the very attempt to make sense of such an experience. In general, it is useful to get involved. This is a useful experience. Any passion and dedication should please, even if they are dangerous. Passion makes you feel alive and introduces you to yourself.
However, we must not forget that any hobby carries its own threats. Passion is dangerous, like all living things. But without danger, without risk, it is impossible to get to know yourself. Therefore, of course, sane people understand that any addictions, hobbies are fraught with danger. No need to look for these risks, no need to provoke passion, but if this happened, do not become discouraged, treat her as a worthy opponent.
But in my experience, I was convinced that falling in love is useful. You get to know yourself better. Break up with illusions. If you come out of this battle unbroken, you will become much wiser. There is simply no other way to wisdom.
And we are actually looking for it, wisdom. And especially from monks, from priests, this is exactly what is expected - so that at the end of our path we could present some kind of experience of wisdom.
Young people intuitively seek wisdom from older people, but they only hear talk about raising pensions. Where does wisdom come from if you were sitting quietly in the greenhouse and no hostile whirlwinds ruffled you? This is exactly what John of the Ladder writes about - that "it is good for that person who, having gone through all the pits and swamps, managed to become a real teacher for another."
Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko). Photo: Efim Erichman
– Can a feeling in monasticism be real, or is it unacceptable?
- Goethe fell in love, being an elderly man, with a young girl. And Tyutchev, the smartest man, diplomat and public figure, ran across the road from his own wife to a schoolgirl. It struck him quite suddenly. But, on the other hand, there may be such relationships as N.G. Chernyshevsky with his wife, who cheated on him, and he loved her wholeheartedly and justified her until the end of his life. I mean, it's all very personal. It happened to you or it didn't happen to you. I know people who have never been in love in their lives.
Love is not a program you run. She overtook you and sealed you. And you fell in love. These are things you can't predict.
Nun Joanna (Pankova)
(7 votes : 4 out of 5 )Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko)
The closed garden is my sister, the bride,
imprisoned well, sealed source.()
Gloomy autumn evening. Brest railway station. In a secluded corner, “all in suitcases,” a young monk sits and timidly sorts out a rosary. A man walks past with a bored look. Monk noted:
What's up, virgin?
Usually, when I tell this, everyone laughs or, at worst, smiles. Funny. Laughter is always born where there is a subtle and delicate situation. Everything related to gender is always delicate, so as long as people are alive, the lion's share of humor will fall on "sex" jokes. Or in another way: laughter can be considered as a psychic defense mechanism - where a person is too vulnerable, that is, in the sphere of sex, laughter is the last defense, and this must be accepted as a fact that needs to be understood.
The feat of virginity - when smart and healthy people take on the cross to keep themselves clean not for some time, but all their lives, and bear this work defiantly openly is a delicate situation. When there are young people who, contrary to fashion and even the opinion of adults, keep themselves clean before marriage, and live in marriage defiantly honestly and cleanly - this is also a delicate situation, which means that it has the risk of being ridiculed.
In our time, the conversation about virginity, oddly enough, is a serious conversation about the funny, and nothing can be done about it: the very word virginity for most of us lives exclusively in an ironic context. A foolish word. And this is true not only for secular vocabulary. Can we imagine that the Patriarch would send a message to the virgins? It is clear that for our time this is absolutely impossible - they will not understand their own, others will mock. But in the ancient Church such messages were business as usual, and almost every saint of those times has such texts. It’s just that the word itself is so overgrown with ambiguities that I won’t be surprised if very soon they will be ashamed to pronounce it in a decent society, if there is one left. The disease of the profanation of the saint, the suspicion of the sacred did not begin today, and as early as the beginning of the 20th century, N. A. Berdyaev bitterly wrote that “love is so distorted, profaned and vulgarized in fallen human life that it has become almost impossible to pronounce the words of love, it is necessary to find new ones. the words" .
Old words cannot be surrendered without a fight, especially since intuitively we all, even non-believers, understand that virginity is a shrine and a miracle of beauty. One of the hymns in honor of the Mother of God begins with the words “angels marvel at the beauty of your virginity.” Virginity is beauty, and it is beauty that conquers us the lives of the holy ascetics and ascetics. No books and articles on the benefits of virginity and chastity are able to infect the beauty of virginity as much as true story a holy virgin or an ascetic shining with purity. We are consoled by these stories, and maybe that feeling of “unspoken silence” (according to the word), which you experience over the pages of lives, is the experience of meeting with the beauty of virginity. “Christ Himself,” writes Hieromartyr Methodius of Patara, “praising those who remain firmly in virginity, says: like a lily between thorns, my beloved is between maidens(), comparing the gift of virginity with a lily in purity, fragrance, pleasantness and beauty. Truly, virginity is a spring flower, tenderly growing on its ever-white leaves, the color of incorruption” (Pir VII 1). Lilies, tenderness, spring, flowering - these are the words the Saint breathes when he speaks of virginity.
But we ask ourselves: is it possible for a healthy young man to keep himself clean? Let's write out the names: Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Newton, Leibniz. This is not an enumeration of the pillars of the philosophy of the new time, these are the names of people who were in a celibate state and at the same time were not noticed in perversions. History remembered them as honest scientists, dedicated to their work, loving philosophy so much that they did not succeed in this love. harass on someone else. All these people grew up in Christian Europe, and the fact that the ability to spend the power of love on spiritual work was a natural skill for them is the merit of Christianity. “Through centuries of educational exercises,” says C. G. Jung, “Christianity has achieved a very significant weakening of the animal instincts-drives characteristic of the epochs of barbarism and antiquity, so that a large number of instinctive energy vitality) was released to build a civilization” . It turns out that our civilization and culture are the fruit of upbringing in chastity. If this is so, then civilization was given to Christians at too high a price, because the lily of virginity is very capricious and requires special care, and when we read in the lives of the deeds of the saints, it is terrible even to think what blood the struggle for purity cost them. “Rushing towards the spirit, the Desert Fathers mortified their flesh to escape the extreme brutality of the decadent Roman culture,” continues C. G. Jung. “Asceticism is a forced sublimation, and it always takes place where the animal instincts are still so strong that they have to be expelled by force.” Here the ancient ascetics carried their heavy cross of feat in the midst of an obstinate and depraved generation(). And of course, if we talk about social benefits, about the role in history - this is wonderful and commendable - but - here is a young man entering life - how both those close and distant will feel sorry for him, how they will dissuade him if they find out that he decided to become a monk! Where does this fear come from among quite church people? Why is virginity scary?
ghost of the waters
Pious Milanese aunts and mothers would not let their daughters go to church if the saint preached there: he spoke of virginity in such a way that the girls left the suitors - the most successful parties - forgot the world, a luxurious life and entered the number of virgins. However, the modern reader is unlikely to be touched by the speeches of St. Ambrose. The remarkable Russian philosopher found the classic text about the virginity of the Hieromartyr Methodius of Patara “The Feast of Ten Virgins” to be incompetent. V. V. Rozanov called the message of the saint to the virgins “a message to the old fly agaric”. Of course, one can say that such texts still need to be learned to read, but in young age, when it is already necessary to decide something with virginity, there is simply no proper skill in reading serious literature, and even when the skill appears, it happens that there is nothing left to store - not all processes are reversible! And at the same time, for most of our contemporaries it is not so obvious that virginity has any value at all. Isn't it ugliness to hold back the natural impulse, the natural, I must say, desire to procreate and to the normal need for bodily joys? Who will assume the power to take away the natural right of man to the joy of the body? And if this joy is natural, then it is precisely the preservation of virginity that is unnatural, it is a perversion, a developmental delay, a disease, an infection on the body of mankind. Did Christ bequeathed the preservation of virginity? Did not the Apostle say: concerning virginity, I have no command of the Lord()? And isn’t all this preaching of abstinence, deployed by monastic Christianity, a crime against humanity, and isn’t it the cause of all sorts of family ailments, misfortunes - isn’t it from this stiffness, tightness, fear of bodily communication? - This is how you can put the question, and this is how V. V. Rozanov put it in his time! Vasily Vasilyevich was tormented by this topic at the beginning of the 20th century and looked forward to getting rid of the dominance of the monastic “seedless” type of holiness for the sake of a different religious ideal - fertility, family, the solar religion of sex. Now beginning of XXI century: the people became liberated, the monasteries were empty, Christianity does not have the same influence, and yet - the birth rate is falling, families are falling apart; without chastity, Europe is dying faster.
True, there is a variant of reconciliation proposed by the famous German virgin I. Kant: to keep chastity - healthy: “chastity(pudicitia) - self-compulsion, concealing passion - nevertheless, as an illusion, it is very useful in order to maintain a certain distance between the one and the other sex, which is necessary in order not to make one sex a mere instrument of pleasure for the other. - In general, everything that is called propriety(decorum), that is exactly what it is, namely, it is nothing more than a beautiful appearance. Chastity is a social virtue, and it appeared at a certain moment in the development of mankind as a necessary condition for the comfortable coexistence of people. But for a Christian reader, it is obvious that this remark captured a change in ideals: the measure in which a person grew was called holiness, that is, organic, existential permeation Divine energies; when Christians looked up to the image of a saint, the virtues were real and alive, and Protestantism and rationalism put a decent, holy man in its place. But they will come up and ask: is it really bad to be a decent person? No, this is a normal and necessary step moral development man, but we are called to more, to better, and how can we name Reverend Seraphim or St. Sergius decent people? Can we call Christ a decent person? They are holy, their faces exude light, light living good and not its imitations. It can be said that Kant is an ethical nominalist: for him, chastity is only a name, but for Christian ascetic writers, ethical realism: chastity is real communion with holiness and true purity. After all, if chastity is only a name, a beautiful appearance, an illusion that has absolutely nothing under it, then the preservation of virginity is only a kind of coquettish game of virtue - why hold on to such a candy wrapper? Then the attitude towards chastity and the holiness of virginity becomes different: “Women, priests and Jews usually do not get drunk, according to at least carefully avoid being shown in this form, since in civil they are weak in respect and they need restraint (and for this, of course, sobriety is needed). Indeed, their outward dignity rests only on faith others in their chastity, piety and separate laws.
Kant, however, clarifies that “even the appearance of goodness in another person should be dear to us, because from this game of pretense, perhaps undeservedly gaining respect, in the end something serious can come out” . Only, after all, illusions do not warm, and the Koenigsberg elder himself said that 100 thalers in my imagination are not yet 100 thalers in my pocket, which is why the image of a chaste person, born of contractual morality, fell apart safely under the blows of psychoanalysis. “What glittered in the 19th century,” wrote Jung, “of course, was not always gold, this applies equally to religion. Freud was a great destroyer, but the advent of the new century provided so many opportunities for breaking that even Nietzsche was not enough for this. Freud still had something unfinished, which he did thoroughly. By awakening a healing mistrust, he indirectly prompted a sharpening of the sense of true values. The dreams of a noble man, which had occupied the minds of the public since they ceased to accept the dogma of original sin, were dispelled to a certain extent under the influence of Freud's ideas.
So, a decent man crumbled, and those who saw in him the limit of human holiness rushed to glue the broken idol and scold the destroyer. Or maybe all this is allowed by Providence, so that people begin to look for true good and the ghost of the waters turned into a lake(cm. )? What is it that we have to learn so important about virginity? First of all, it was not Christians who came up with the idea of appreciating it.
empty world
The pre-Christian world clearly distinguished between natural virginity and mystical virginity. The first is very clear to us: a girl must keep herself until marriage. But why? Historians most often provide an explanation in terms of legal and property relations. The owner, that is, the husband, must be sure that the firstborn, to whom everything will pass, will be his son. Therefore, the bride must be a virgin by definition. Our very ancient word“bride”, which is often deciphered as “unknown”, “unknown”, is a hint to us. When in ancient times a ransom was paid for the bride, it was virginity that was bought, it was bargained for. In one of his wedding songs, Catullus conveys the words of parents reproaching their daughter-bride:
Is your virginity all yours? It also has a share of parents:
The third part from the father, and also the third from the mother,
The third is only part of you! So don't resist two
If rights over you with a dowry were given to your son-in-law.
(Catullus 62, 60-65)
Virginity is being claimed like real estate, and it's tempting to think it all came down to that legal moment. But virginity is also beautiful, and in ancient times they knew how to appreciate beauty no worse than ours. The ever-memorable Catullus, who was never blamed for the excessive chastity of the verses, nevertheless has these lines:
But as soon as the flower withers, trimmed with a thin nail,
He is no longer loved by young men, and he is no longer loved by girls.
The girl is the same: as long as she is not touched, everyone loves her.
But only innocence will lose the color of a defiled body,
She no longer attracts young men, she is not nice to her friends either.
(Catullus 62, 43-45)
Note two points: the pagan poet speaks of the beauty of virginity as an obvious fact, without explaining, as an intelligent person, why virginity is considered beautiful. Second: the body that has lost its virginity is defiled, desecrated, slandered. That is, the beauty of virginity is sacred, sacred. And this is not a legal language, but a religious one. Here natural virginity coincides with mystical virginity, and it seems to me that the observance of virginity before marriage was not so much connected with the requirements of law, but carried in itself a deep intuition of virginity as the storage of the power of love, creative power, which means that the mystical power, which was necessary for the creation of a family and clan, was considered exhaustible, and therefore needed a talisman.
The priestesses of Vesta were virgins. Vesta - the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth, the goddess of the earth, the virgin goddess. Keeping the family and the well-being of the Roman state was entrusted to the virgins. The Vestal Virgins enjoyed deep respect among the Romans, as evidenced by their unusual privileges: wherever the Vestal Virgin went, she was always accompanied by a lictor who cleared the way for her, if she acted as a witness, she was not required to swear an oath if she accidentally met a criminal led to execution, he was left with his life, vestals had the right to be buried within the city. Outwardly, the vestals looked like nuns: they were ordained through tonsure, they wore a special ascetic attire. However, the holiness of the vestal was directly associated with her purity, and for violating the vow of virginity, the priestess could be buried alive in the ground, because the violation of virginity promised misfortune to the Roman Republic. The vestal body was considered sacred, and although the priestesses were allowed to marry after 30 years of service, few of them, as Plutarch wrote, used this right, “and even those who did this did not bring themselves any benefit, the majority spent the rest of their days in repentance and despondency, and they brought such religious horror to others that they preferred virginity to marriage until old age, until death. The nature of Vesta is fire, she, the incorporeal virgin goddess, demanded servants like herself. But is it by chance that the family kept virginity? In Greece, Vesta corresponded to Hestia, the patroness of the hearth. The religion of the Incas knew alcas- “virgins of the sun”, keepers of solar fire - they lived in a special temple, and only they were allowed to sew clothes for the emperor and cook food for him.
A similar connection between virginity and marriage is demonstrated by the cult of Artemis. On the one hand, she is the patroness of childbirth, the guardian of marriage, on the other, the virgin goddess and protector of chastity. Before the wedding, the girls donated a lock of hair to her in honor of Hippolytus, who suffered for his chastity. The hero of Euripides Hippolytus, who preserves his virginity for the sake of Artemis, brings her a wreath from a virgin reserved meadow, which was not touched by a sickle, on which goats were not grazed. Hippolyte lives like a monk: he does not eat "anything that breathes", he studies prophetic books, participates in the mysteries. The religion of Mitra also knew a kind of monasticism, both female and male.
There is another aspect: virginity as a condition for initiation to wisdom and knowledge. The virgin (παρθένος) was the owl-eyed Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the patroness of creativity and the giver of beauty, highly revered in Greece. In the temple of Athena there was a room where clothes for her statue were spun - only girls were entrusted with this work. The famous prophetess of the Kuma Sibyl was a virgin. In ancient India, as soon as a young man entered the age of a disciple and was given up to be raised by a Brahmin, he certainly had to take a vow of chastity, because it was believed that a person who had lost his virginity was already losing the ability to bear knowledge and mature spiritually. The training stopped immediately as soon as they learned about the violation of the vow of chastity. Abstinence from intercourse with wives for the sake of preserving wisdom was taught by Pythagoras and Empedocles.
In any case, the virgin has always been considered the best, because religions that knew human sacrifice, favored untouched young people: the Maya sacrificed beautiful virgins to propitiate the gods of rain; At the end of the year, the Incas buried about 500 virgin boys and girls alive in the ground.
The history of religion knows many examples of the simple magic of virginity. The Germans had soothsaying maidens who looked after springs and prophesied through the water; the heroine of the Nibelungen epic, Brunhild (Brünnhilde), possessed a violent power that was directly associated with her virginity: she loses this power with the loss of her virginity. In Belarus, during the rainless period, it was the girl who went to the well with a jug, threw it there and whispered spells. For many traditions, for example, for Ancient Egypt, it was typical to treat children as prophets: children are pure and blameless, they are closer to heaven and hear his will more clearly. I must say that the magical perception of virginity is the most tenacious of the above intuitions. An insidious villain or a vampire cannot do anything to a virgin and wait, hiding, for a change in her status - this is one of the motives of American horror films. The celibate Jedi Knights in Star Wars are also an example of modern ideas about the magic of virginity. Curiously, all of the true cosmic troubles in this film begin when the main character, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, breaks his vow of chastity.
Here we must stop and make two reservations. First. After all of the above, there is a temptation to think that Christianity actually did not offer anything original, but simply borrowed the already known form of religious life, which was called monasticism. In the postmodern age, it is natural to talk about endless quoting and the death of the author, and the reader along with him, but here, it seems to me, everything is simpler. Kant showed us that our mind works only within 12 categories, and even geniuses cannot break out of this cognitive grid, which we, as it were, throw on the world in the act of cognition and are forced to create within its boundaries, if only because to be understood. And these limits of reason not only do not interfere with originality, but rather help its birth. Religious archetypes are just as universal. Any more or less developed religious tradition will inevitably lead to temple worship, ritual, the institution of the priesthood, monasticism - all these are universal forms that are sometimes completely filled out. different material. Our Christian attitude tells us that this grid religious archetypes is a consequence of a single very ancient primary religion of Eden, from which we all trace our origin, and a Christian can and even should learn husk of the wildest beliefs and rites of presentiment of genuine revelation, fully revealed in Christianity.
Second. The virginity of the heathen world is a different virginity. In that world, magic and unconscious premonitions of the truth about man reigned. The pagan world was drowning in debauchery, and virginity was treated rather magically. The same vestals, according to many ancient historians, allowed themselves to participate in the most disgusting amusements - the main thing is to preserve bodily virginity. he writes with disgust about the galli - the servants of the Great Mother, who castrated themselves in her honor (On the city of God VII 24-25), and pagan authors share this disgust with him. About the great Virgil, Suetonius wrote: “Moderate in food and wine, he had a love for boys<…>Otherwise, he was so pure all his life both in thought and speech that in Naples he was usually called Parthenius (virgin). Comparing pagan virginity with the Christian ideal, it should be noted that only the same name connects these phenomena.
Mentioning Virgil, one cannot but emphasize the fact that shortly before the birth of Christ, the word “virginity” began to be applied to men. After all, virginity is an exclusively feminine property and virtue, and here Virgil is called a virgin, in the novel by Achilles Tatius (II century) “Leucippe and Cleitophon”, the protagonist repeatedly calls himself a virgin, proving his loyalty to his beloved (V 20; VI 16; VIII 5) , constantly making a reservation: “I have retained my virginity so far, if such a concept is appropriate in relation to a man.” All this was unusual because the four classical virtues ancient world- prudence, justice, courage and moderation - were exclusively male virtues, at least the first three were inaccessible to a woman, she seemed to fall out of ethics, and she was left with only moderation, which was often identified with chastity. And here is such a strange exchange of virtues. And already among Christians, who considered a woman to be in the same image of God as a man, capable of acquiring grace-filled gifts and deification, virgins were not ashamed to bear the name of female origin.
However, our review will be incomplete without reference to the Old Testament church. There are both universal and specific moments here. Every time God came out to meet people, or people approached the shrine, a demand appeared: don't touch women(; cf.). Proximity to God demanded from a person a special holiness, a special state. This moment is universal. Among the Jews there were people who kept this state for a long time, and sometimes all their lives, and in the 6th chapter of the book of Leviticus the rules of the Nazarite vow are described. But these were still temporary vows, which is explained by the special value of the family and clan. The Jews were waiting for the birth of the Messiah, it could be any newborn boy, and any girl could become his mother. The seven deadly sins for a Jew begin like this: a man who has no wife or has a wife but no children. Such - kill their people and violate the first mitzvah - "be fruitful and multiply." Therefore, every Jew, upon reaching the age of 18, was obliged to enter into marriage. Blessed Jerome very accurately explains such an arrangement of value priorities: “Then the world was empty and, with the exception of the types, all the blessing was in children.” And although Blessed Jerome points to the figures of virgins that occasionally appeared in the Old Testament (Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Daniel), the rooting and understanding of this state became possible only after the appearance of the Primate Christ.
Virgin Logos
St. Chrysostom begins his “Book on Virginity” with the words “The Jews despise the beauty of virginity, and this is not at all surprising if they did not honor Christ Himself, who was born of the Virgin.” However, in fairness, it must be said that in philosophical and theological use the word virginity It was the Jew who introduced it - the Platonist Philo of Alexandria (I century). Continuing the philosophy of Plato's eros and trying to combine it with the biblical Revelation, Philo taught about heavenly eros as the source of all virtue. Eros is the desire and love for virtue; The eros of knowledge, as a gift from God, is the force that impels one to knowledge. “Communication between God and man at the highest levels is designated by Philo by the name of virgin charisma, a gift (τ¾ν παρθένον χάριτα), writes I. I. Adamov, “here we mean the stage of the closest communion with God, when nothing remains between God and the soul average." The attentive and grateful reader of Philo, the saint, already spoke of the Virgin Logos (παρθενικός λόγος), whom he identified with the face of the Savior. “The soul enjoys joy and gladness when it has the virgin Logos παρθενικός λόγος, because Christ suffered and was crucified for it, Who is the παρθενικός λόγος the virgin Logos. The possession of this Logos also obviously takes place on the highest levels, because it is characterized by joy, and the deprivation of the Logos is accompanied by sorrow and repentance: the soul, in which the word of God, or παρθενικός λόγος, has died because of its intemperance, falls into pity.
It even looks somehow unusual - “virgin logos”: “logos” is an extremely spiritual term, purified from any admixture of the bodily, and “virginity” is a term taken from the field of physiology, denoting, of course, special purity and holiness, but - the sanctity of the body, - the very combination of “holiness of the body” for the ancient philosopher was the same oxymoron as “fiery snow”. Plotinus, I remember, was generally ashamed that he had a body. But - The word became flesh() - which means that it not only sanctified corporeality, but also justified the body, showed that holiness is a normal and only natural state for the body. Therefore, only in Christianity it became possible to speak of the true holiness of a person who does not need to get rid of the body in order to achieve deification, and virginity became synonymous with the perfection of a justified and deified person. Therefore, as Holy Martyr Methodius of Patara wrote, “The high priest, the first prophet, and the first angel should also be called the primate. In ancient times, man was not yet perfect and therefore was not yet able to accommodate perfection - virginity. He, who was made in the image of God, still needed to be in the likeness of God.<…>For this He, being God, deigned to put on human flesh, so that we, looking as if in a picture at His Divine way of life, could imitate the one who drew it” (Pir I 4). The mystery of virginity, only foreshadowed in the pre-Christian world, was revealed in the God-Man, when Christ was born of a Virgin and chose the lifestyle of a virgin. Hieromartyr Methodius compares the Savior to the Artist, who has drawn for people the image of a virgin life. The fullness of communion with God, bestowed in Christ, that closeness to God that we received in Him, requires a special, extraordinary holiness from a person, and if the Lord, appearing to Israel at Sinai through the images of fire, smoke, an earthquake, that is, indirectly, commanded people to refrain from carnal fellowship, then what kind of holiness does the gift of being one-blooded and one-bodied to Christ require of us? People quickly get used to everything and easily lose the ability to be surprised, but if you think about a rather simple and obvious fact for everyone: in the city of Polotsk, the relics of St. Euphrosyne are revered - that is, the body (!) of a dead (!) woman (!). For the world of antiquity, this is madness! For the Jews - a temptation, but for us, called - God's Power and God's Wisdom(cf.).
The classic text on virginity is Mt 19:11-12: not everyone can accommodate this word, but to whom it is given, for there are eunuchs who were born in this way from the womb of their mother; and there are eunuchs who are castrated out of men; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Who can accommodate, yes accommodate. Here virgins are called eunuchs not literally, but figuratively. Their flocking makes sense only for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. But the Lord notes that only those to whom it is given are able to bear this feat. “But if it depends on the will,” Chrysostom reflects, “then someone will ask: why did he first say: not all contain, but they are given to eat? In order for you, on the one hand, to know how great a feat is, on the other hand, you do not consider it necessary for yourself. Given to those who want." In the 7th chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul also notes that regarding virginity he does not have the commandment of the Lord, but gives advice as one who has received from the Lord the grace to be faithful to Him(). First of all, we note that virginity is not a command of God, but advice; the feat of virginity is not a path for everyone. “Why then does the Apostle not have the command of the Lord concerning virginity? - Blessed Jerome asks, - because what is brought without compulsion deserves a great reward. Another point: virginity is the grace to be faithful to God. Loyalty to God in virginity means complete surrender to God, and therefore virginity is higher than marriage: an unmarried woman cares about the Lord, how to please the Lord, in order to be holy both in body and spirit; but a married woman takes care of the things of the world, how to please her husband(). In other words, virginity is a special charismatic service, a special mission. And so the Apostle Paul sees this mission in the double testimony of virginity: the testimony of the Cross and the Resurrection, so that the holy ascetics of chastity are called reverend - they are likened in their purity to the Primate Christ, testifying with their life and holiness to the reality of the life of the next century even in this life.
God paints white
The feat of virginity is in the testimony of the Cross and the Resurrection. It sounds nice, but - the phrase is rather vague. Firstly, how correct is such a union of words - “the feat of virginity”: after all, a feat is something active, dynamic, energetic, and virginity is a rather passive, protective state? In addition, virginity is a state inherent in a person from birth, you don’t need to look for it, you don’t need to fight for it, it is given, you just need to protect it, hence - doesn’t the whole feat come down only to performing the function of a watchman, to guarding one’s innocence?
This is a common mistake - to see in virginity and in general in a chaste life only asceticism, that is, negative passive protective spiritual labor or suppression of passionate impulses. Moreover, it is generally accepted that such suppression leads to neuroses, and this is indeed a fact that cannot be brushed aside. However, if we turn to the texts of ascetic writers, we will see that the core of the feat of virginity is not simple abstinence and self-restraint, without which it is, of course, impossible, but they only formalize this work, make it possible. “Chastity,” writes the monk, “is preserved not by the aid of austerity (abstinence), as you think, but by love for it and pleasure from one’s own purity.” The soul must “turn all the power of love from carnal objects to the contemplation of intellectual and immaterial beauty,” says St. Gregory. “The perfect soul is that one,” the monk teaches, “which passionate power is all completely directed towards God.”
This truth is universal; sometimes it is called the principle of sublimation, that is, the reorientation of the power of love, eros to the Source of love, beauty and holiness. Even Plato argued that lust is curbed not only by laws, that is, by restriction and suppression, but by better desires (State IX 571 b), and his entire dialogue “Feast” is dedicated to educating eros in love for truly beautiful for the sake of real communion with it. And the insights of the Fathers are not just borrowings from their predecessors, but a universal human intuition, naturally inherent in every person as a bearer of the image of God. We will find motives for the education of eros both in Indian mysticism and in the teachings of the Sufis. The difference between the Christian worldview lies in the fact that we know that the truly beautiful, in love for which a person grows, is not a faceless, albeit powerful force, as was the case with Plato or the Hindus, but God the Humanitarian, who loved me and gave himself up for me(cm. ). The principle of education of eros is simply and accessiblely formulated by the Apostle Paul: walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh() - it is important not only to curb and suppress lust, but also to live, that is, to actively act and create oneself in the spirit. If there is no work to educate eros, but only suppression and limitation, then the disease really begins, then the very state of neurosis, which is persistently sought omniscient and ubiquitous psychologists.
A virgin ascetic is not just a fearful watchman, but a person who lives life in its true fullness, for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind(). “Virtue,” explains Chesterton, “is not the absence of vice or an escape from moral dangers; it is alive and unique, like pain or a strong smell. Mercy is not about not taking revenge or punishing, it is concrete and bright, like the sun; you either know it or you don't. Chastity is not abstinence from debauchery; it blazes like Joan of Arc. God paints with different colors, but His drawing is especially bright (I would say especially bold) when He paints with white.
Thus, the feat of virginity has two sides - negative and positive - abstinence and cultivation of the power of love - and must certainly pass along these two lines, at the intersection of which, as on a cross, the ascetic carries out his work. The path of virginity is the path of self-mortification and crucifixion. “The intervention of death is necessary,” writes H. Yannaras, “in order to so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life(). It is this death that the monks voluntarily venture upon. They refuse marriage - the natural path of self-denial and love - and strive to hypostasize eros and flesh in the image of the Kingdom of God. Their goal is to acquire hypostatic existence through obedience and austerity performed in the renunciation of nature. Then the only source of existence and life becomes a love call addressed to man by God.
Prisoners of love
Hieromartyr Methodius writes that virgins should be counted among the martyrs, because they endure bodily hardships “not just any short time, but suffering all my life and not being afraid to strive for a truly Olympian feat of virginity. In the stichera to the holy martyrs (Oktoih at the verse on Wednesday evening, tone 5) is sung: “ Insatiable love of the soul(emphasis mine - and. FROM.) Christ did not reject, holy martyrs…”. Virgins choose the path of abstinence because of the insatiable thirst for God, which in an ordinary person is only dormant or manifests itself in an unconscious desire for everything beautiful and good.
“Whoever achieves love,” writes St. Macarius of Egypt, “he becomes already a prisoner and captive of grace. And whoever almost (παρ¦ μικρόν) approaches the measure of love, but does not yet reach the point of becoming a prisoner of love, he is still under fear, he is threatened by scolding and falling; and if he does not establish himself, then Satan will bring him down. This is how others were led astray. Because they had grace in them, they thought they had reached perfection, and said, "We have had enough, we have no more need." The Lord is infinite and incomprehensible, so that Christians do not dare to say: “We have comprehended,” but they humble themselves day and night, seeking God. “Whoever’s mind is attached to God with love,” says the monk, “he neglects nothing visible, nor his own body, as if it were alien to him.”
Ascetic writers were looking for an identical experience of love among the heroes of the Sacred History. The saint, who looked very intently into the life of the prophet Moses, sees him as a partaker of the same path: who has seen God yet, asks to see the Desired One. So all the others, in whom Divine love was deeply rooted, never stopped in lust, turning everything given to them from above to enjoy the desired, turning it into food and maintaining the strongest lust.
So the Saint insists that desired power, the power to love, or eros, cannot be left in idleness or simply suppressed, but must be purified and directed towards the only worthy object of love - towards God, Who is the source of beauty, goodness and love, and Himself is Love, Goodness and Beauty. And it is precisely with this true beauty of God that the ascetic is wounded and partakes in it to the extent of self-purification.
So, the meaning of the exercise in virginity becomes clear: the ascetic, having experienced the revelation of Divine beauty, takes on a dual feat, firstly, purifying, collecting and curbing his eros, and secondly, the correct direction of his energy to the source of Love and Beauty - God - for the sake of the closest unity with Him.
But it is not entirely clear, what does virginity have to do with it? Why is bodily innocence so valuable among ascetics, so that even the achievement itself is called the name of virginity?
rotting lilies
St. Gregory of Nyssa has such an unusual phrase: “We find it useful for the weaker ones, so that they resort to virginity, as to some kind of safe fortress, and not provoke temptations against themselves, descending to the custom of this life” . Why is virginity for the weak? Why is virginity a safe fortress?
This is a rather delicate topic. Both theologians and philosophers used the language of images to clarify this problem: if the power of love, eros was likened water flow, then the experience of sexual relations, especially the first experience, was compared with the channel that lays the stream. It is very difficult to align the flow vector laid by the flow along the usual channel, or to give the flow a different direction. The monk, talking about virginity, uses such a terrible image: “If the beast gets used to eating the flesh, the most fierce will be created in old age.” Just as a bear that has tasted human meat can no longer eat anything else, so a person who has lost his virginity, with the first sexual experience, acquires a skill that requires the realization of eros only in the usual way. Therefore, among Christians, bodily virginity was so valued - the labor of educating eros is easier given to those who preserve it. The feat of virginity is the labor of collecting water of desire- and collecting water is not easy. “If anyone,” writes St. Gregory, “unites all the randomly flowing streams, and confines the water that has hitherto spilled over many places into one channel, he can use the collected and concentrated water with great benefit and benefit for life. So, it seems to me that the human mind, if it constantly spreads and disperses to what pleases the senses, does not have at all sufficient strength to achieve the true good.
Sometimes the Fathers also use another image: bringing the best to God, so quite often we can meet the motive of virginity as a sacrifice; let us recall here the pagans who sacrificed virgins to their gods. And here are the reasonings of the Monk Macarius of Egypt: “After all, Patriarch Abraham to the priest of God, Melchizedek brought as a gift the best of prey, and for this I received from him blessings(cf.). What, then, does the Spirit give us to understand, leading us to the highest contemplation? Is it not that we all must always, first of all, bring to God the highest and fat, the first principles of the whole composition of our nature, that is, the very mind, the very conscience, the very disposition, our very right thought, the very power of our love, the beginning of our whole person, the sacred sacrifice of the heart, the best and first of the right thoughts, constantly exercising in remembrance of God, in meditation and love? For in this way we can daily increase and advance in Divine love (œρωτα) with the help of the Divine power of Christ.”
In a word, the unspentness of a person, his innocence are of great importance for success in the feat of virginity. However, bodily virginity in itself acquires value only when a truly Christian meaning is imparted to it. Innocence is not yet a virtue, but only a convenient condition for its implementation. “From that time,” writes St. Athanasius, “as you began to abstain for God, your body became sanctified and the temple of God.” Abstinence has value when the right motivation is present: when it is undertaken for God. Bodily virginity is not the goal of a feat, but a means of its realization.
The ascetic authors, clarifying the meaning of the virginal feat, used the expression “exercise in virginity”, thereby emphasizing that the feat of virginity is an intense inner doing, in the absence of which the preservation of bodily virginity itself loses its true meaning. “For the apostle,” writes St. Macarius of Egypt, “clearly teaching what souls should be like, moving away from carnal marriage and worldly bonds and desiring to fully exercise (™ξασκε‹ν) in virginity, says: The virgin takes care of the Lord in order to be holy Not only in body but also in spirit(see), - to be free from real and mental, that is, from obvious and secret sins, commanding the soul as the bride of Christ, who wants to be combined with the pure and undefiled Heavenly King. St. Gregory of Nyssa speaks out a little harsher: “Let the exercise in virginity be laid as some foundation for a virtuous life; and upon this foundation let all works of virtue rest. For although virginity is recognized as a very honorable and charitable deed (it is indeed such as it is revered), but if the whole life does not agree with this good deed, if the other forces of the soul are defiled by disorder, then it will be nothing more than an earring in the nose. pigs or a pearl trampled under the feet of pigs.
Thus, virginity “does not belong to the body alone, but mentally extends and penetrates into all the actions of the soul recognized as correct” . We are talking about the virginity of the body and the virginity of the soul, but we must clearly realize that for a Christian center of gravity The virtue of chastity lies primarily in the achievement of the soul. , reflecting on the sad fact of the barbarian abuse of the nuns of Rome, writes that violence against the body cannot damage the virginity of a person who does not consent to this lawlessness: “God would never have allowed this to happen to His saints, if the holiness that He imparted to them and whom He loves in them, could perish like this” (On the City of God I 28).
Ascetics certainly mention these seemingly understandable truths in their texts, because a person has always been distinguished by the ability to distort any correct idea, and therefore, as one of Dickens' characters said, “vice is virtue taken to the extreme.” There have always been, are and will be people who are able to bring the idea of virginity to the point of absurdity, even fanaticism. The English have a saying: "Rotting lilies smell worse than weeds." If the Lord allowed the manna, the heavenly bread, to rot, He gave freedom to decay and the lilies of virginity. Kinds decay varied. Firstly, the already mentioned neglect of internal deeds: “if you visibly keep your body from corruption and fornication, but internally you commit adultery before God and commit fornication in your thoughts, then your virgin body will not benefit you.” Secondly, excessive, even excessive enthusiasm for external achievement, when virginity turns from a means into an end, when the very meaning of the exercise in virginity is forgotten, so that the ascetics “are not able to freely ascend with the mind and contemplate the higher things, being immersed in the concern that crush and crush your flesh.”
But the most terrible rot is pride and the contempt of others associated with it. Saint Athanasius warns: “If a person labors in asceticism, but does not have love for his neighbor, then he labors in vain.”
The return of the monks
One of the varieties of humiliation of neighbors is the condemnation of marriage. Such a view of marriage can only appear in a person who has not understood the most important thing: Christianity generally does not know and does not accept a celibate state, because virginity itself is a spiritual marriage, the most real, not metaphorical. St. Gregory even allowed himself to speak of a marriage contract with God: “A soul that has clung to the Lord in order to be one spirit with Him, having entered into, as it were, some contract of living together—to love Him alone with all its heart and soul, will no longer cling to fornication, not to be one body with him.”
If God is real - and He is too real - if a person burning with love for Him is real, if the dialogue of love between God and man is real - and the ascetics testify to the authenticity of this dialogue both with their lives and their appearance - then we have a genuine marriage, perfect marriage because he is selfless and eternal. Therefore, it is wrong to erect a name monk to the adjective μόνος ‘lonely’ - this is true linguistically, but not in essence. It is better to say this: “monk” means “monogamous”. The monks are not single and not alone, they are in a very serious and responsible marital state (although marriage is serious and responsible by definition).
But we all know perfectly well how stable and tenacious the opposition between monasticism and family life is. Why is that?
Why the lay people do not like the monks is not so important. Most often this is from a lack of understanding or unwillingness to understand; in any case, here we will find more emotions than thoughts. But the claims of the monks are sometimes drawn up in a clear position, main element which - a suspicious attitude to the bodily communication of the spouses. Reflections on this subject can be found in many ascetic writers. Published and widely distributed, these texts confuse many Christian spouses, but it is important to understand their origin: these texts are part of monastic spiritual exercises, meditations on the themes of corruption and the sinful defeat of man and the entire cosmos, in a word, monastic didactics, and as such this didactics is useful and good in its place, but to raise it to the absolute is unreasonable and even harmful.
Marriage and virginity are so closely connected that the neglect of one element entails the death and decay of the other. Marriage explains the virgin feat, virgin life justifies marriage. True virginity is not opposed to marriage, but itself, being ideal marriage, pulls out natural marriage to its true height and wholeness. Where there is no such aspiration, where natural marriage has nowhere to grow, the very idea of marriage is vulgarized and profaned. “For marriage is not dishonorable only because,” says the saint, “that virginity is more honest than it. I will imitate Christ, the pure Bridegroom and Bridegroom, who works miracles in marriage, and by His presence brings honor to marriage.”
Ancient Christian writers always fought for marriage, fought against heretics who abhorred marriage, and since that time, the attitude to marriage as a blessed and sacred feat has become a criterion of orthodoxy and fidelity to the apostolic Church. “The Church,” writes the Hieromartyr Methodius, “is likened to a flowering and most diverse meadow, as decorated and crowned not only with the flowers of virginity, but also with the flowers of childbearing and abstinence.” This will seem strange to many modern Christians, but the Holy Fathers wrote with special reverence about such things as, for example, the conception of children, calling it a sacred act, because, as the saint says, “man, contributing to the origin of man, becomes the image of God” (Teacher II 10). Hieromartyr Methodius expresses the same thoughts, and where! - in a treatise on virginity! The husband, “united with his wife in the embrace of love, becomes a participant in fruitfulness, leaving the Divine Creator to take a rib from him in order to become a father himself from a son. So, if even now God forms man, is it not bold to turn away from childbearing, which the Almighty Himself is not ashamed to do with His clean hands” (Pir II 2). Here our holy writers do not create some new view of the intercourse of the sexes and conception, but continue the biblical tradition. Let us recall, for example, with what virginal and childlike surprise and gratitude the book of Job speaks of the conception of man: You poured me out like milk and curdled me like curd(cm. ). We have become too corrupt to read such texts! The Fathers teach us pure vision and reverence for a person, not only for his soul, but also for his body. “We are not at all ashamed,” writes St. Clement, “to name the organs in which the conception of the fetus occurs, for God Himself was not ashamed of their creation” (Educator II 10); this sounds unexpected and reproachful to us, but this is a very important lesson of asceticism. A person who has not learned to accept his gender, to accept it with gratitude, cannot bear the feat of virginity. It is necessary to understand and accept too much that you are a man or a woman, this is how the Lord created you and this is how He accepts and loves you. You are not a disembodied spirit, and no one expects from you the life of a disembodied angel, you are beautiful in the eyes of God and pleasing to him as a person, just like a person woven by Him from bones and lived, and the body is your closest neighbor, in need of care and understanding , requiring a reverent attitude as an accomplice of your eternity. Therefore, the ministry of a virgin is the ministry of justification of the body, faith in the body, however strange it may sound. Monasticism does not outgrow Christianity, it is not something that is higher than it, more esoteric. "Both paths - monasticism and marriage - are equally recognized and revered by the Church, since they lead to a common goal: "true life", independent of space, time, corruption and death.
At the beginning of the last century, Archpriest P. I. Alfeev wrote: “The ideal of Christian marriage follows from the ideal of Christian virginity. Where virginity is trampled upon, polluted and overthrown from the height of its moral greatness of purity and holiness, there marriage is destroyed. When lowered top bar moral values, this entails the deformation of the whole structure of life. G. K. Chesterton even wrote a whole novel to confirm this idea - “The Return of Don Quixote”, which ended with amazing words: “I know one thing for sure, although many would laugh. When monks return, marriage returns.”
There is an unwritten law in choral singing, well known to musicians: the top voice in the choir should sing positionally slightly higher than the general key, then it will be convenient for the choir to sing the work in its own key without lowering it. When monasticism is humiliated in society (often the monks themselves), they try to adapt this ministry to some social or even educational tasks, this will necessarily have a very bad effect on the institution of the family. “Sometimes one can hear such a judgment: we do not understand the meaning of those convents where, apparently, there is no service to others,” the holy martyr writes in his diary, “Let the answer to this give the very name of these monasteries, which we often have in Rus' they are absorbed. We often call them "maidenly", denoting by this that virginal purity is their calling, their service to the Lord. Service to suffering humanity is inexplicably high, but the development of purity of heart should be the first and indispensable goal of all women's cloisters without exception, and at the same time such a goal, which sometimes may be sufficient for salvation. Without this first goal, the second one, that is, serving others, will be carried out under compulsion, with grumbling, it will be dead and unfruitful.
According to the Fathers, even the problem of demography directly depends on virgin service: “If anyone thinks that the human race is decreasing as a result of the consecration of virgins,” says St. Ambrose, “let him pay attention to the following circumstance: where there are few virgins, there are fewer people; and where the desire for chastity is stronger, there is comparatively more people <…>According to the experience of the universe itself, the virgin way of life is not considered harmful, especially after salvation came through the Virgin, fertilizing the Roman earth.
Thus, in the discussion of virginity, we have identified three interrelated positions: virginity is called
1) the natural virginity of the body, or innocence;
2) a spiritual exercise, possible even for those who have lost their innocence;
3) a state of perfection, deification of a person, christification.
In patristic literature, virginity is a spiritual exercise traditional for Christian asceticism, the purpose of which is to cultivate the power of love, or eros, for the sake of a total aspiration towards the only object of love of the ascetic - Christ. In this sense, the natural virginity of the body is the basis for the practice of virginity. Virginity has nothing to do with a celibate or single state, because virginity is the spiritual marriage of the ascetic with God. Like a true marriage, virginity is not opposed to natural marital relations, but is the ideal to which natural marriage is equal, finding in it its true spiritual basis. Marriage is not the image of virginity, but virginity is the image of marriage, if you like, eidos marriage. Christian virginity is marriage, the union of a believing person with Christ without an intermediary, a school of love in which a person's personality is enriched, revealing itself in love for Christ, Whom it has missed. Both in marriage and in virgin service, Scripture and the Holy Fathers see the path to communion with God, the necessary condition for which is the growth of a person in love. The meaning of marriage is not limited to childbearing: its essence is in the mutual love of spouses, which develops into love for God. Similarly, virginity is not only abstinence from sexual intercourse, but above all the acquisition of love for God, a true union with Christ.
Dance of Angels
On Cheese Week, people usually don’t go to church - they gain strength before Lent. And this, oddly enough, always suits gourmets divine services: there are few people in the temple, and with pleasure and knowledge of the matter you unweave the elegant pattern of the most complex services of the annual circle. And Friday night main course- a canon to all the venerable fathers who shone in the feat. Anyone who has read this text at least once will fall in love with it forever and will wait for this service as a miracle of meeting with the blessed elders and old women, whose feat is sung by the canon. “Desert flowers”, “kind beads”, “flowers of the ever-living animals”, “living bird life” - peaceful elders, fragile and simple-hearted, like flowers, thin like birds, barely touching the ground with their feet - and much, much light - “light shining”, “bright fasting”, “shining miracles”, “lamps of reasoning”, “rays of the sun of truth”; with them are the wives of God-wise - “the fire-manifested Theodula”, “unwise Marina”, “Christ-bearer Vriena”. Not a canon, but a celebration of light and purity! Wounded by love for the truly beautiful - did they know rest in their labors, didn't the world abhor them as eccentrics and freethinkers? Proidosha in cuteness, and in goat skins, deprivation, mourning, embittered. The whole world is not worthy of them, wandering in the deserts and in the mountains and in the dens and in the abysses of the earth ().
They - the prophets of Beauty - imitated their Lord in everything and became like Him, like Him in excess of beauty and philanthropy. “You are truly beautiful,” St. Gregory addresses the Savior, “and not only beautiful, but always like this in the very essence of beauty, unceasingly abiding by the fact that You are in Yourself; Your beauty is long life; her name is philanthropy.”
But many choked with love
Do not shout - no matter how much you call, -
They are counted by rumor and idle talk,
But this account is involved in blood.
And we will put candles at the head
Those who died from unprecedented love ... (Vysotsky).
“Blessed is he who fasts all the time of this life, because, having settled in the mountainous Jerusalem, he will spin with the Angels in a joyful round dance and rest with the holy prophets and Apostles.”
Berdyaev N. A. Reflections on Eros // Eros and Personality. SPb., 2006. S. 201.
Bitter experience shows that books in defense of chastity bring the greatest harm to chastity. Why? In virtue itself there is no intrigue, and no intrigue - nothing to write about. All virtuous people are the same, Aristotle noticed this, and only a genius can find success in describing goodness, but something needs to be written about chastity, and they write according to the principle “from the contrary”: “Long live chastity, because, - they knew wonder what they are doing there”; then there is a detailed enumeration of what is not chastity, with a large number of examples from life, to the great delight of the “sober” reader, and you thank God only that none of these authors thought to publish their masterpieces with illustrations.
Such “wild” customs reigned in Koenigsberg late XVIII century. . Book of poems. M., b. pp. 47–52. Saint Gregory of Nyssa Decree. op. S. 395.
Of course, this damage should not be underestimated. In the experience of sex, one should always remember about principle of the Gorgon: from the look of Medusa Gorgon, a man turned to stone, and only Perseus guessed to look at her indirectly, through a polished shield - that's why he was able to win. Care for chastity requires us to be extremely careful, and everything related to sex, whether it be a positive experience or an experience of mistakes, should not be looked at directly, we should resort to mediation: carefully choosing words, avoiding remembering the sins of one's own and others, clearing meanings.
Saint Clement of Alexandria. Decree. op. S. 188.
Yannaras X. Decree. op. S. 121.
Cit. on: Neganova E. The Ideal of Marriage in Orthodoxy // Russian Theological Conference Orthodox Church"Teaching of the Church about Man". Moscow, November 5–8, 2001 Materials. M., 2002. S. 278.
Chesterton G.K. Return of Don Quixote // Selected. SPb., 2001. S. 504.
Hieromartyr. Light is quiet. M., 1996. S. 172.
Saint Ambrose of Milan. About virginity // About virginity and marriage. M., 1997. S. 147.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Explanation of the Song of Solomon. S. 110.
Saint Athanasius the Great Decree. op. S. 134.
I started writing quite by accident, I never thought that I should share my thoughts with anyone. But one day a truckload of books arrived at our monastery, among which I found and realized that this is the best magazine.
I contacted , we began to call back and correspond, our communication lasted a very long time - more than three hundred letters were written from each side. And somehow I wrote an article for Marina Andreevna , just for fun, to amuse her. She published this text and then began to ask me to write sermons, essays. It so happened that almost every issue had my text.
I don't know why some of my lyrics become popular. For example, I wrote an obituary about a monastery cat for a narrow circle of parishioners. We buried her at the gate and marked the grave with a stone. Pravmir decided to publish this text, and then people from Moscow came to me and asked if there would be a sequel.
Or recently I wrote a text for myself - it was published on the 9th day after the death of Doctor Lisa and musicians from the Alexandrov Ensemble. And this personal text was read by more than five thousand people.
Apparently, people want to hear personal intonations in the texts, it is personal things that become interesting today.
The Orange Saints book. Photo: eparhiya.by
Bishop in shorts and dissertation topic
I came across the works of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov by accident. I needed to quickly find a dissertation topic, literally within a day. And I began to rummage in the bookcase, wanting to find the thinnest book. I found the "Eucharist" by Archpriest Sergius and fell into this trap - I began to read and read out.
Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov, a man who has been abandoned by our Church for the future, is misunderstood. Once the priest Pavel Florensky dreamed small man in black, who explained Bulgakov's texts to him. In the same way, we need such a person who will tell about Bulgakov. But, of course, it is necessary to talk about it and make a film.
one of the most prominent theologians of our time. He found how to talk about God in a very personal way, and for many this was the discovery of a new language of religion.
When an exhibition about Metropolitan Anthony came to us in Gomel, it simply captured the city. Before the Great Patriotic War Belarus was declared the most atheistic republic, and today this atheistic inertia is very strong in our country. And this exhibition was a discovery for many of my atheist friends.
First, she showed that the bishop is a man. After all, for many people today a bishop is something beyond the icon, behind the scenes, but here he is standing in shorts in the photographs. How is this possible? And many people, thanks to this exhibition, believed that Orthodoxy can be alive, colorful and diverse.
Also, Metropolitan Anthony is valuable to me because I see Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov behind him. So this is a topic for a dissertation - how the theology of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov influenced the worldview of Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh.
Find the truth of an atheist
Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov had an amazing talent to see the truth of every phenomenon. Although in life he was a man of strict disposition, he justified every truth, even the gesture of an atheist, his offense against God. Atheists are living people who have experience of love, hate, respect. When I talk to a person, it is first of all important for me to understand whom he loves, whom he respects. We also have a rule in the monastery - I do not recognize a person until I see him in a rage.
Yes, this is a meeting with a different point of view. Recently I got a driver's license, and for me it was the discovery of a whole new world - gestures, signs, a different logic. This is how each person's perspective is unique.
Christianity is vision therapy, we must learn to see and justify before judging. One must be able to justify a person, to find his truth. All our spiritual development is the treatment of the eyes, the acquisition of vision.
Metropolitan Anthony has a sermon on the blind Bartimaeus. The blind man heard that Christ was coming, threw away his outer garment - everything he had - and ran towards the noise of the crowd. In the same way, we must follow the voice in order to learn to see, perhaps without even trusting ourselves. We must always proceed from the pity and justification of man, and we must learn this skill from Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov and Metropolitan Anthony.
It is useful for us to go out of our niche, out of our point of view, and even give up our monopoly on the truth. It is useful for us to look at ourselves through the eyes of another person. One can protest and resist by reading atheistic authors, but it is useful to arrange such an internal earthquake of our point of view, our faith. For if our faith is such that it can be lost by a slight hesitation, let it be lost.
There is a children's song - eyes to see, ears to hear ... But why does a person need a face? For a smile. We need to be able to smile, and it is important for us to find this encouragement by smiling in another person. As you know, when a baby responds to a mother's smile, a person's self-consciousness awakens.
Russians are waiting for an irreversible flourishing
My favorite writer Ray Bradbury, in one of his last interviews, said about the Russians that they are a people who have not yet spoken their word, and that "they will declare themselves when they learn to love themselves." We are now in adolescence, with the categoricalness characteristic of this age, jumping from side to side, and so on.
People learn about freedom, love, joy of life for a very long time, and we have survived such a difficult twentieth century, and have not yet learned to perceive it without categorization, without philosophical color blindness, when everything is divided only into black and white.
But I am sure that we are waiting for an irreversible flowering. Give it time, I feel in my skin that amazingly good things are about to happen to us.
Monks and cats are lawless
I have been living in the monastery for twenty-two years. Russian monasticism is special: we are more charismatic, and more lawless, unlike Catholics.
But today Russian monasticism is on the way of becoming, it is just beginning to appear. Therefore, for the time being, it is better for no one to interfere in this childish world of monasticism. Do not publish any "Confessions".
If the monks are not touched for the next one hundred and fifty years, everything will be fine - both the elders and the ascetics.
Why do I love cats? Cats are reckless. They are very free. The cat walks by itself.
This respect for freedom, readiness for the unexpected - are characteristic of the owners of cats. Humans have an authoritarian attitude towards dogs.
What I have been thinking about for the past half hour is what I tell students
When I go to the students, I perceive every lecture as a disaster. I'm afraid to admit it, but I don't understand today's youth. Therefore, I only talk about what excites me, and not what is attributed to me, what they ask me to say, not “on the topic”.
I'm saying what I've been thinking about for the past half hour, what worries me the most, if it resonates, fine.
There is no need to be afraid of your passion, a person must have a healthy passion for something. Therefore, it is good when a person is passionate, wants to achieve justice in something. A person should be "excited about the truth."
The main commandment is to live!
My favorite book is Dandelion Wine. This is an epochal and very important novel for European literature, as it is written about how to live well. If the realization that he is alive makes the protagonist of "Nausea" Sartre nauseated, then the hero Bradbury is jubilant at this realization.
And it seems to me that the whole Bible consists of one commandment - be! We must talk about life. Even if we have lived this life being sick, crippled, living is the greatest joy. Bradbury discovered this passion.
And we need to cherish this passion for life and constantly return to it. And we spend ourselves on trifles - a career does not work out that way, children fail, etc. We do not know how to appreciate the joy of life. You are alive - this is the main thing, you need to maintain this fire of gratitude for the fact that you are alive.
Our monastery takes care of disabled children, and on Christmas and Easter we bring these children to church, there is no one else in the church at this time. And it’s a discovery for me to see with what eyes parents look at their children when there are no strangers in the temple nearby - they are so glad that these children simply exist. Yes, this child is blind or convulsing, but he is.
So it doesn't matter how long you've lived - you are, and it's forever, it's indestructible. We are here, and this will never be erased in history.
One day we were having a meal in a monastery, and I set the agenda: who dreams of what? And our regent Vladimir, who is sixty years old, said: "I want to stroke the head of a wolf or a fox." Here is a holy man.
And then I asked myself this question and got scared: I don’t dream of anything, I have everything, and for a long time. Right now I have all of you, this evening, Moscow in illumination, and the only thing left is to rejoice and give thanks.
Father's hands
–Reading your texts, it seems that you know how great it is, being an adult - a monk and even an archimandrite,- to remain a child in the perception of the world, when knowledge and experience do not overshadow sincerity, do not interfere with continuing to be surprised and rejoice. So, if possible, I would like to start this conversation from your childhood. Do you have any childhood memory that you go back to? Is there any image that helps you keep this childhood in you?
- But childhood is not always a positive experience, it is often negative. I have a dream that I have very often: I have to write an algebra test, and I just can't write it. It's also a childhood experience, right?
I liked to study, and I treated my studies very easily. And now, imagine such a dream. Apparently, some, perhaps, disturbing states of my adult experience in a dream return to this terrible experience of the algebra test. Childhood experience is very different.
Therefore, I am not inclined to idealize and say that a child is some kind of special being. It is in childhood that we all experience happiness and sorrow. But a child is probably more privileged than an adult in that he is happy in any case.
No matter how tragic childhood is, it is there that we all experience happiness. Then we start looking for it. And I've been looking all my life. But we wouldn't be looking for it if we didn't know what it is. A child in childhood is happy, happy with very simple, very banal things, simply with the fact that he is.
I liked one story in a book by Bert Hellinger, a very interesting psychologist, about his adventures in Africa. At one time he was a missionary there, and he was completely struck by the Zulus, such an original tribe.
Civilization was imposed on them (and there was nothing wrong with that), accustomed to something, helped to cope with diseases, with some social problems, but they retained their own worldview.
Here Hellinger gives such a wonderful story. The Zulu sits on the ground, sits for himself, sits, Bert walks nearby and looks puzzled at this comrade, who just sits in idleness, does nothing.
Well, for us Europeans, it's strange - just sitting around, you need to read some newspaper, solve a crossword puzzle, think, write, surf the Internet, flip through the phone. And the Zulu just sits. Here Bert comes up to him and says: “Listen, are you bored?” He says: "Well, how can I be bored, because I live."
So it is with a child: his experience is genuine, real - it is the experience of just life, which adults gradually lose, but this experience can then manifest itself in some images of childhood.
For some reason, I remember very well one moment of my stay in the pioneer camp: when I became ill, our coach picked me up and carried me to the first-aid post. It was a moment of truth: that I was being carried over the heads of other children, in their arms, so carefully, carefully, sympathetically, and everyone was looking at me like that ... It's unforgettable.
It seems to me that for a believer, for a Christian, this experience - the feeling of the hands of the Father - is, in general, probably the most central, important. After all, when we die, falling out of this world, we fall into the hands of the Father. Therefore, Christians are not afraid of death - neither their own, nor their loved ones.
The value of all things
– Well, it’s hard to say when I started reading and what exactly I read as a child. I just read and read. And there are things that I like. And there is even a problem, because I like too much in this world - both in cinema and in literature. And just even communicate with people, talk, drink tea.
- And how does this “too much” connect with your understanding of Christianity, which is perceived by many as a kind of withdrawal from the world, a limitation? After all, there is “one thing that is needed”, why is it “very, very much”? Can it interfere, distract, fill the soul with something else?
– But the Gospel says – seek, first of all, the Kingdom of Heaven, and everything else will be added. It does not say that everything else will fall off, disappear. Will apply. That is, when we find Christ, we begin to see the whole world in a different way, do you understand?
It seems to me that the path of a Christian is the path of personal asceticism and the transformation of vision. That is, we suddenly begin to see, to see clearly. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that in the Gospel of John there is an image of the sight of a blind man - such a rich, such an important, mysterious, enigmatic image.
Just gradually, getting to know Christ, we begin to see the light, then we begin to get to know our neighbors, and through this, in the end, we find our face and begin to see the true value of other things. The authenticity of "a lot" can only be seen in the Light of Christ, and one can truly love these things. But sometimes at first it happens to fall out of love with them.
You know, for some time I studied vocals and sang (and now I sing and regent, though a little less). There is such a principle in vocals: when a teacher deals with his student, sets his voice, then first he destroys his manner of singing, and then he collects a real voice from these primary elements.
Setting the voice is a return to the natural sound of the voice, to a new discovery of those vocal gifts with which the Lord has endowed a person. Because all the students who were engaged in vocals usually “hang themselves” in the first year, because they generally learn how to sing. They are forbidden to sing in the choir, they are generally forbidden to sing, they completely lose this ability.
So Christians, it seems to me, when they come to Christ, they first lose their taste for everything. And that's okay. Many even quit their jobs, their hobbies, music. Such ascetic maximalism appears, but, of course, one cannot linger in it.
A friend of mine, when he began to go to church, stopped writing poetry. He used to write very good poems, but here - again! - and stopped. And nothing could be done about it. Only after many years did he somehow begin to slowly return to creativity again. That is, refusal is a necessary step of some ascetic self-restraint.
But this is only a step, it needs to be passed in order to return to the present. To see and feel the real weight of these things, the sound, to see how everything in the world is truly beautiful.
Why do we always return to books? One acquaintance told me that he was arguing with one of his friends, who basically does not keep books at home. He was sure that the bad ones should not be kept, but the good ones I keep in my mind and heart. And yet we return to books, because every year we change, and we simply were not able to see some things before.
In the same way, in Christ, we begin to truly see the beauty of some works, notice the beauty of communication, even the taste of food changes. Children don't appreciate beauty. good wine, give them soda, and when you grow up, you acquire this ability to distinguish between tastes, to enjoy them. This is completely different. The same is true here: we are growing, we are understanding. And we never stop being kids.
– But it seems that many cease to be children ...
- No ... You know, there is such an expression "angry boy." An adult uncle is sitting, pouting, angry, angry, he can do some nasty things from time to time, but this does not stop him from being a child. Adults do not exist, I think so.
Born - work on yourself!
– Yes, the essence of Christianity, baptism- in dying and restoration, in the birth of a completely new person. But after all, we all carry a human history, a genetic code. Each person is a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, and so on, up to the 12th generation, up to Adam. Here's what to do with this heredity, for which you do not seem to be responsible?
– But we are not on our own, we grow on some kind of tree that stores the experience of previous generations. I recently had a nephew, the fourth nephew, and now we have a shock in our family that has not gone away for several months, because this baby is the spitting image of a grandfather. When I saw him, I just stood there, confused: well, the spitting image of a grandfather!
And when I looked at him, I had an idea: after all, we are not original, we repeat the features of our ancestors - both in the color of the eyes, and in the shape of the skull, in manners, in the turn of the head. Even reappearing, the body retains a memory - both positive and negative. And these skills, these desires, some passions, illnesses, taste preferences that are incomprehensible to us ourselves - all this remains in us.
The Lord trusts us to live in this, not quite our body. Well? Wonderful! So fight, fight, look for your real. Let you take already prepared material, but by creating on it, we are gradually turning this body into our own. And these habits that we have borrowed, borrowed, we also turn into our own: either we refuse, we fight with them, or we sanctify ourselves, we transform them.
Look how happy people were when a priest appeared in their family or there was a monk in their family. Even now I meet ordinary people who are deprived of the ability for any philosophical or theological reflection, but they seem to feel with their skin how great it is that there is a prayer book in their family, in this large branched family tree there is some very healthy a branch from which kindness, holiness spreads to all other branches.
This is wonderful: you were born - let's work on yourself, it's great that a whole family is behind you. Most importantly, when a person marries, gets married, he himself stands at the beginning, at the source of the family. It seems to me that this is an absolutely amazing feeling - to realize that some kind of branch is growing further from you, and you are standing at its source. I think it's a dizzying idea.
- One guide in Jerusalem led me to this idea, he said: “Can you imagine, here you are standing here, and next to you are your great-grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers, who only dreamed of being on this Earth? Can you imagine all the responsibility that you carry in yourself? Every day, put a memorial candle for all grandmothers. And I walked around the Holy Land with a completely new sense of understanding myself as part of a family, clan, humanity ...
“But not only great-grandmothers. We forget that the race goes forward. My great-grandmother lived to be 100 years old, she remembered for the rest of her life an episode that she was proud of, how she went to Kyiv on foot in her youth.
It happened once in her life, but for the rest of her life she remembered this walking pilgrimage. From Kyiv, she brought an icon, a prayer book, which she had been laying at the head of her bed all her life, on the nightstand next to the bed. She brought it in her hands, she endured this feat.
And, probably, somehow I was there with her, and all my nephews, and the one who was born quite recently. Unfortunately, this generic feeling is now being washed out very strongly, we are accustomed to the idea that we are on our own, that we choose our own path. Not…
– Do you have a friendly family? Are you friends with your parents?
- Yes, I'm friends. But I won't say: friendly - not friendly, it's hard for me to compare with something. But our family is very large, I have a lot of relatives, but we live peacefully, yes. I have three brothers, we are very different people, but we never have conflicts.
Yes, I think we have a good family. At least very funny. All great comedians and love to sing. As children, after dinner, we would stay at the table and begin to sing something very loudly, all together.
– And what songs?
- Various. That's what we remember, then we'll eat. Because, you know, the problem of all lovers of singing is that you love a song, but you don’t always know the words. And therefore, what is sung is good.
I'm alive!
- When you spoke about the authenticity of things, I remembered the weight of a leaf in paradise, described by Clive Lewis in "Dissolution of Marriage". Remember, when a person who came from the infernal space, where he was surrounded by weightless phantoms, finds himself in paradise, he cannot lift even a small leaf, he is so real, weighty ... So every leaf, blade of grass, every song can be perceived essentially, but you can build around phantom cities…
– One of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, wrote a book that was probably impossible at all in literature. I don't know what else can be put next to this piece. This is Dandelion Wine. The text, it seems to me, is, firstly, revolutionary; secondly, unappreciated.
And its revolutionary nature lies in the fact that it is the first text with such a positive content, which, without negating the tragedy of life, highlights what, probably, in Russian philosophy is called a sophianic view of things. The joy of being without curses, without reproaches, without sorrow.
12-year-old Douglas Spalding, one of the main characters in Dandelion Wine, makes an amazing discovery. He cannot find his formula in any way, he cannot understand what he has discovered. And then his phrase sounds: “I am alive!”
This is the most wonderful thing in the novel! At the beginning of Dandelion Wine, when Douglas is running, he feels the juices filling the plants, the bunches of wild grapes bursting in his hands, the way they roll with Brother Thomas on the grass, hitting each other with a kind of foalish joy. And he is happy about it, he feels he is filled with this mystery of life.
For some reason, I correlate this text with Sartre's Nausea. There, the hero also makes a discovery: “I am alive!”, But this makes him sick. And this is not new in culture. In Seneca, for example, in the letters you will also find this description of nausea from the fact that you are alive.
You know, these are two completely different ways of perceiving oneself and the world, and even God, which have condensed into different mythologies or iconic images. Even after all, religion has its own images of paradigms and forms in which these two ideals are embodied: peace-loving and peace-loving.
Last year, the remarkable Russian philosopher and poet Vadim Rabinovich died. He has a poem that contains these lines:
…And kissed all the things of the universe.
And only then departed for the unspoken verb.
This poem is dedicated to the verb "to die". He says that you cannot say that I died using the perfect, that is, in perfect form. The person who says "I'm dead" is lying. That is, this perfect action is already: since you died, it means that you died. Yes, Stendhal spoke about this, this is a well-known idea in European culture.
But I was struck by this phrase: “And he kissed all the things of the universe. And only then did he leave for the unspeakable verb, that is, he died. A person who lives this discovery “I am alive!”, not a peace-loving ideal, but a peace-loving one, he is ready to kiss all the things of the universe, because not only natural things are worthy of surprise and admiration, experience, but also simply human.
And Bradbury has this intuition too. After all, people do not die immediately, their things, on which their breath is preserved, the imprint of their hand, they continue to live. And a sensitive person feels reverence even before the objects that another person held - before the cup of his beloved mother, or grandmother's vase, or the machine tool on which his father worked, the gun that he used. Everything around keeps their imprint, because things absorb a person, do not let him go forever. And it's amazing.
And no matter what sorrows befall us, the revelation that “I am alive!” - this is something absolutely amazing, maybe it is even the basis of what we call happiness.
The form in which faith manifests itself
– One modern theologian said that Christianity is the most material of all religions. The entry of God into human life, into human flesh, and now the eternal presence of God in matter is a mysterious, inexplicable, inexpressible, truly inseparable combination - it called on man to bring the whole world back to Him. And so every cup, every leaf is very valuable.
It seems that modern society (both on the one hand, religious and material) so often forgets about this. Tell me, if you have an understanding ... one of my friends asks this question on one television: what is faith and what is religion? Is it one? Or are they different things? And why should there be religion?
- I think religion and faith are very different things, of a different order. You know how we don't put a kilogram and a kilometer, let's say, in the same plane - these are different measures of different things, in different orders of being. Religion is a certain form in which a person realizes his faith.
And Christianity is not a religion, although Christianity has a religion. Religion is a set of different cultural universals. For example, we are now in a temple, and so a temple or a monastery is that crystal, that form in which the faith of a person or society manifests itself.
Or, for example, the institution of the priesthood, the institution of monasticism - these are all some of the religious forms that you will find in absolutely any religion. If a religion is more or less developed, it means that a temple appears in it, a priestly class, some kind of monasticism with its charter, with asceticism, with spiritual exercises. There is a ritual, a rite, and so on. This is absolutely normal.
But faith is something that is found in forms, that cannot be unformed, you see? But we must distinguish between these things. You can be a religious person, but not be a believer. You can be a believer and strive to show your faith in religion, but not always and not everyone succeeds.
You just brought up the idea that Christianity is the most material of religions, I would say that this is not entirely accurate, because Christianity is probably the most sophianic religion. Sophia in the sense that God never let go of the world, never left it, He was never a stranger to it. God has never been a stranger not only to the spirit of man, but also to matter. In this sense, yes, we can say that we are indeed a religion of sacred materialism.
But the revelation of Christianity is much deeper than the distinction between matter and spirit. Everything is much more solid, more organic. Christianity we comprehend only in some personal experience maybe even almost family relations with God.
Beauty is one of the names of God
– Do you remember your meeting point with Him?
- Oh sure. I have had several such moments in my life, and I think that the most interesting ones are yet to come. But the most important such moment, the key one for me, is, of course, the meeting with St. Sergius of Radonezh.
I was a non-church person, I grew up in an ordinary Soviet family, and once a book by Boris Zaitsev about Sergius of Radonezh fell into my hands. A very simple text, which does not pretend to anything, but for some reason it struck me so much that I probably walked for several months under the great impression of the beauty that flowed from these pages, manifested itself from the image of this person. I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
And it was the experience of meeting Heaven, the experience of meeting beauty, because beauty is one of God's names.
Of course, it was possible to subject this experience to some kind of analysis - psychological, psychiatric, whatever - but it was. Even, perhaps, in our non-genuine experience, something real, something significant sometimes shines through, so I think that I had some kind of guarantee of a meeting with God.
Monk on the palm
–When did you decide to become a monk?
- That's when I accepted it.
– Everything happened in one moment - both the meeting with God and the determination of the path?
- Of course. I realized that monasticism is the way of life that suits me, and I will be under the protection of St. Sergius of Radonezh all my life. Incidentally, I had never felt an ascetic vocation before. And even now I am not a monk, but rather a sympathizer after all. As well as not a Christian, but rather a sympathizer, because, well, somehow I don’t dare to do real feats ...
– Excuse me, you are an archimandrite, it already sounds so solid ...
- It just sounds. And that's all. I do not like this word, by the way. It was a great disappointment for me when they decided to raise me to this superfluous degree, which, in my opinion, is completely superfluous. Superfluous word, very ugly. And if this title is canceled at all, it will be just fine.
- What was your name before? How did you deal with the name change? Have you had this dying and resurrection in the new man?
- You know, it was all very simple for me, without any romance, lyrics. There are people who go through life somehow majestically, but for me everything always happened comically. Probably will continue to happen. I don't mind it at all.
My friend, who recently got a haircut, told me that he experienced some kind of almost animal horror on the eve of the tonsure, he shuddered all over from some kind of inhuman trembling. He lived a long life, difficult, very interesting, but he never experienced this.
You know, monastic vows begin with a monastic candidate in a white shirt crawling along the path, covered in the robes of the brethren with candles in their hands, while singing the troparion “The Embrace of the Father.” And here, as soon as I lay down on this path and began to crawl, the horror immediately disappeared, and I felt that I was lying ... on the palm of my hand. On some warm, very cozy hand that holds me. And I no longer wanted to crawl or do something - just such peace and such a childlike joy came that destroyed all my fears and doubts.
I have never experienced such things, I will tell you right away. Everything happened somehow quickly, unexpectedly. In general, I was very young, I was not even 19 yet. That is, my tonsure is some kind of pure misunderstanding, and I would not advise anyone to ever tonsure young people at that age. I am convinced that tonsure should be done much later, not earlier than 30 years.
– So, I think it was in ancient times.
- In ancient times it was different. Everything has always been different, but in our time, I believe, tonsure should be done after a thorough test. So I read in books that a monk should feel something, maybe cry about sins, but I was just a little scared, surprising and incomprehensible, and I honestly didn’t experience any romantic feelings, shocks.
–Were there any personal changes?
“A monk is such a subtle being that he has to go through a very long school. He needs to be educated and nurtured. You know, Grigory Skovoroda has this phrase: “O riza, riza! How few have you revered!” That is, the fact that you are dressed in monastic vestments, changing your name, does not mean anything.
This is just a kind of guarantee that in the future you will be a worthy student and master the lessons. I don’t know whether I have mastered the lesson, whether I turned out to be a good student, but monasticism is just the very way of life that suits me, I never doubted it, and I am not going to change it in any case. I was, in my opinion, in my place. And thank God!
husking out meanings
- We talked about the fact that a person bears the seal of generations - past and even future. Now they say a lot that we need to return to traditions. But there are so many of these wonderful traditions! Traditions of the first Christian community, Byzantine, Greek traditions, traditions of Eastern asceticism. Then, spreading to every country, Christianity acquired its new traditions. Why return? What is a tradition, and should we return to it?
“I think we still need to look ahead. We very often look back and take for something authentic just some cultural forms. If we want to revive cultural forms, well, we will turn into such a goblin reserve, cultural ghettos.
When I was still a seminarian, a bishop once said to me: “You are not dressed in an Orthodox way.” This phrase somehow puzzled me so much, I thought about it for a long time, I still think: how should a person be dressed in an Orthodox way? What does it mean?
In fact, our task is always to peel out meanings, to find the true meanings of some images. It is no coincidence that I mentioned the difference between faith and religion. Religions can change. And for me here the experience of the first Christian community is the most authentic and significant.
The apostle Paul, who revolutionized Christian theology, showed that one faith can be found in two different religions. Remember the conflict between Judeo-Christianity and Gentile Christians? This is a topic that should be studied in detail and very thoughtfully. I don’t know of studies, maybe they exist, I just didn’t come across that would analyze this problem in detail, intelligibly and with theological depth.
That is, there was the faith of Christ, the first Christian generation was alive, witnesses, apostles. For some Jewish Christians, this faith was formalized by the Jewish religion, they continued to go to the temple, observe the Sabbath, perform circumcision, observe numerous other rules, the laws of Moses, and so on. Pagan Christians - and this the apostle Paul insistently constantly confirmed, emphasized, emphasized - had a different religion, different rituals, but the same faith.
Just imagine the life of the first Christians from pagans, how they were torn out of their usual cultural and religious environment. We now have Easter, a calendar, we know when fasting begins and when it ends, when you can eat dead chickens, when you can’t, how to light candles, where to go to confession. We have a child born, a boy and a girl decide to get married, a person has died – we always know how to formalize it religiously, imagine, experience our joy or sorrow in some religious form.
The first Christians from the pagans had nothing of this: neither the calendar, nor the rites, they did not even have Holy Scripture, there was no creed. All this later crystallized in the search for new cultural forms by borrowing from Jewish, Roman, and Greek rituals.
In this new religion elements of Neoplatonism were introduced, even some healthy ideas of Gnosticism (after all, Gnosticism also has its own truth). Thus, in the first centuries of Christianity, we see one faith in two different religions.
This experience needs modern reflection, because here, it seems to me, lies the grain right attitude to other faiths. For example, we sometimes argue with Catholics: our pilgrims come to Catholic churches - they are allowed to serve the liturgy, but when Catholic pilgrims come to our Orthodox churches, here in Rus', no one will ever allow them to serve the liturgy, in any case. Even, as it happened recently in Diveevo, they are driven out of the temple, which, in my opinion, is a complete savagery.
We have to think about this, because the world has become closer, cultures have become so close that they crowd each other. And we cannot simply close ourselves in a cultural-religious ghetto, we cannot throw Christians of other denominations who speak other languages out of sight. These are our brothers and sisters.
And our experience of religious formation is much closer to Jewish Christians than to Gentile Christians. After all, some and others had completely different rituals, completely different approaches to meanings. And we very often argue here with Catholics because of some stupid things, without reaching the dogmatic depth. Well, this is a separate conversation.
presumption of kindness
– So what do we do with the traditions today? What traditions to focus on? What to support, and what to calmly refuse, as a temporary one? But in such a way that, as is also often the case, the baby is not thrown out with the water? We know about the life of a contemporary ascetic who founded an Orthodox monastery in Europe. When he was alive, everything was organic, in the spirit of freedom and within the framework of traditions, but as soon as he left this life, everything began to scatter ... The form, the skeleton help to keep both the body and the soul, and even keep it full ...
- Of course. Forms must be Therefore, I believe that the canons, the disciplines of the Church, need protection, care, support, they cannot be changed arbitrarily. And, of course, you need to treat everything with care.
But our job is to work. The work consists in always finding something significant both in one's own life and in church practice, in order to distinguish the main thing from the secondary, always to see and preserve the very essence of Christ's faith.
But this work must be constant, methodical, with love. And there is no need to divide into parties: these are the Renovationists, and these are the Conservatives, we commemorate these, but these should be anathema. Not so long ago I found out that I was also ranked among the Renovationists ...
There is such a site Antimodernism.ru, where people carefully proofread my texts and criticize them. Well, why? We're supposed to be friends. And if you read your opponent's articles, read honestly, trying to discern the point he is saying, trying to understand.
You know, it seems to me that it is very important for a Christian to accustom his heart and mind to the presumption of kindness. Before judging another person, weighing his actions, somehow evaluating, trying them on for yourself, you need to proceed not from condemnation, that is, immediately from denial, but from an attitude of peacefulness and begin communication with an attempt to understand. And before condemning, you must first justify, find the truth, even, perhaps, in some things that you deeply dislike.
Once again, a person can be religious, but not a believer. And this experience is well known, you should always run away from it. As in the will that the Apostle John the Theologian left us: "Children, run away from idols."
Our faith, religion is honey, which is constantly candied. And each generation must break this crust in order to get to honey again and again. There can be no universal rite, forms or traditions that will be absolute.
At the Local Council of 1971, when the oaths were taken from the Old Believers, the following phrase was heard in the council's definition: "To recognize the rites of the Old Believers as equal salvation."
You see, the rite cannot be saving, it simply cannot. A rite is just some form in which we can put whatever we want, but a rite in itself cannot be saving, as well as some specific tradition in its cultural dimension, of course.
Because the tradition broad sense- this is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, Church Tradition. And the tradition, for example, Serbian, Romanian, old Russian, wearing some kind of kosovorotkas, for example, or praying according to some special rosary, performing bows, rules, and so on - all this should always be in some kind of reverent predenial.
It is very easy to turn into an idol both the theological system, and the theological language, and a set of some texts, and rituals, and rituals, and in this categoricalness of yours, it’s really, as you said, to throw the baby out with the water.
We have no other story
– In the Old Testament period, the religious national idea was nation-forming. The Almighty specially singled out a family, a clan, a nation for the storage of genuine knowledge about Him. But in Christ the knowledge of God became open to all peoples, He opened national borders. When He came to Jerusalem, many were waiting for Him as a national-religious hero-liberator. And He came to fulfill another mission, He brought humanity to a new relationship with God, supranational. And the first Christians - both Jews and Gentiles - had to realize this, that the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world, that everyone is now called to be not patriots of some country, but citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. But several centuries passed, and already churched humanity returned to religious-national-cultural ties again...
- This is a problem of biography, let's say, the biography of a particular people. It is impossible, for example, for Russians not to be Orthodox, I think. Because our people appeared together with Orthodoxy. We have no other history. This is true for the Bulgarians, and the French, and the British, and the Germans. There can be no other. And therefore, if we now lose faith, we will lose our national face.
That is why I think, for example, that for the Russian state – perhaps it will seem very categorical to you – it is very important to stop playing democracy, the equality of religions. The Russian people are Orthodox. Based on non-religious values, we cannot substantiate this, but there is no other way to live.
There is, of course, a fine line, it is possible to reach idolatry here, and there have already been such experiments in history. But it seems to me that for the Bulgarians, for the Russians, for the Greeks there is only one way - our faith. Orthodoxy is the source of our law, our statehood, the dogma of our Church, the moral theology of our Church, the Divine revelations that we keep in these forms. Well, this, of course, is a topic for a separate discussion.
labor of love
– In your articles, essays, sermons, you talk so much about the fact that this is the main thing in Christianity - the law of love, and if love disappears from this entire complex system of life - church, historical, dogmatic - then nothing remains at all. One of your works is called “Love and Emptiness”…
- Love is a gift. It cannot be earned, it cannot be achieved by any of our efforts. And I think that our task is simply to learn to love. In the family, in society, in the Church, first of all, we must first learn a little, very simple things - just courtesies.
For example, our people often do not greet each other. It is believed that saying hello several times to one person in a day is somehow redundant, to put it mildly. You should start with simple things: learn to be kind, try to be kind, behave like kind people.
When I serve the Liturgy, I really like the moment when the priest breathes a veil over the transferred Gifts. At first I thought: “What kind of procedure is this? Why is it necessary to winnow?
Of course, there are historical justifications for this action, but for me, for example, this image is associated with something childish. You know, when kids don't know how to say something and they point with their hands. So we show with gestures: “Do it like that! Lord, send the Holy Spirit! I don’t know how it happens, I don’t know how You do it, Lord, but I ask You to do it.”
So it is in our feat... Of course, it is difficult to call it a feat, just our labor of love. The Apostle Paul uses this phrase all the time: "The labor of love." Here we must work, behave, at least, as people behave who love each other, respect each other.
You need to start with simple things - with friendship, kindness, a sense of duty, responsibility, mutual respect. They asked you to do something - do it right. If you are responsible for some organization, for a society, for a family, do it properly. And this labor of love, maybe one day will turn into love.
It is important for us to avoid such a “pink Christianity”, when we take our emotional excitement for love and kindness. The world is tragic. And we are far from good people.
Here I have three brothers. Probably, people who have brothers and sisters will agree with me that at least once in your life you had a desire to deal with them. Yes, from time to time we have a desire to kill someone, to deal with someone. We are just people, the way we are. But the Lord trusts us to live a worthy life, and we should not neglect such simple things like a sense of duty, respect.
It seems to me that any normal family should be based not on love, not on emotions, but simply on a sense of duty. You are a man, you are at the origin of the family, you must take care of your wife, you must take care of your children, because you carry very important mission and therefore you are a respected person.
In our country, this category of “respected person” has now disappeared altogether. When I say “respected person”, they say to me: “You probably came from the Caucasus, right?” After all, a respected person is, for example, a priest, a teacher, a doctor, a person who has worked hard and earned respect. Every man who adequately raises his children, protects his woman, takes care of his parents is a respected person.
It is very simple, and you do not need any special feats, you do not need to go far, fall into some kind of euphoria. Live with dignity, in simplicity, work, do things with your own hands, build a family on a sense of duty and respect. Just respect each other, and then, if everything works out for you, if you are patient in this work, the Lord will send love. These are such simple but profound things that can be quite revealing. But if you have not experienced the simplest things, have not achieved them, you will never know more.
And the same is true for children. Korney Chukovsky made the following dedication to his "Crocodile": "To my esteemed children." You understand, "respectable children"! But children also need to be taught to respect their parents. They are not on their own, they are not servants, in a certain sense, for their parents.
I really liked in the old Russian literature that children addressed their parents by name and patronymic, and stood up in their presence. Quite simple things, but this must be learned and taught. For example, teach a child to be silent when adults are talking.
In my childhood, for example, if there was some kind of family holiday (and our family is just gigantic), the children were covered separately, they never listened to adult conversations. Interfering in conversations between adults was considered simply indecent.
And the modern child most often behaves as if he is the center of the universe, and everyone should pay attention to him. This is already wrong, everyone should know their place, the child - his place, the adult - his own. And everyone is called to show mutual respect, kindness, courtesy, courtesy. This is very important, without this foundation nothing will happen.
You can create yourself in love, comprehend some mystical energies, create some kind of synthesis in yourself, you will speak in tongues, but if you do not simply fight for kindness, then nothing will happen.
Anthony the Great wrote about this. You can find his words in the “Philokalia”: yes, you can pray, but if you don’t fight for kindness, if you don’t try to be meek and humble, nothing will happen. You will be neither meek nor humble. You will pray, but you will remain an evil person. What a horror, you understand. You can be religious, prayerful, even work miracles, and inside you will be these frogs.
Being an adult hurts
- After all, love always replaces something, but there is a feeling of emptiness. Or is it just a feeling? What is emptiness? Here in Western ascetic theology, there is the concept of “dark night”, when, it seems, there is complete darkness in general, and you are alone.
Once upon a time, Pope John Paul II issued an appeal to specialists in moral theology, that's how we would do it. After all, theologians are respected people, they need to be supported, they need to be carried in their arms, they should live in our houses, not worry about anything, just write books, research various issues, and not wander around the editorial offices to bargain for a penny …
Everything is very difficult topics. One thing I will say is that the Lord allows us to be surrounded by this darkness, and we need to learn to live with it and accept it courageously. Being an adult hurts, but you have to get used to the pain.
If you want to be an adult, get used to the pain. To the pain of parting, betrayal, separation, loneliness. In a family, you can be respected, and you will try to respect others, be friends, and still there will be some kind of anguish inside. Inexplicably. Sometimes the Lord simply allows this state, which can last for years.
I knew such people, very good ones, who did not stop depression, but they learned to live with it, and accept this pain with gratitude. I don’t know why this is given, you just need to trust God. Since the Lord gives it to me, if the stars are lit, it means that someone needs it. And here the same thing: nothing, we will survive, we will survive ...
I remember such an anecdote... Maybe it's not quite appropriate here, maybe it's more an illustration of the Belarusian character... The Nazis grabbed three partisans - a Russian, a Ukrainian and a Belarusian, and hanged them. In the morning they go out - two have died, and the Belarusian hangs and looks around with one eye. They say: "Are you alive?" He says, “Well, yes. Trochy squeezed, and then got used to it. That is, crushed, and then got used to it. That is how we live.
Yes, it happens that it will crush, but there is no need to panic. The Lord allows us serious sorrows, serious trials - nothing terrible. Our ancestors endured much more.
Imagine life without novocaine, without painkillers, even without toilet paper, sorry, without shampoos, but they lived like that, normally, nothing. They carried buckets, washed them on the river and were happy, and there were respected people who lived a decent life. With pain, with sore hands, with some incurable diseases. I have met people who courageously endure this pain more than once. I bow before them.
And now we live very well. My God, you're depressed! But don't go hungry, though. Fillings in all teeth and you drive to work by car, and dress well, not cold. Well, nothing. Depression is also a reason for me to get upset.
Not heroism, but asceticism
“Now that the war is going on nearby, hatred has spread so rapidly in the air. Until recently, everyone was, if not close friends, but neighbors, and now it seems to many that there are enemies all around ...
You know, it's easier to be evil. Much easier. It's very easy to be offended. People who take this position, stick to this style, keep their posture so reverently, because it is very convenient. The main thing is laziness. Yes, it's all laziness, unfortunately. We have such a serious flaw, which was described by Father Sergius Bulgakov in the article "The Heroism of Asceticism."
Why do our people somehow die very easily? It's easy to say, give me some idea, I'll go right there, die for it, put my stomach in, put something else in, whatever. But here is the methodical, monotonous, patient work of many years - no, it is better not to. I'll do anything, just don't work. This is the problem that Father Sergei Bulgakov described about the intelligentsia, but we are all intellectuals around now.
There are two styles of life in society, two ideals (if these are ideals, of course) - heroism and asceticism. What we need now is not heroism, but asceticism: the patient building of our culture, our society. Do not go out to demonstrations, say: “Here, something is being destroyed there, somewhere someone is stealing.”
If you are a Christian, please be kind, you see, officials steal, become an official yourself. If you see that culture is collapsing, take care of culture, you see that there are problems on television or in science - don’t run away somewhere abroad, don’t go to live in Florence, where you will give out boats to the population, but work here.
But this work, as you understand, is monotonous, constant. As in science, for example, geniuses are rare, but everyone needs to do their long, long, tedious work, for which, maybe once you are mentioned somewhere in a scientific journal, but they are unlikely to be given a medal.
And you need to accustom yourself to this work, then there will be no time for all these endless accusations that someone owes something to someone ...
Here I live in Belarus, but it never occurred to any of the Belarusians to make a claim to Ukraine regarding Chernobyl nuclear power plant, say: "Well, you exploded, but it blew towards us." The whole of Belarus is simply terribly polluted, our vast arable land is simply not used due to the consequences of the accident.
We already have a poor country, a small one, there is no sea, no oceans, no mountains, nothing, but it never even occurred to anyone to say: “Here, Ukraine is to blame. Let's supply us with barrels of oranges." Not!
We must work hard and just learn to be friends, learn to respect each other. And I absolutely do not understand the anger that is present on both sides. This is completely incomprehensible to me. And I think it's just laziness.
And a Christian cannot be angry at all, one cannot harbor hatred. When I hear about some church schism, that someone calls to break away from the patriarchate, to anathematize, then I am horrified. Well, can we, the disciples of Christ, act like this, guided simply by hatred and resentment? It seems to me that this is wrong.
Although this is a very difficult question. And here one phrase will not do. I understand that here I am saying words, and to myself I am making endless reservations. And this is a difficult question.
But once again I say: if our people, I personally, and each of us, especially Christians, do not understand that many years, if not a hundred years of asceticism is necessary, our society will never get out of its problems. Never. We will all sit there, blaming others, blaming the authorities. Once a person is in power, then he is, by definition, bad.
Well, how is it? Let's raise children, students, let's make a career for them, help them get into power, bring up civic responsibility.
Recently, a lady with pain in her heart told me about how an architectural monument is dying in one of the small Russian towns. “Is that how it is, how did the authorities allow it?” But where do powers come from? Let's stand up and tell each other that a monument of architecture is dying.
But there are civilized methods: you can collect signatures, publish an article, make a photo report, declare it, raise funds, volunteers, and in the end just save this monument. Do not talk, do not throw mud at the governor or someone else, but do business.
Although I'm not making excuses for anyone, we all have our flaws, but you just need to learn how to do your own thing. Quietly, calmly, painstakingly doing a small deed. For some reason, I want gigantic feats, like in a fairy tale: a river poured out of one branch, and swans from the other. It is good to have such very useful sleeves, but our business is small. We must build at least a little bit, little by little, and everything will work out. Just set yourself up for work, for pain and gratitude. Like this.
Learn mutual humility
–I think you have a lot of faith in people.
I just trust. There is simply no way out. Well, who else to trust? What, hedgehogs, or what, to trust? There are people who exist, and we are not given others, and from nowhere, from Mars or from Jupiter, you cannot write others out, you cannot change them. Here they are, our contemporaries, with their problems, what they are, they are.
– Probably, you communicate a lot with Russian contemporaries, with Belarusian ones. Is there any difference in our communities, in church communities?
– You know, Russia is so different. When I come to Moscow, I set myself up specially. When you arrive in another country, you think: you haven’t spoken English for a long time, you need to restore the language, you need to at least tune in so that your mouth somehow gets used to it.
Here Muscovites (don't be offended) are a special people. You come to some other city - there are other people there, but Moscow is very different. I have many friends among educated, intelligent Muscovites, and I noticed that Muscovites are very categorical. And this distinguishes them from Belarusians, for example.
In Belarus, people are simpler, softer. Belarusians, strange as it may sound, are tolerant people - tolerant and calm. Sometimes it even seems that they are so phlegmatic or even indifferent. No, they are just very shy.
And Muscovites are quite categorical in their judgments, in accusations, and, probably, they overestimate their capabilities. But I love Muscovites very much. When I come to Moscow, many things have a very ionizing effect on me. Here you can talk about some interesting, complex, bold topics, which, for example, among my friends in Belarus, even sometimes will not arouse interest.
But, you know, we all need to learn mutual humility. But in general, among the Christians with whom I communicate in Moscow, in Belarus, in other parts of Russia, there are so many wonderful people. I like the expression "good Christian". Here I communicate with such people very often.
Every time I visit Moscow, new acquaintances appear, and most of them are good Christians. And here I have a source of optimism and hope, because there are many good Christians around. Just attentive people, caring. Unexpectedly caring, friendly and kind. And that's great!
I give my children in Sunday school one task, a simple spiritual exercise: get up in the morning, go brush your teeth, and as soon as you see yourself in the mirror, recognize who is standing there, you yourself say several times: “I am kind”, just remind yourself about it.
Because often, especially in the morning, people have such a fat, smoking, threatening mood. And if an ordinary person has his own modern style of life, Christians have responsibilities. Being kind is a duty.
And so we must set ourselves up every day, in spite of pain, sorrow, contrary, for example, to the completely justified right to be offended, be that as it may, to set ourselves up for kindness.
There is absolutely no such category in our Orthodox everyday life: somehow we don’t talk about kindness. Humility, obedience, meekness, non-possession, some other virtues are on everyone's lips. All these ascetic properties can settle in us, like birds, it would be where ...
We have a lot of birdhouses in the monastery, it's just awful, a whole forest of birdhouses. So, in order for the starlings to fly, we need birdhouses. In order for the Christian virtues - so refined, subtle - to settle down, for them there must be a birdhouse of elementary human breeding, culture, and honesty.
If this is not the case, then the birds will not fly to you. They circle around, find no shelter and fly away. So let's build birdhouses!
Video: Victor Aromshtam
The author of Pravmir, Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko), made such a shocking confession about how he delivers his speeches to an audience that 15 centuries ago, after such revelations, he would have been sent to an experienced old man for spiritual healing. This person is clearly under a very serious influence of demons.
In the photo: Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko) during one of his speechesArchimandrite allows the demon to speak through himself
Here is what Archimandrite Savva said in an interview with the Orthodoxy and the World portal: “Most often I go out to the audience, not knowing what I will say. And the moment I see people's faces, something happens and I say what is being said; I just let it speak through me. Therefore, the topics are unexpected, and I myself am interested to hear what I have to say. Just yesterday I was talking about the theological meaning of the film "Suicide Squad" with Jared Leto and I myself was surprised that I suddenly started talking about this film. And I think: “Oh, this is even interesting. Should I write it down, maybe?
Hegumen Ephraim (Vinogradov-Lakerbaya), who publishes his books under the pseudonym "Hegumen N", wrote a whole book about such people who themselves do not know what they say and what they write, and who are then surprised at what they wrote and said. It is called "What do UFOs, psychics, occultists, magicians want to "save" us from".
In this book, Abbot Ephraim talks about famous writers, painters and composers who worked under the dictation of demons. One of these contactees was Marina Tsvetaeva. This is how she described the process of her creativity: “Something, someone inhabits you, your hand is a performer - not you, but Togo that wants to be through you. “Togo” means demon.
Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko) says in his interview about the same thing that Tsvetaeva said: “I allow this speak through yourself. “To this” means to the demon who contacts the archimandrite. And from the revelations of the archimandrite it is clear that he is only a performer, that someone through him conveys his ideas to people. The speaker himself does not take any meaningful part in his speech. Archimandrite Savva is even sometimes surprised - what came out of him? Moreover, he even expresses a desire to write down what came out through him, since these thoughts are not his.
Sometimes when I'm writing an article, I understand something new about what I'm writing about. But at the same time, I don’t have such sensations that it is someone who conveys his thoughts to me, and that it is someone who writes through me. I have a feeling that my brain is analyzing the situation on the go, and that my brain comes to such conclusions as a result of the analysis. And I am not at all surprised at the conclusions that appear in my head while writing the article, just as I am not surprised at what I wrote. So I do not deny that the brain can produce something new while a person is speaking in writing or orally, but what happens to Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko) during his speeches goes beyond the normal process.
Hegumen Ephraim writes in his book about Marina Tsvetaeva: “In the work of Tsvetaeva, we can observe a slightly disguised atheistic, sinful orientation, which is generally characteristic of the work of contactees.”
In Archimandrite Savva, too, in his speeches and in his "Pravmirovsky" articles, there is an atheistic and sinful orientation. The God-fighting orientation is visible even in this latest interview. In one sentence, the archimandrite says that he is fighting with God, and also slanders the Old Testament righteous Jacob, calling him a theomachist: wrestled with Someone by the river, Israel the God-fighter. But let Archimandrite Savva not slander real Christians: their relationship with God is not a duel and not a struggle, but reverent veneration of the Creator and obedience to Him.
And here is how Archimandrite Savva describes the vestments Orthodox priests and how he evaluates their preaching: “Especially young people are sensitive to this. They see a strangely dressed man on the pulpit, who speaks pretentious nonsense. And they don't believe. And that's how they perceive a priest - like a cardboard fool" (this is taken from the same interview). It seems to me that a real Orthodox monk cannot call priests cardboard fools and say that they are strangely dressed and carry pretentious nonsense. These are the words of a demon, with which we were kindly informed by the portal "Orthodoxy and the World", which received a Russian government award "For a great contribution to spiritual and moral education" several years ago, and a resident of an Orthodox monastery.
This spring, Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko) said at the presentation of his book that it is necessary to idle talk, and that the rejection of idle talk is harmful, it can turn into depression for some people. This is a direct rebellion against the words of Christ, who said that for every idle word people will give an answer on the day of judgment, as well as a rebellion against the commandment of the holy fathers not to idle talk.
Also in the spring, this resident of the Belarusian monastery wrote in his “pravmirovskaya” article: “A normal person can be offended and should be offended.” Meanwhile, as Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) said, resentment stems from the lack of meekness and humility, as well as from self-price, which must be destroyed in oneself. That is, touchiness is a bad quality; people who are healthy in spirit do not have it.
And last spring, through Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko), atheistic propaganda of the 1920s suddenly emerged, which made it clear to attentive observers that this citizen had contact with an unclean spirit. After all, demons were behind the atheistic propaganda of the 1920s, and behind these words of the archimandrite. Maybe it was all said by the same demon. I quote here excerpts from the "Pravmirovsky" article by Archimandrite Savva and from the article of the magazine "The Atheist at the Machine" about the celebration of Easter by Christians.
This was written by the archimandrite:
“Breaking the fast is a real disaster for some families. People are terrified of the holiday. This is partly due to the fact that lenten abstinence is perceived not as a skill and a consciously set habit, but as shackles, a “concrete slab” that crushed, but for a while, and “we would stand for a day and hold out at night.” With such an attitude, indeed, the whole holiday will turn into a complete dressing, a selfless spree, and for some, a binge, when a person suddenly tries desperately to remember on Radonitsa: who are these people, where does this sofa come from, who covered me with a newspaper and did I have time, in in the end, to consecrate your Easter cakes?
And this was written by "The Atheist at the Machine":
“Kids are rolling red eggs, and fathers are already yelling songs. By evening, the whole village is buzzing, roaring. Windows are knocked out together with frames, doors from hinges. After the holiday, a rare house stands whole. Riots, fights, but not so much on the noses, but they break the ribs, turn the hands out of the nest. Baba beat how much in vain drunk, and then with a hangover. The wounded and the crippled are being taken to the hospital;
I will not give here all the examples of the wild statements of Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko) - he is a very prolific author and all the time spews terrible things that are incompatible with Christianity. Fully with his work can be found on the website of the portal "Orthodoxy and the World".
The Bes Leading the Archimandrite Stands for the New Christianity
In that latest interview there is a very interesting passage. Archimandrite Savva says that there is nothing to read the holy fathers - their texts are outdated, and they are harmful even to modern monks, and not to the laity. He calls on modern publicists and theologians to "create a language of evangelism that is understandable to a contemporary" and "to speak in normal modern Russian those experiences that make up the very essence of Christian life."
How can our modern publicists and theologians, mired in sins and passions, express the essence of Christianity? We all see the fruits of their experiments. A month ago, I read in full all the works of St. Anthony the Great and was shocked: everything that we hear in the Orthodox media and social networks completely contradicts what St. Anthony the Great said and taught. It is not real Christianity that is spreading over the Internet, but a fake, a fake! And Archimandrite Savva and the demon speaking through him call on pseudo-Orthodox publicists and theologians to multiply counterfeits of Christianity, so that not a single theme heard by the holy fathers is left without its antipode.
Archimandrite Lazar (Abashidze), at the end of the 20th century, either foresaw what will be happening with us now, or guessed from the initial signs where everything would come, but here is what he wrote about fake Christianity, which blossomed riotously before the end of the world : “The latest Christianity will take only a shell from the ancient one, while the content will imperceptibly be replaced by a new spirit, a different lifestyle, way of thinking and other values. Secularized Christianity, with clipped wings, is not only not afraid of the devil, but also will serve him: after all, the Antichrist will pretend to be Christ, the Messiah, the God-Man. The Devil, preparing the way for Antichrist, will be interested in spreading secular, lifeless, formal Christianity throughout the world, and even all religions will try to “make friends” with him. All religions recognize their "spiritual relationship" with Christianity, and will even admire the height of its teaching, the holiness of its moral requirements, the beauty of its symbolism, and so on. Many, even naive Christians themselves, will applaud, seeing such a respectful attitude of the world towards their faith, and with ardent enthusiasm, leaving their passions and spiritual ulcers to their mercy, will rush in a fit of carnal zeal to preach their secularized Christianity to the whole world. Scripture says about such preachers: “I did not send these prophets, but they themselves fled; I did not tell them, but they prophesied” (Jer. 23:21). Preaching a mundane “Christianity” adapted to the carnal will of fallen humanity, these “zealous heralds of the gospel word” will in fact lead the world away from Christ and incline it onto the path of Antichrist. But these preachers themselves will not notice it.”
In fact, the works of the holy fathers for true Christians do not become obsolete and do not even become boring. Here is what Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin) writes about what the true followers of Christ see in these works: “The creations of the holy fathers are revealed to a person gradually in accordance with his lifestyle and personal asceticism. As a person grows spiritually, he will always find something new in the holy fathers - something that was previously hidden from him. Therefore, the understanding of patristic works always remains an unfinished and unfinished process.
The mentors of Archimandrite Savva understood that he could end badly
In the same “Pravmirovsky” interview, the archimandrite, scolded by demons, said: “But until a certain age I had very difficult situations, because neither our late bishop nor our late rector shared my style, and it was very hard for me, painfully hard, and this went on for years. I even wonder how I survived in this situation at all, because I could not do anything with myself. How much they shamed me, denounced me ... Our bishop went out to preach, and everyone habitually looked at each other, because the topic was known: "The All-Church Struggle with the Pride of Father Savva." I'm a proud person, but I've come to terms with it. What can you do here?
But now the rector and the bishop, firmly standing on the precepts of the fathers, went into another world, and Archimandrite Savva blossomed into a riotous blossom to the death of himself and those around him.
Alla Tuchkova, journalist
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