For 12 years, Archpriest Fyodor Borodin has been the rector of the Moscow Church of the Holy Unmercenaries Kosma and Damian on Maroseyka. We asked him to tell us about what he was like to the faith and about the people who met along the way.
I'm lucky to have a godmother
- How did it happen that you, a person who grew up in Soviet times, came to faith?
I grew up in a family far from the Church. My father received holy baptism when I was already serving in the army, my mother was baptized in childhood, but until then she had no contact with spiritual life. I was lucky to have a godmother. On the website "Orthodoxy and World" there was an article "Childless mother". The heroine of this article, Vera Gorbacheva, is my godmother.
My father was a master of sports in sambo, he was very fond of physical labor and languished in his bureaucratic work in Metrostroy. My father was always ready to help someone when moving. He did it free of charge and with great joy, so that afterwards he could sit and have a sincere conversation. And then one day he helped some regular intelligent family that was moving to the second floor of our house, we lived in Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane. The father saw that there were icons in the family, and asked Vera Alekseevna to become the godmother of her children. I was 9 years old, my sister was 10.
Vera Alekseevna turned out to be a corrosive and stubborn godmother. She brought us a prayer book (wherever she got it at that time!) And showed us the prayers that need to be read in the morning and evening. Came a month later: "Fedya, are you reading?" I said yes. She looked at the book with the eyes of her teacher and said: “You're lying! The pages are as good as new, not folded. " I had to read.
She took us to the church, to her confessor, the famous Moscow priest Fr. Gennady Nefedov. We received communion twice a year. It was a completely different life, in no way connected with everyday life. For a very long time, these two lives went in parallel, without intersecting in any way. I joined the pioneers, was a member of the Komsomol. We did not treat it as something serious, for us it was a formality. Since I was not raised in the faith since childhood, the contradiction that exists and is understandable to me now did not look like a contradiction then. It seemed natural to me to hide faith inside myself, like a cross under a shirt. I began to wear a cross from the age of twelve.
But I must say that the very situation in my family was conducive to the acquisition of faith, my father and mother are deeply cultured, well-read people. As a child, we were read a lot, taught us to read. For a child to fall in love with books, parents need to read aloud to him. I remember how my mother read to us, very young, "The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson", "Odyssey" in the translation of Gnedich, it was wonderful. In childhood he was very fond of Chekhov, Tolstoy. I read the biographies of Renaissance artists that I could get my hands on. He loved art albums, books about Ancient Greece and Egypt.
I remember that my father read the Bible, just like literary work... He knew Russian literature very well, wrote poetry, plays, one of them was even staged at the Taganka Theater. At home we often, almost every day, were artists, musicians, poets. I remember that Zhanna Bichevskaya, the sculptor Pologov, the artist Kocheyshvili and his wife Leah Akhedzhakova came to us for a while young Limonov, who had just arrived from Kharkov at that time.
For Soviet times, large families were a rarity, how did you feel then and how do you assess your childhood now?
I am grateful to my parents that there were three of us. As an adult, I learned that my mother had to withstand a fierce attack not only from all relatives, but also from doctors in order to give birth to me. My sister and I are just the same, my brother is nine years younger than me, to defend his birth, my mother had to go through a real war. Then even a family with two children was a rarity, let alone three. We lived, to put it mildly, not rich, but my childhood was happy.
Parents took care of us. The parents spent their vacations and vacations with us. My father went hiking with us. I remember how he sledged us along Tverskoy Boulevard. And he also told us fairy tales, he himself called them fables, multi-part, multi-pass, and if someone passed by, he would definitely stop to listen. For its time, our family was very unconventional. My father died in 1990, I really miss him. Unfortunately, when I was 12 years old, my parents broke up and this for me is a wound that still hurts. And every time someone of my acquaintances divorces, I look at this misfortune through the eyes of a child and it hurts again.
Difficult school
I was lucky with the school. I studied at the 31st special school, now it is gymnasium No. 1520. Children and grandchildren of high-ranking people of the country, members of the Politburo, studied in the class. I got to this school just at the place of residence, I was lucky. I was also lucky to have a history teacher. Unfortunately, he taught with us for only one year, but in many of my classmates he managed to awaken a taste for intellectual work. Recently I was visiting a friend of my childhood, with whom I studied in parallel classes, your constant author Andrey Desnitsky. And he admitted that his passion for antiquity began from school, from this history teacher.
Elena Konstantinovna Ivanova, a literature teacher, also played an important role in my life. This is a very dear person for me, thank God, she is alive and well and sometimes comes to our church. She knew how to turn her subject into a window from the Soviet rectilinear world into completely different problems and a different depth.
From Icon to Faith
My parents loved art and were well versed in it. With their help, I discovered the Russian icon. And in many respects the awareness of myself as a believer, the transition to this part of my life happened precisely through the knowledge of the beauty and greatness of the icon.
I went to art school, I wanted to be an artist. But when I realized how perfect the art of the Russian icon is, I wanted to know more about the faith that this art gives birth to. From my experience, I can say that bringing up an artistic taste in a child brings him closer to faith.
After school, I entered an art school, then an institute, but did not enter, and worked as an artist in a metro depot, drew posters, wall newspapers, numbers. All these signs in the metro station "Stop of the eighth carriage" are painfully familiar to me. And then he joined the army. My father believed that one must definitely serve. I told him then: "Dad, what if to Afghanistan?" "Griboyedov served there, and you are not ashamed" - was his answer.
Miraculously, I did not get to Afghanistan. Before the army, I underwent parachute training at DOSAAF. Our entire group was called up at the same time. We arrived at the gathering place. We got on the bus. An officer came up and counted. There are 36 of us, but you need 35. "Borodin - come out." My last name was first on the list, there was no one on "a". Then, by correspondence, I learned that everyone ended up in training in Fergana, and then in Afghanistan. The Lord saved me. After all, even if he even returned, but killed someone, he could not become a priest according to the canons.
Comrade Captain, bring back the Gospel!
- What did the service in the army give you? Is army service necessary now, is it useful?
I believe that one should serve if the child is healthy. In the army, there is a sharp maturation. The young man has to learn to take responsibility and make decisions. The very same parents with such a son will be calmer and safer to enter old age. If something is wrong with health, then only then it is necessary to save from the army. Hazing? When I served, the hazing was terrible. Of course, it is scary to send a child to the army then and now. You have to pray. My elder is serving now. We pray with the whole family.
Both in the army and in the last grades of school, as a believer, I had to keep a tight line. In the 9-10th grade, I already clearly understood that I was different and live by different laws, there are things that I will not do. Served in the Airborne Forces, sergeant. I was the only believer in the company, I had to defend myself. They "calculated" me in the dining room, realized that I do not eat oil during fasting, I give it to someone.
Then they found the Gospel. It was 1987. Then my mother worked in the baptismal hall of the Yelokhovsky Cathedral, and the priests, who themselves were not allowed, asked her to conduct at least a short catechesis, at least 40 minutes to talk about faith. But what is confession without the Gospel? And my mother rewrote the Book several times at night. She let me read for a while with a return. These handwritten texts, as in ancient times, were read by many people. And then with the blessing of Fr. Kirill Pavlova's mother became a manufacturer and distributor of spiritual literature.
Bound photocopies in plain cover - St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, letters from Ambrose of Optina and other books. People who entered our house through acquaintances secretly and fearfully took them in their hands, holding their breath, and carried them away like a great treasure. Chernyakhovsky Street, 15 - for many of today's bishops, archimandrites and archpriests, their theological libraries began there. Such a handwritten Gospel was given to me by my mother in the army.
The company commander found the Gospel from me, took it away, locked it in his safe, in order to return the book, I opened his safe. "Righteous" theft! The company officer pushed me to the floor, kneeling on my chest: "Did you take the book?" I answered: "She is mine, Comrade Captain!" When at the end of the term there was some kind of freedom, I went into the woods to pray.
By the way, when I entered the seminary, I learned that they did not take documents from those who did not serve in the army. When it began to float in the air that the Churches would soon return the churches, the recruitment to the seminary increased. On our parallel there were four classes, and there was only one applicant who did not serve in the army. Firstly, becoming a priest at 22 is not only a great responsibility, but also a risk. Secondly, how can you serve the heavenly Fatherland if you have not served the earthly one?
It used to be believed that if you did not serve in the army, then something is wrong with your conscience or with your head. Then, military service is, of course, a matter of discipline and growing up. I believe that the army is absolutely necessary.
Father's tricks
- What is the main thing for you in family life? What is the role of the father? How did your parents' example help you?
We have six sons and a daughter. The eldest, twenty, has recently left to serve in the army, and the youngest is a year old. Our marriage is soon 22 years old. The example of my parents helps me, I repeat, we were engaged. It was a rarity in those years. Then the adults lived their own lives, my friends spent their holidays in pioneer camps, and Sundays - with grandmothers, their parents existed according to the principle of "TV-slippers-newspaper", and they have been studying me since childhood, so I have both taste and joy for this.
Working with children is not a heavy duty for me. I understand that this is a time that should not be missed. Following the example of my father, I tell my children serial fairy tales.
- Is there something that you did not know about fatherhood, and that you only learned from your own experience?
It seems to me that every child requires a heart. And not divided by the number of children, but - total. This bond must never be broken, it must remain. You must periodically reunite with each of them. This can be once a year or every six months or once a month. If you feel that something has begun to "crack" in the relationship, that the child is growing and moving away, you need to find time to be with him.
This is what I understood.
And I also realized that all children are very different, that it is impossible to approach them with one measure, with one set of requirements. What is elementary for one is very difficult for another. What is open to one from childhood, to that of another must grow. We, of course, very much interfere with the children with our pride, our ideas about what they should be.
- When there are more children, don't you pin such hopes on one person, are they evenly distributed?
You know, I have an amazing wife, she has every child as one. Tracked, comprehended, well-groomed. She is very good at it, despite the fact that she grew up virtually without a father and mother. My wife's father left the family when she was three years old, my mother tried to build her personal life and gave her daughter to her grandmother and uncle for a long time. I can say that in this sense, my wife is an absolutely clear miracle. A woman who did not see how people live in a family, did not have any behavioral scenarios, by the grace of God became a good wife and mother. In many matters, she understands children much more subtly and deeper than I do. I admire her. But what an inner feat it cost her, only the Lord knows.
In the sacrament of the wedding, they ask for gifts for the upbringing of children. If a person accepts them and works, then God will replenish everything that people did not give. For me, my wife is an example of the fact that all that is God-given in a person can gracefully sprout, and everything will work out, even if it seemed that it was impossible.
Country Maroseyka
- What role did the church of St. Nicholas in Klenniki play in your life?
I was very lucky that the first church I got to was the church of St. Nicholas in Kleniki. This is the grace of God to me. I served there as a deacon for six months, and then, as a priest for three years, I served in parallel in two churches on Maroseyka.
In the church of St. Nicholas, then and now everything was imbued with the spirit of Fr. Sergius and Fr. Alexy Mechevs, there were shrines, things from their hands. I found the daughters of Father Sergiy Mechev, the granddaughters of Father Alexy. We went to the grave of Father Alexei at the German cemetery, then the relics were transferred to the church.
Irina Sergeevna Mecheva - a person who lived incredibly difficult life full of hardships and labors. She described her working day to us, as in comparison with her I live on constant vacation. This woman had time for everything and kept the sharpest mind until last day... And the other sister, Elizaveta Sergeevna, was outwardly very similar to Father Sergius, just a copy. When we looked at her, we saw a photograph of him come to life, these large wide-set eyes, and even the expression on his face.
My mentor was Father Alexander Kulikov, a true bearer of the Marosei tradition, wise, humble, loving, when necessary - strict. A man who lived and breathed worship. An amazing confessor is absolutely amazing.
Leave everything and serve God
- What is the difference between the time you started serving and now?
Then there was such an impulse - to leave everything and serve God. This is typical of our entire generation. Nowadays, there are no so many inspired young people. But there is great amount children who grew up at the temple.
- They're not leaving? By at least- come back?
Of course, someone leaves, but there are almost no people who would break with the Church. There are those who are attracted by life, sucked in, but they sometimes appear. In our church there is a group of so-called “veterans of the Sunday school,” there are about twenty of them, sometimes more.
- What hopes from those years did not come true? What happened differently than you saw then?
It seemed to us then that the Bolshevik-communist lie had fallen, and soon Russia would become Orthodox again. We were not ready for the possibility of a new lie. Of course, we talked about this, but we believed that it would not be so. It turned out that everything is much more complicated than it seemed then.
Cosma and Damian
- Tell us about the parishioners of the Church of Kosma and Damian
In the center of Moscow, there are few inhabitants, but there are a lot of churches. There are practically no parishioners “at their place of residence”, 3-4%, no more. Most come from residential areas. It turned out that many of my classmates became parishioners of our church.
The peculiarity of our church is that we have a lot of children, many large families and every Sunday about half of the temple is children. It happened so.
- And before there were only grandmothers?
When a lot of children appeared, grandmothers left now we have few of them. This is the result of the fact that we slightly adjusted the liturgical life to meet the expectations of mothers.
Imagine a mother is going to church with her child. First by bus, then by metro. In the church there is no changing table, no place to feed the child, everyone is chuckling at mother and child, and hissing. But there is a room for a mother and a child in any hypermarket! This mother accomplished the feat, she herself came to church and brought the child, and the father will take her and will not confess her, say: "Come to the all-night vigil."
V Soviet times Sunday services were organized with the expectation of one non-family, childless person, usually an elderly person, and now this trend continues. Imagine a family with six people, where dad works hard all week. If you force him to come to the all-night vigil on Saturday, he may faint on Sunday in church. Yes, and he needs to rest on Saturday, things have accumulated at home. Of course, if dad is getting ready to take communion, then we ask him to come to the all-night vigil in the church next to his house. But the attitude towards mothers can be completely heartless. Every now and then you see some mother, whom the young priest chastises for being late.
The temple in the center of Moscow is not chosen according to the place of residence, but because the Lord has called here. If a person has come, then it means that we must deal with him and thank God that it was he who brought him to us.
Young cattle area
- Do you find a common language with the new generation?
It's not easy for me with them. In the Soviet Union, we were all alike, but the current ones are different. Each generation will now be very different from the previous one, but if you show them Christ, tell them about Him, then many will still believe, because the soul recognizes its Creator. It seems to me that it is important to be extremely sincere with young people. From any falsehood, they immediately close their ears forever. They also cannot stand an arrogant tone, they do not tolerate being condescended to. Modern teenager should feel that the priest respects him, ideally loves him. It's difficult. Sometimes they barely endure their own in a transitional age, but here - strangers, with words, hairstyles and negation.
And we also need to give them the opportunity to meet somewhere at the temple. If you give them a platform so that after your lesson they can just drink tea with each other, then they will become friends, it will be easier for them to stay at the temple, to keep in faith when they go to college. In our parish, as elsewhere, young people get to know each other, families are created. They get married in our church, we play weddings with the whole company.
But you need to understand that we cannot completely fix them. They all, even those who grew up in Orthodox families, everything is broken. Now there are only one or two normal families per church. Many have broken families, second or third marriages. And all this is reflected in the children.
Therefore, you need to be sincere with them, not hide yourself from them, not pretend to be anyone, but just love them. When young people feel that they are sincerely loved in the church, that they are expected here, they rejoice, begin to communicate, make friends. What is the problem? A child comes to Sunday school, he has been attending it for 10 years, he is stuffed with knowledge, and the opportunity to make friends with peers is not given, "came and gone."
And so he graduated from Sunday school, begins adolescence... Our boy was taken to church by his mother, or grandmother, and his father was not a church member! And the teenager says: "I will be like dad." Then he enters the institute, where all the unbelievers, and that's all, he forgot the temple. Therefore, the church should have a platform where young people can communicate. Young stock area. This, of course, is hard, you have to invest in it, it is very difficult with them, they do something wrong all the time, but it’s that O it!
Mom, everyone here is wrong
In the summer, the parishioners and I go out into the countryside, to the camps. A hundred people are going. We take children from the age of one month, from the age of ten we take them on kayaking trips. We spent with children role-playing games on the road for three years in a row, we have a wonderful parishioner who did this
What is the camp for? Children look at adults, imitate them, learn. In part, this is how it is possible to compensate for what is not received in the family. Now there are many broken families, most often, of course, the father is out of place.
- And what is happening with men now? Is the imbalance that has existed since Soviet times even out?
In our country, during the repressions, during the war, millions of men left their families. Whole generations have been raised by women. For example, my father and mother grew up without fathers. Maybe this is largely why they divorced, because in childhood they did not see what a family is. Even when people go to church, they carry all their wounds with them for a very long time.
The most common male problem is the inability to take responsibility.
We had one family in our parish, which, unfortunately, nevertheless fell apart. When the disorder began, for a very long time, sitting on a bench in the church, I tried to talk to my father. But from whatever side you come in, the wife was to blame. This is such a common occurrence. You start asking: "Is there anything your fault?" He says: "Yes, I was too soft!" - This is such a standard approach to family breakdown. And when I had exhausted all the arguments, I asked this person: "When did you get married, did you want to make your wife happy?" He looks at me in surprise and says: “I didn't even think about it. How interesting!".
Most families are created by people who do not understand that family is service to another person. Nobody wants to understand that the principle of Christian love is selflessness and service to another person. And when you need to make an effort, to overcome something in yourself, then the person simply leaves this problem. And then the children of these people come to the temple, we bring them to the camp, we have to make tremendous efforts to bring them to their senses to teach discipline.
One more case. We have a boy, he grew up in a family with a difficult dad. On the campaign, this boy managed to ruin relations with everyone. He came to his mother in the tent and said: “Mom, everyone is wrong here. I will never marry and will not come to the temple! " This is "Mom, everyone is wrong here!" has become our proverb. And there were almost 70 people on the trip!
But I will repeat once again that if a person sincerely comes to God, then God will help to see all this first, and then - to overcome. I, too, in my family and children, as in a mirror, my flaws are visible. I learned a lot in my family.
- If you did not become a priest, who could you become?
As a child, I wanted to be an artist. In the 9th grade I got to Archimandrite German (Krasilnikov), he was such a perspicacious confessor. He served in the village of Shemetovo behind the Lavra. When he saw us for the first time, he called us by our first names. And he said that my sister would enter the philological faculty of Moscow State University - and so it happened. And he told me that being an artist is not my way, but my way is different - the priesthood. I was so unprepared for this that I did not even think about these words. He returned to them already serving in the army. And so…
The Lord brought me to become a priest, and I cannot even put anything next to the service of the liturgy.
- Are you happy?
When I serve the liturgy, absolutely. These are the happiest moments in my life!
Archpriest Fyodor Borodin made a report at a closed pastoral seminar "Features and problems of the family life of priests." The video of the speech of the rector of the Church of the Holy Unmercenaries Kosma and Damian on Maroseyka got into the network and raised many questions. The editors publish the text adapted for printing.
- Your Eminence, dear fathers, brothers and sisters, unexpectedly to me, already now deceased, our dean, Father Dionisy Shishigin, offered and blessed me to make a report, I made it. This report, apparently, hit a sore spot, because over the past month more than 25 clergymen thanked me in writing, by phone, at the meeting for this report. This I did not expect at all. Today I was asked to repeat it. While here, I managed to read the comments of the mothers to him, for which I am very grateful to them. That is why I will change the text a little, add something. He is emotional.
When I wrote it, I was very worried. The topic is painful. I am still worried, for the second time in my life I speak before the bishops.
Not only will they not be condemned, but also praised for their honesty
I think that all those present will agree with me that never in the whole history, the Church has faced such a crisis in the families of clergy. We all know, although there is no available statistics, how many of our fellow practitioners in theological schools parted with their wives. Among my fellow practitioners in twenty-five years, about ten people were divorced and defrocked.
In our two-cleric church, the statistics are as follows: in 24 years, three clergymen have destroyed their families and lost their dignity. Several priests younger than me in terms of ordination, who have created their families before my eyes, have come to a complete family dead end, although they have not yet divorced.
Of course, it is clear that the main reason is sin, the terrible fall of the priest or his wife, or both of them. Mothers reproach me in the comments that I am confusing the effect and the reason, that I do not indicate this. I'm just not talking about it. It goes without saying. The source of divorce is sin, and everything else is just an excuse.
If we still talk about the reasons, then the main one is the general crisis of the family, as Vladyka Anthony said in his previous report. Many of us were brought up in single-parent families with divorced parents - there is no experience, there are no behavioral scenarios for serving a spouse, for settling family conflicts, parenting.
We, our wives and children, like everyone else, experience tremendous anti-family pressure: the heroes of news and films, articles and social networks fornicate, cheat, divorce and abandon children. Even the head of state is divorced in our country. live- It is difficult to imagine a more severe blow to the institution of the family. All this constant background of life tempts a person. Our children spend in this information noise, where divorce and fornication have become a variant of the norm, much more time than in communication with their parents. This forms a tolerance for sin, unfortunately, as something that is already so abundant that it is already pointless to fight with it.
Anyone, a former priest, too, who left his family, through the Internet, can easily find a community like him. In this community, he will not only not be judged, but also praised for his honesty. Thus, the barrier of public censure was broken, which earlier could have kept the family of clergy from disintegration during the crisis. These external reasons... It is impossible to eliminate them. They can be resisted only by constant work, prayer and deepening into your spiritual life. Building up your home church, heartfelt communication, speaking out all the problems and disagreements that arise.
The priest's children grow up without a father, and the wife turned to the wall and roars
But this crisis of the families of clergy also has our church, internal, reasons that can and must be overcome. Firstly, this is the lack of free time among the clergy, first of all, the absence of at least two normal days off for many.
The working day of a priest is not standardized. Often he leaves home early in the morning, while his wife and children are still asleep; returns in the evening after service, confession and conversations with people, when his children are already asleep. The working day, which includes the duty in the temple, turns into a 12-hour day.
Mandatory watch, which in itself, in combination with a series of services, is very difficult to combine with weekends (you just need to sit down and look at the clergy's weekly schedule). It often does not leave an opportunity for visiting patients at home on these days and for performing other extra-temple requirements and obediences. They have to be rescheduled over the weekend.
All clerics are subject to extra-temple obedience. Often for the abbot, this is a service in a prison or a meeting of those responsible, teaching in spiritual educational institutions and so on - are an annoying factor that he simply ignores.
The cleric has to change with the serving brethren and compensate for the replacement again at the expense of days off.
There are priests who carry out administrative service in the structures of the patriarchate and vicariates, answer letters, and work as censors in the publishing council. Having worked five days on weekdays, they begin Saturdays and Sundays, which for any clergyman are days of joy, but also of maximum load. Such clerics never have days off.
I can give an example of refresher courses. With the blessing of the hierarchy, I went to the first call, which was held in the Novospassky monastery. The schedule was as follows: five days a week from 9 am to 6 pm, the sixth day - Saturday - until three days. Obviously, the schedule was drawn up by some monk, to whom the Vladyka, the abbot of the monastery gave the following obedience: "Make a schedule." By the end of two months of school, my wife was in a terrible state!
Such an exhausting schedule is catastrophically dangerous for any person, but if a monastic risks only his own health, then a family priest risks his family.
Yes, we all took an oath, we will do everything that we will be blessed, unconditionally. We, if necessary, will get sick and die in these obediences, we are, of course, ready for this. But divine grace, always “weak, healing and impoverished, replenishing,” was not accepted by wives and children in our ordination. They may not be able to stand it.
On his only day off, the priest simply sleeps and wakes up, in fact on that day he is also absent from the family. So my friend, a priest, has six children and one day off. His wife, our former parishioner, tearfully tells me: “Children grow up without a father, as if he were in prison or in a war. We don't see him at all, he sleeps on weekends. " I will repeat the key phrase: "Children grow up without a father." This is about children, not about the father, about their fate, and not about the fate of a priest.
And the wife is at home, she is tired of children and household chores, many of which had to be solved for a long time. Majority modern girls not even ready for three children, either physically or mentally. What about families with five, six and eight children?
The husband comes and falls on the bed exhausted. There are no domestic helpers, most of the grandparents modern families also no. Solve the issue with doctors and teachers, take to school, pick up from it, three parenting meetings in a week, do your homework and cook food for big family... This to the dentist, this to the orthopedist, this to the speech therapist, and all this with a baby in her arms or a pregnant woman - and all without the help of her husband. This is the reality of a large urban priestly family. Fatigue, irritation, resentment, disappointment accumulate.
I know a priest whose wife once just lay down and stopped doing anything, she could not get up - she turned to the wall and roared, no strength. There was a mental breakdown. Children run around, father has to go to church, no one has canceled cases. The irritated abbot is already calling, he does not want to hear anything, because he has only one child, he does not understand.
And the priest leaves the family for a successful project
What consequences does this have for the cleric's family? Catastrophic. Joint prayer stops, that is, the most important thing disappears, in which it is realized house church, neither the wife nor the children pray with the father almost never. I repeat, if he lives far from the temple, he leaves when the children are asleep and arrives when they are asleep. The priest's family most days of the week does not have the main thing that is in ordinary church families: common prayer.
The most terrible consequence such a work schedule is the lack of communication with the wife and children, which nothing can replace. Year after year, moving away from his wife, a priest may come to the destruction of the cordial connection with his wife, on which, above all, the whole family rests. Often the situation is aggravated by the fact that at the parish the priest is surrounded by reverence and obedience, but at home everything is not so, and they no longer obey him. We can say that parish life is a successful project, where everything worked out for him, and the family is unsuccessful, because he cannot solve it there. And the priest leaves the family further and further into a successful project, where he is on the podium in the rays of glory, and everything worked out for him.
But after all his future wife did not marry Father John, but Vanya, she fell in love with just a person. It changes, it changes. A family is two people in constant development and change, and not only priestly family, any. In order to cope with this, you need to talk and communicate a lot, spend time together, do some things together, but this does not happen, and the relationship begins to break down, for which there are a huge number of examples. Relations with children suffer the hardest, they cannot be built without sharing time with the father, without general games and joyful things that are interesting to children - it is impossible, this is the law.
Let's remember the prophet Samuel, the Lord revealed to him his will for the whole nation, and the children grew up to be worthless. A reason other than them free will, there can be only one - the lack of joint time. Even for the family of the great prophet, this law works, what to say about us sinners.
We all know that the cordial, I emphasize, it is the cordial connection with the baby that is built through physical contact. If dad does not take the child in his arms every day, does not squeeze and kiss him, this close connection will not exist. The part that should be laid down in infancy, it is born through affection. If the father cannot do this due to his workload, this connection will not exist, and it will be even more difficult to build it further.
“We don't pray together with dad. We have breakfast, lunch and almost always have dinner separately. Lessons and school without him. On Sundays, the Pope is not at all. " Mother and children in the church closest to home, neither talk to their father, nor listen to a fairy tale, nor a book, this happens extremely rarely. Even if a cleric has two full days off, they never coincide with the weekend of schoolchildren, since they fall on weekdays (this is not a solvable problem, I understand, but this must also be taken into account).
The priest almost cannot go somewhere with the children to rest. In many dioceses, leave is never given for a month. In Moscow it is given, thank God! In many dioceses, two weeks and then another week, or just two weeks. Even if you have a benefactor who will pay you a trip to the sea in order for you to have a rest, and your wife has a rest, you will not have time to rest during this time.
And he hears: "Divorce, sacrifice your family"
A priest from one, rather large, Central Russian metropolitanate says to me: “Not only are they given me only two weeks, I still have to justify myself, as for a crime, that I am leaving somewhere for these two weeks. They can call me at any moment. " Moreover, in this diocese, when a priest comes to the bishop and says: "I have problems with my wife." He hears one standard answer, the meaning of which is to get a divorce. This is the result. Why? Because the answer is: sacrifice your family, the main thing is the clergy. You have to sacrifice them, it’s bad, but it’s true.
I have no words! Instead of healing, the situation is driven even further.
Separate household duties, separate divine services, raising children without a father - what awaits such a family? The worst thing happens - the family ceases to be a joint activity, it simply ceases in fact and, accordingly, a source of joint joy.
In the absence of regular joyful interesting communication, with the constant absence of the father at home, with his exhaustion and fatigue, with the tension of his relationship with the mother, which the children unmistakably feel, with the impoverishment of love between them, the rupture of the heart connection with the adolescent child is almost inevitable. As a result, the rejection of the father by the end of the transitional age and most often with a departure from the faith and the church.
De-churched priests are a terrible temptation for our parishioners. Just like mothers, Vladyka, you are absolutely right. Everything that the father preaches is questioned. If the father failed to build small church that he is talking there from the pulpit, we will still hear. This temptation can turn so many young people away from the church, nullify all our youth work simply by the number. If I meet with the son of a priest who says: “Everyone is lying to you, I know from my father,” it is useless to preach further. We remember how many priests became revolutionaries.
If a wife has lived in poverty for 20 years, she may lose faith in the Church.
The second reason is our internal, internal church, much less terrible, but also very painful. All this is happening against the background of constant lack of money, which does not allow us to quickly resolve many issues. You can't fix a car, there is no money for convenient doctors without a queue, tutors, clubs and sections are often not available. You cannot enter the institute without tutors now. The larger the family a cleric has, the more acute this issue is.
Recently I talked with one priest with many children, nine children, I asked him about the salary, he said: “Like everyone else. Can't the abbot, who has two children, just count his expenses on children and multiply by five? Add salary, what is he waiting for? When the cleric's mother fails and begins mental disorder, or when will she lose faith in the church? "
You see, if a priest's wife has been living in such an exhausting humiliating poverty for 20 years, she may lose faith in the Church, she will say: “You are preaching to us that this is a community of love. Where?" Recently, the rector raised his salary from 30 to 50. What is a family of 11 people for 50 thousand in Moscow - it's just ridiculous, do you understand? Funny. They have nowhere to take money, now they don’t give money for demands.
We all go, give communion to elderly people who once went to our church, there you will still leave money, because they have nothing to buy medicine with. If every three or four months you sanctify something, and they give you something, that's all. Gone are the 90s, when they gave money for religious services, now there is practically no such thing. Maybe someone else has a different statistic, I have one.
What is he waiting for? When will a priest get drunk or close into complete cynicism? And there are a lot of them. Why do we have such ruthless indifference to large families? Humiliating, not even poverty, but poverty - this is how many clerics with many children now live. You can endure it for a year, two, ten, but not all your life.
It is also very important that the children of priests do not want to live like this. I have heard many times from the daughters of priests: “I will not marry a seminarian, because, firstly, I don’t want my husband to be transferred. Okay, still in Moscow, another metro station, but if you serve in some big city Russian, who is united with the diocese, and the husband was taken and transferred 400 km or 300 km away. The school is here, and the husband is there, there are no roads. I don’t want me not to see you. ”
Even the late Patriarch Alexy II repeatedly pointed out at diocesan meetings that a cleric should not have more than two days off, but it can be done so that there should not be less than two days off. Strictly monitor family clergy, especially clergy with many children, to exempt, if the priest has more than five children, from any additional extra-temple obediences, to monitor the salary. You can pay from the arrival of an au pair, cook or nanny for such a family, or find volunteer helpers on a charitable basis.
My friend, the abbot, has one adult son, and his cleric has seven children. At some point, the latter said: "To keep my family, I need two months of vacation." And the abbot unofficially lets him go, himself remaining almost without rest. Honor and praise to such a person, this is mercy. Unfortunately, this phenomenon remains an exception.
He consoled mother for two hours, gave money for ice cream - and this saved the family
What could be suggested? It is necessary to work with seminarians. When I graduated from seminary in 1992, most of my fellow practitioners were chaste, they did not know what a woman was, and they approached the building of a family on a patristic basis. It's different now.
About 7-8 years ago, I was talking with one seminarian, then with another, I came across completely discouraging information that many seminarians (this is in the Moscow Theological Seminary!) Believe that only mother should be virgin before marriage, and a priest , a seminarian can afford a connection. That's it, you see. Of course, this cannot but affect his future family life with great sorrows. We need to talk about this, it needs to be corrected.
What else can you suggest? Lord, I'm sorry, you are blessed, I suggest. It seems to me that the bishop should meet separately with the wives of the priests, and without spouses, and ask questions. In parts, and not all at once, because if this is a hall in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, then no one will get up and say nothing. We need to meet and ask what the problems are, talk, console, strengthen.
A priest friend of mine 15 years ago had a huge number of extra-temple obediences - the restoration of three churches on it. At a certain moment, his wife said: “That's it, I can't take it anymore,” and went to Vladyka Arseny. I asked her later: "Well, and how?" She says joyfully: “Vladyka pushed back the chair, leaned his elbows, looked at me attentively, smiled and said:“ Come on, tell me. ” For a long time, two hours, there is a queue of those who are registered, and he talked to me, consoled me, strengthened, explained, then asked: "Do you like ice cream?" - "Yes". And he gave me money for ice cream. "
He brought her out of the impasse in which she was. He took off part of her obediences from her husband. In this family, the problem was not lack of money, but in the complete absence of joint time between the priest and his wife and children.
She came out completely elated. Here is an archpastoral conversation with a woman, with a mother, who was on the verge of breaking up with her husband. In time if you pick it up. This family still exists today. He is a wonderful priest, rector of a large Moscow church. Vladyka Arseny simply saved her with this conversation.
I am not familiar with the practice of rural parishes, I am talking about urban ones - it is important to make sure that clerics have days off. What can be done? You can just put together a list and analyze. Moreover, one should ask not the abbots, but the clergy themselves, because the abbots can overlook and ignore many things.
Look, call the rector and say: “Please tell me why this priest was here this week without days off, and that week he had only one day off. What are you waiting for?". Moreover, it is necessary to convince and force the abbots to consider non-temple obedience, for example, teaching at St. Tikhon's University, as a working day. We all know many cases when the abbot does not want to admit it, he needs the priest to serve, he says: “These are your problems. Do you want to teach? Go on weekends and that's it. "
Provide some privileges to clergymen with five or more children. What benefits can these be? Exemption from duty in the temple. Trust me, if a priest has five or six children, he will not rest this time, he will spin like a squirrel in a wheel.
Exemption from certain extra-divine obediences. To have these days off.
Organization of tangible material and household help for large families on a regular basis.
I can offer the following criterion: if, after passing the transitional age, all your children go to church, and are ready to confess even with you when there is no other opportunity, and even mother is ready to do it when there is no other opportunity, as an exception, that is, she continues to trust you as a priest, only then will it be possible to exhale and start taking care of the grandchildren.
Before that, you can't breathe out, because those years that we spent without communication with children, they can shoot at 17 and 20 years old. It seems to me that if we do not take some measures, in a few years we will have not just a wave, but a tsunami of divorces in the families of clergymen, or extinguished families, you can call it that, when there is no joy, they just live together, because otherwise he will lose his place and will have nothing to support his family. What can such a priest teach his parishioners? Unclear.
Exempt from obedience for family reasons
I had such a case, I'm sorry, I'll tell you about myself. When my wife gave birth to her seventh child (I now have eight), she had a blood clot on her leg, it did not need to be operated on, he did not threaten the heart, and there was no way. The wife is lying, there are no grandmothers, no grandfathers, no helpers. Thank God, I had two weeks of vacation left, which I thought of for childbirth. Then the fathers let me go a little. She could not walk, she could not stand up at all, there was such pain. Kitchen, lessons - everything is on me. She lies with the baby, everything else is on me. When I had this problem with my wife, I was still carrying out obedience in the patriarchate. All the rest I could bear, and this, I feel, I can no longer.
I went to Vladyka Arseny. It was funny enough, I'll tell you about it. I came, solved the parish questions and said: "May I have a personal question?" He says, "Yes." I begin to tell how I live: this, that, that, (besides, I had one son who was seriously ill and a separate adult had to deal with him all the time, but this is impossible). The Lord strains, looks at me like that, clenches his hands and says: "What do you want?" I say, "Please release me from my obedience to the canonical commission." He's like, “Huh! Certainly go".
Perhaps he thought that I would ask for the state, because from the situation I described, he has such eyes - he did not know how I live. You see, no one knew, and no one should know. But he got into the situation, said: "Please."
For the only time in 25 diocesan meetings that I attended as a priest, I heard the words "such and such is released from obedience early for family reasons." And that was about me. Before the expiration of three years of obedience, I was released. I am infinitely grateful to Vladyka for this. I don’t know if I could withstand that load and not break. If you have serious problems, go to him, he will listen, and, despite the fact that he has no family, he will understand.
But this is not the case everywhere. If this problem is not addressed, this wave of divorces and extinguished families will be a terrible temptation for both believers and non-believers.
“Soon it will be 25 years since I have been a priest. Over the years, about 15 people with whom I was in different time sign, have lost their sacred dignity. The reason is the same everywhere - the disintegration of the family, fornication ... A priest who has allowed even one fall dies like a priest. Inevitably. It's like “a trauma that is incompatible with life,” - Archpriest Fyodor Borodin reflects on why there is a chill and people leave the Church. The conversation was led by Oksana Golovko.
And the harlot says: “You are a priest! I will not be with you "
- Today there are frequent conversations, public confessions of people disillusioned with the Church. How should we treat them?
- “The lamp for the body is an eye. So, if your eye is clean, your whole body will be bright ”(Matthew 6:22). The way I perceive the surrounding reality, I see dark or light in it, testifies to the purity or impurity of my heart. The church is like a huge multi-storey building, where there are upper floors, from where there is a beautiful view and next to the sky, and there are cellars.
And each person chooses where in the Church he will live. If a person seeks in the Church for its Master - Christ, seeks prayer, he will meet the priest who will help him along the way, and will meet the same brothers and sisters. And for him the Church will be the real Church of Christ.
And if a person comes to the Church with a dark, crafty eye, if he is looking for shortcomings everywhere, if he does not even think to fight the sin of condemnation, then he will meet just such a reality of the Church. And he will consider that this is the Church. It will get angry and irritated when people say: "No, the Church is not that, the Church is the abode of the Lord, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit." Unfortunately, there is almost nothing you can do about it. Because if a person is determined to condemn and see dirt, he will see it. Sooner or later, such a person leaves the Church. After all, he did not meet Christ there.
There is an ancient patristic parable in which an elder tells a young monk how three people ended up in the central city square at night. And they saw how some man, wrapped in a cloak, sneaks from shadow to shadow past the square, trying to pass it unnoticed. One thought it was a fornicator who returns after his sin, the second thought it was a thief who robbed someone. And the third thought that this is a lover of solitary prayer, who is looking for a place for this and wants to hide his exploits. The elder told the disciple: "Everyone saw that which is akin to his heart."
If you met Christ, loved Him, then no one can separate you from Him.
In the life of the holy righteous Alexy Mechev, it is said that there was such a time, nine years, when the abbot mocked him, small and unprepossessing in appearance, all the time. Shouted at him, scolded, humiliated, beat. If Father Alexy had seen the Church in this, he would have removed his rank, would have written, perhaps, a book called “Confessions of a Former Deacon” ... But he did not. Because of the sins of man, he did not stop seeing Jesus Christ in the Church. And so he became a great saint.
And as for any Christian who leaves the Church or is disillusioned with it, it is still the result of either a grave sin in which a person lives, or the result of cooling off. Each of us must daily put ourselves before the face of God and daily restore this connection, remember that no external doing in itself will restore this connection, without our own effort and desire. If this does not happen for a long time, then the inner fire in a person goes out.
- And when priests publish such "confessions", how not to be disappointed with these stories?
The priest, unfortunately, is just as susceptible to these temptations as any layman. Yes, even, maybe more. Because nobody checks the priest. No one watches as he prays and confesses. The priest must seek confession. Most of the priests I know regularly confess, much more often the obligatory two times a year.
Most priests are well aware that they will simply go out if they do not confess often.
When a priest grows cold and at the same time encounters some passions in the Church, first of all with his own, then it overwhelms him, captures him, and he loses the ability to see the Lord Jesus Christ in the Church. And he himself says: "I do not understand what I am doing here."
Unfortunately, the chilling of a priest is often due to his own grave sins, including drunkenness and fornication. Still, most of the clergy who have lost or renounced their dignity, no matter what they declared, faced just this. Because the canon is very strict. A priest who has committed fornication cannot celebrate the Divine Liturgy.
Soon 25 years as a priest. Over the years, about 15 people, with whom he was at different times familiar, have lost their priesthood. The reason is the same everywhere - the disintegration of the family, fornication. Two of them were banned from the ministry because of a conflict with the hierarchy, but still a year later ended up with other women.
A priest who has allowed even one fall dies like a priest. Inevitably. It's like a "trauma incompatible with life."
I am writing this with pain; and most of them are very good people, some are still dear to me, but, apparently, betrayal does not come alone. And betrayal of the priestly oath attracts betrayal of his wife.
I had to take confession from a priest for a certain period of time. He lived in another city. There, for obvious reasons, he did not confess, but came to Moscow.
His family disintegrated, he fell into fornication and simply took off prostitutes. And in order to have money, he "bombed" at night, moonlighted as a cab driver on the road. In civilian clothes, very short-haired, handsome, rather young man. And so he says: “I once put a harlot in my place. We drove off with her, we begin to negotiate. She looks at me and directly shouts: “You are a priest! I won't be with you. ”
He begins to deny and say that everything is wrong. But she continues to scream and almost jumps out of the car on the move, it is not clear how she did not crash. That is, a professional harlot felt the grace of God, which the priesthood gives. And he has ceased to feel it in himself. He did not react to my words that I could not read the prayer of permission, that I had to go to the bishop.
The most striking thing is that I saw how the priest gradually dies in him, how he begins to be afraid to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, at the service they stopped coming to him for confession. He simply could no longer fulfill the priestly duties.
Most famous case when the priest refused to serve - this is the example of Alexander Osipov, the famous fighter against the Church of the times of Khrushchev. This is a former teacher and professor of the former Leningrad Theological Academy and Seminary. The reason that he stopped seeing Christ in the Church was his sin, incompatible with the priesthood, his second marriage.
Further in front of a person leaving the Church: former monk, novice, priest, two roads. The first road is to remain loving Christ, loving the Church and move on through repentance to salvation, on which there is always hope, no matter how deeply a person may fall. The second way is self-justification.
V recent times the second way, thanks to the Internet, has become very attractive and easy, because you can always post your vision of the situation, find people like you, who have settled in the same way, who have the same view of the Church, and be justified in their eyes. Then begins criticism of everything in the Church, a distorted view of the Church, full of hostility, hatred, when a person sees nothing good in anything, but only sins.
It is better not to read such texts, since they are obviously, for the purpose of writing, almost always biased. You dirty your soul, and you won't know the truth. An "anonymous" or "former" will assure that everything, absolutely everything is bad. But this is a view distorted by the sin of apostasy.
I heard the story of the forbidden priest about how he was forbidden by the "tyrant" - the metropolitan, at the slander of the dean - the "monster." In horror I call my friend, who serves in the same diocese, in the same deanery. The abbot of the beautiful large parish, which he built from scratch, is extremely surprised. He says it’s not like that at all. When he finds out where I got the information, he says: “You should have seen how this former priest behaved at any meeting. I have never met such rudeness ”. It turns out, as in the joke: "Maryivanna, why did you again throw a doormat into the pot with borscht?" Answer: "You are evil, I will leave you."
No one, no circumstances, no misbehaving bishop or dean, or anyone else can deprive a priest of faith, except himself.
Because the priest himself once decided to take the priesthood, it was he who received the Pledge in his hands at the ordination, he was told that "you will answer on the day of the Last Judgment."
The Apostle Paul, anticipating the end of his earthly life, speaks very important words: "He finished the course, kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4: 7). Even he had to fight to keep his faith.
The priests and laity plowed with fatigue
Nowadays, they often talk about the opportunities missed by the Church in the nineties and noughties. Don't you think that it was necessary to deal with people more, to communicate openly with them?
It does not seem to me that the Church has missed out on a huge number of opportunities.
Let's just remember how the late Patriarch Alexy answered these questions. He said that it is difficult to demand from a person who has recently been beaten for a very long time to get up, straighten up and work well. The church approached the nineties in a completely tortured state. Not that normal preaching was prohibited until recently - there were times when any sermon, even delivered in the temple, had to be coordinated in advance with the commissioner for religious affairs.
And his representative stood with a typewritten copy in the temple and checked. If the priest deviated from the agreed text, he could suffer very much for this. It was impossible for him to openly preach to people, and it was forbidden to talk to the young.
My future wife was still a schoolgirl, if she wanted to go up to the confessor in the church and ask some question, she had to do it, hiding behind a column, so that the headman standing on the kliros would not see.
That is, the Church did not and could not have the skill of broad open communication with people.
There was no literature. My mother, in order to give people the Gospel to read, copied it by hand about fifteen times.
The traditional priestly families were virtually unique. So there was almost no one to learn from. When a wave of completely unprepared people poured into the Church, becoming priests, it turned out that there were still very few of them. That is, so little that in the nineties any priest served simply for wear and tear.
Both priests and laity - church workers - in the nineties and zero years plowed as best they could, exhausted from fatigue. Many priests sacrificed their communion with wives, communion with children, almost always health as a sacrifice to church building. I remember one summer with only two days off. I'm not talking about vacation.
At the age of 23, I became the rector of a church that had to be restored - it's like making a graduate of the medical institute the head physician of a hospital. And people like me were in the majority, because churches were given away, but there were no priests.
Once I had to serve in the winter in the church in the name of the Forty Martyrs of Sebastia. And the temple was in such a state that, in order not to freeze at all, everyone took turns getting up to the only fan heater that was in the temple - on the kliros. The Holy Gifts froze in the Chalice, but how in a new way we then felt the feat of the saints freezing in Lake Sebastia!
Now it is a shame to hear the widespread reproach that we were dealing with bricks, not souls. Because it’s not like that at all. In those conditions, we, first of all, were engaged in divine services and people, preaching and confession. We preached wherever we could, including going to schools and institutes. At the same time, they were engaged in the restoration of temples.
I taught for 17 years mainstream schools free on their weekends. I drove fifty kilometers, because I live in the suburbs. And it was hard, but happiness.
In other schools, institutes, wherever there was an opportunity, where they only called, one-time or systematically, I immediately went without hesitation.
- But in the end, not everyone heard and accepted the sermon - what are the reasons?
If we say that we have not done something, then the main reason is not that we were hindered by bad organization or something else like that. Sin gets in the way of preaching. The main source of our preaching failures is, on the one hand, the fact that we do not reveal Christ, on the other hand, the fact that people do not want to hear about Him.
It must be understood that if a person wants to hear about Christ, he will hear about Him. In Soviet times, the so-called "funny Bible" of a Czech cartoonist was published, which included parodies of stories about the days of creation from the Book of Genesis. And people bought this book in order to take from there at least those quotes that the author criticized. This is how they sought God.
The fact that society has not completely become Christian is a matter of the totality of the choices of the people who make up this society. Because over the past 25 years, anyone could take the Gospel in their hands, everyone in our country heard about Christ.
As for the intelligentsia, constantly criticizing the Church, I recall the words of Christ: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang sorrowful songs for you, and you did not weep ”(Matthew 11:17).
Too many people who are far from the Church know exactly what it should be, what and how it should do. When the Church begins to do something wrong and something else, as those "experts" decided, they begin to get irritated and scold her. So it was with Christ Himself. Only those who did not impose their vision on Him, but were ready to learn and listen, remained disciples. After His resurrection, He appeared to about 500 people - that is all the disciples during the three years of His preaching. And this is with Christ Himself!
Therefore, do not be embarrassed by the fact that in church life a small number of people entered deeply. And the rest, having stomped at the entrance for twenty years, decide to disidentify themselves from the Church. It had to happen sometime.
Either a person turns around and leaves, or a person grows into the Church and begins to understand that the main thing they are doing here is the salvation of the soul, and the rest is secondary or alien.
And let's not forget about one eternal vice of our intelligentsia - to always be against any system if you have entered it. I remember how in the early 90s one excellent church worker was ordained a deacon. After his consecration, he could no longer call the Patriarch Patriarch. Only by last name. He could no longer confess to the abbot. I went into open conflict and lost my rank. Critics call the Church abusively - "system", but without earth system a multi-million dollar community cannot exist.
Even if there are about ten holy ascetics, they are looking for an abbot for themselves. They understand that they need him. Even on Makovets, at the request of the disciples of Abba Sergius, a system appears. Not for him, for them.
When you meet an intelligent, well-read person who has read everything except the Gospel, you understand that this is simply not interesting to him and that you can preach to such a person from morning to evening for at least a whole year - to no avail. He just doesn't want to, he doesn't care what is written there. It doesn't matter because he knows perfectly well that he will have to change. Still, this is the choice of the people themselves.
Believers today remember that then, in the nineties, when they prayed in dilapidated churches, where the wind was blowing, everything was different, brighter, sharper than now, in decorated and warm churches. Is it really?
People tend to feel nostalgic for youth. And in our church youth too. Of course, these were wonderful years. I myself well remember how breathtaking it was to hear that this monastery had been given away, here tomorrow there will be the first liturgy.
We, who entered the seminary in 1988, believed that now we would ease the pressure on the Church a little more, and then it could be anything. I remember how my fellow student at the seminary, who submitted documents for ordination, walked around and said to himself: “Lord, at least serve one Liturgy. If only one Liturgy was performed, and then life would be filled with meaning. " And the other, who had already entered the seminary, could not, during the week left until September 1, in his hometown go to the house: a police squad and a military patrol were waiting for him in turn. In order to either put him in jail for 15 days, or send him to a two-month military training and there to force him to refuse to study at the seminary. And by the end of our studies at the seminary, churches began to be opened. This joy cannot be described in words.
Yes, church revival - it was really like the sunrise after long night like spring after winter. Then the time came when the general neophyte was supposed to end and for everyone the time of great work on oneself began. It was necessary, according to the apostle Paul, to remove the old man from oneself and to cultivate a new man in oneself in the image of Christ. And this is a daily job for many decades. It is very difficult and not at all as beautiful as coming and taking out the long-term garbage from the temple. Everything is clear here, but when you are busy with your soul, it is hard and not so outwardly obvious, very long and difficult.
- There is much more negativity towards the Church now than twenty years ago. Why?
A person's gaze picks out from a variety of objects what he is looking for. If he wants to see the priest in the Mercedes, he will only see him. And those who live on the verge or beyond the verge of poverty - will not see.
It is enough to read any interview with Father John Okhlobystin and see his answer to the question why he stopped serving - he could not feed his six children. This is a priest, very a famous person, who served in the center of Moscow. And what happens to others, what is on the periphery?
Often criticism of the Church is very much simply from self-justification. I had to hear literally this: "I have not gone to church all these years, and today I understood why - when I saw a priest in a Mercedes." They, rejecting the Church, do not reject us, "fat priests", but Christ, they do not come to us, but to Him.
Yes, we have a huge responsibility and we must be impeccable. Every priest and every layman must remember that in the eyes of those around him he constitutes the Church.
A priest should never be drunk, never, never in his life. Because if they see him at least once, if he seduces at least one person, it is hard for him to answer for it.
Yes, you can't ride expensive cars... Of course, you have to be polite, you can't be rude. Yes, you need to read, you need to constantly educate yourself.
Our mistakes are our mistakes. But, through any mistakes of any clergy, if a person loved Christ, he will come to His Church. Because this is His Church, not the church of “fat priests in Mercedes”. And such a person will absolutely not care how the priest sins. He will think about his joy of meeting Christ and about his sins.
The Church should be criticized by the person who loves her
- Who can criticize the Church?
I think that only a person who loves her, treats her like a mother, can constructively criticize the Church. Only such criticism will benefit, and we ourselves - members of the Church. Although it is useful to humble us. I am personally useful because I am a proud person.
Although I have never driven a Mercedes, and even if they give it to me, I will not go. But yes, inappropriate criticism keeps me in good shape.
I remember the time of my faith - high school. 1982-1985, when I internally learned to resist the state ideology of atheism. In this sense, it is easier for me: I have something to remember and just restore the skill.
The Lord allows criticism so as not to relax. Criticism is also useful so that we believers train our intellect so that we can defend our faith.
But something can be changed in the Church only through criticism of inner pain, through criticism from the one who loves, who has been in the Church for twenty, thirty years ...
And when it comes from outside, it sounds strange. For example, they say: "Here the Church receives money from the state." And no one remembers that the Church has been restoring non-property at its own expense for 25 years. There is a society, and the society has monuments of architecture, and the whole society is responsible for these monuments. Even the unbelievers of this society are responsible for ensuring that the monuments are preserved. It is not for them to decide that most of these monuments are temples. So our ancestors decided.
But society in the early nineties easily threw off the problem of preserving its monuments, its heritage on the Church. And all this time we have worked hard, maintained and restored what does not belong to us. Now some churches have begun to be transferred to the ownership of the Church.
Why, then, when the Church receives some crumbs of money to restore state property, does abuse begin?
Why does the Church not always give an appropriate assessment to those who speak and do the unacceptable on its behalf, because this negatively affects its reputation?
The Church has developed over the centuries the practice of not doing anything hastily. Because if you do it hastily, you cannot get out of context and look at the situation from the outside. It seems to me that the Church should not work in the rhythm of the news feed on the Internet, when it happened half an hour ago, and an hour later the commentary.
But it is clear that the dialogue on behalf of the Church should be conducted by people with an appropriate cultural level, preferably with the first higher secular education. The wisdom of the management is to put just such people in the press services and send them to negotiations.
Unfortunately, any small reason, any inadequate statement can be blown up to the All-Russian news. We live in this new reality... We have to get used to being fully responsible for our words, to get used to the fact that we live as if under a glass bell, where spotlights are directed at us from all sides, and any act can be blown up to discussion throughout the country. So a clergyman, before saying something, needs to think carefully.
People have become more cynical, but they are looking for depth
- Today you can hear from the priests that the Church has more formal work, is that so?
Unfortunately, this is partly true. It's just that if you start some new business in Russia (for example, catechesis, which should be conducted in every parish, or missionary service), it is impossible to complete the business or make some changes to it without systematic reporting, since this is the most accessible image of the reverse. communication.
It's another matter if reporting becomes an end in itself. Then she kills the real case. If, for example, they demand that there be a youth leader in the parish, but not a youth leader. And so I, for example, call a person and say: “Listen, be a youth leader, because they demand from me. Go to the meetings. " In this situation, he will simply lose confidence in me, because youth is usually uncompromising, and here I have to offer him to fake.
So such things are very dangerous when reporting can begin to live by its own logic and kill life. I remember the story of one priest, who said that he had a huge number of young people in his parish, his bishop blessed him to formalize the youth movement. And when he started formalizing it, everything was empty.
For example, it is difficult for me to find someone responsible for youth work, because we have a lot of young people and children in our parish, but they are all included in common life... I cannot form them into a separate movement and I think that this is wrong in the situation of our particular parish.
With any reporting, it seems to me that one should be very careful and anxious about the fact that all situations are different.
- Is there something in the Church that today obscures Christ from us?
If I seek Christ, no one can shield Him from me. There are only reasons around me, the reasons for the loss of Christ will always be within me. This is an axiom of asceticism. The cause of any sin is within me, sin is born in my freedom. No one can lose touch with Christ for me, no one can lose faith for me. Outside can only offer a reason.
And as for trials, let us remember the words of the Apostle Paul: "To those who love God all will pursue good things" (Rom. 8:28). And if God sends difficulties to his servants, then he considers them necessary.
Where does the arrogance of believers, including priests, come from in the address of the "baptized but not enlightened" people, and should we fight this?
We must learn to accept people and turn every opportunity into an occasion for preaching. If a person came to church in order to light a candle for someone, one must understand that he did not come to me, to the priest, but came in search of God. The fact that I know much more about God (as it seems to me self-confidently) is not a reason for me to rise above this person.
In general, the temple is a place where Christ meets man. And the priest is the person who serves this meeting.
This means that this movement is necessary, if it is directed towards the Lord, maybe not yet formalized or misunderstood, or maybe even a little stupid, some kind of ridiculous, to pick up, support and move a little further to Christ. Say something good, smile, give a book, tell something.
It takes quite a bit for a person to understand in general that a priest is someone with whom you can talk. He will come next time, ask deeper questions.
Our temple is located on Maroseyka Street, and excursions come to us. Without asking permission, people can start taking pictures and making noise. It would seem that what can be done? Strictly say: “Who blessed you to take pictures here? Who blessed you to preach in this temple? Come on, get out of here! " But it will be a missed opportunity. Therefore, I cling to it, approach and politely offer: "Let me tell you about this temple, I am the abbot here." Even an anti-church guide cannot refuse.
And you start: “Come here, please. And here is such and such an icon, its history. But such and such people. Dostoevsky often, when he was in Moscow, visited our church. The Botkins were our elders ... ”People suddenly discover all this for themselves and flourish.
I repeat, it is necessary to use any step of a person towards God in order to pick up and direct him further. Remember how the apostle Paul praised the Athenians for being godly people? Although from the point of view of both a devout Jew and a Christian, it was an impious pagan city. But the apostle first saw the good in them, and then began to preach.
- Do people who came to faith in the nineties differ from those who come now?
Wonderful people have come and are coming to God. Christ is the same yesterday and today. And the soul, if it longs to touch Him, like a deer to the source of water, is still the same as a thousand years ago, that one and a half. These are the tortured, sin-mutilated souls of God's beloved sons and daughters.
But there are still differences. On the one hand, people have become more cynical. On the other hand, very many people are looking in the Church not for the external and ceremonial, but for answers to the most pressing questions about salvation, they are looking for conversations about how the Church lives in its depths.
- How have you yourself changed over the years?
Any person, and me too, the Lord leads through life and teaches humility. Strength with age has become less. In my youth it seemed that now, now I’ll move mountains. Now I understand that I can do very little.
My task is to catch the moment of my cooling and return myself again to that, perhaps inexperienced, but sincere burning, which was at the beginning. Asking yourself: "Fedya, where is that boy, that novice priest?" And try to get back to it. To serve the Liturgy again in the same way, with the fear of God.
For 12 years, Archpriest Fyodor Borodin has been the rector of the Moscow Church of the Holy Unmercenaries Kosma and Damian on Maroseyka. The family of Fyodor's father has eight children. The youngest is not even two months old. And mother Lyudmila seriously ill... She needs to take care of her health, but who will take care of the children at this time? We urgently need a nanny for a long period, we need our help. It is necessary to collect 312 thousand rubles. You can help.
I'm lucky to have a godmother
- How did it happen that you, a person who grew up in Soviet times, came to faith?
I grew up in a family far from the Church. My father received holy baptism when I was already serving in the army, my mother was baptized in childhood, but until then she had no contact with spiritual life. I was lucky to have a godmother. There was an article on the website "Orthodoxy and the World". The heroine of this article, Vera Gorbacheva, is my godmother.
My father was a master of sports in sambo, he was very fond of physical labor and languished in his bureaucratic work in Metrostroy. My father was always ready to help someone when moving. He did it free of charge and with great joy, so that afterwards he could sit and have a sincere conversation. And then one day he helped some regular intelligent family that was moving to the second floor of our house, we lived in Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane. The father saw that there were icons in the family, and asked Vera Alekseevna to become the godmother of her children. I was 9 years old, my sister was 10.
Vera Alekseevna turned out to be a corrosive and stubborn godmother. She brought us a prayer book (wherever she got it at that time!) And showed us the prayers that need to be read in the morning and evening. Came a month later: "Fedya, are you reading?" I said yes. She looked at the book with the eyes of her teacher and said: “You're lying! The pages are as good as new, not folded. " I had to read.
She took us to the church, to her confessor, the famous Moscow priest Fr. Gennady Nefedov. We received communion twice a year. It was a completely different life, in no way connected with everyday life. For a very long time, these two lives went in parallel, without intersecting in any way. I joined the pioneers, was a member of the Komsomol. We did not treat it as something serious, for us it was a formality. Since I was not raised in the faith since childhood, the contradiction that exists and is understandable to me now did not look like a contradiction then. It seemed natural to me to hide faith inside myself, like a cross under a shirt. I began to wear a cross from the age of twelve.
But I must say that the very situation in my family was conducive to the acquisition of faith, my father and mother are deeply cultured, well-read people. As a child, we were read a lot, taught us to read. For a child to fall in love with books, parents need to read aloud to him. I remember how my mother read to us, very young, "The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson", "Odyssey" in the translation of Gnedich, it was wonderful. In childhood he loved Tolstoy very much. I read the biographies of Renaissance artists that I could get my hands on. He loved art albums, books about Ancient Greece and Egypt.
I remember that my father read the Bible just as a literary work. He knew Russian literature very well, wrote poetry, plays, one of them was even staged at the Taganka Theater. At home we often, almost every day, were artists, musicians, poets. I remember that Zhanna Bichevskaya, the sculptor Pologov, the artist Kocheyshvili and his wife Leah Akhedzhakova came to us for a while young Limonov, who had just arrived from Kharkov at that time.
For Soviet times, large families were a rarity, how did you feel then and how do you assess your childhood now?
I am grateful to my parents that there were three of us. As an adult, I learned that my mother had to withstand a fierce attack not only from all relatives, but also from doctors in order to give birth to me. My sister and I are just the same, my brother is nine years younger than me, to defend his birth, my mother had to go through a real war. Then even a family with two children was a rarity, let alone three. We lived, to put it mildly, not rich, but my childhood was happy.
Parents took care of us. The parents spent their vacations and vacations with us. My father went hiking with us. I remember how he sledged us along Tverskoy Boulevard. And he also told us fairy tales, he himself called them fables, multi-part, multi-pass, and if someone passed by, he would definitely stop to listen. For its time, our family was very unconventional. My father died in 1990, I really miss him. Unfortunately, when I was 12 years old, my parents broke up and this for me is a wound that still hurts. And every time someone of my acquaintances divorces, I look at this misfortune through the eyes of a child and it hurts again.
Difficult school
I was lucky with the school. I studied at the 31st special school, now it is gymnasium No. 1520. Children and grandchildren of high-ranking people of the country, members of the Politburo, studied in the class. I got to this school just at the place of residence, I was lucky. I was also lucky to have a history teacher. Unfortunately, he taught with us for only one year, but in many of my classmates he managed to awaken a taste for intellectual work. Recently I was visiting a friend of my childhood, with whom I studied in parallel classes, your constant author. And he admitted that his passion for antiquity began from school, from this history teacher.
Elena Konstantinovna Ivanova, a literature teacher, also played an important role in my life. This is a very dear person for me, thank God, she is alive and well and sometimes comes to our church. She knew how to turn her subject into a window from the Soviet rectilinear world into completely different problems and a different depth.
From Icon to Faith
My parents loved art and were well versed in it. With their help, I discovered the Russian icon. And in many respects the awareness of myself as a believer, the transition to this part of my life happened precisely through the knowledge of the beauty and greatness of the icon.
I went to art school, I wanted to be an artist. But when I realized how perfect the art of the Russian icon is, I wanted to know more about the faith that this art gives birth to. From my experience, I can say that bringing up an artistic taste in a child brings him closer to faith.
After school, I entered an art school, then an institute, but did not enter, and worked as an artist in a metro depot, drew posters, wall newspapers, numbers. All these signs in the metro station "Stop of the eighth carriage" are painfully familiar to me. And then he joined the army. My father believed that one must definitely serve. I told him then: "Dad, what if to Afghanistan?" "Griboyedov served there, and you are not ashamed" - was his answer.
Miraculously, I did not get to Afghanistan. Before the army, I underwent parachute training at DOSAAF. Our entire group was called up at the same time. We arrived at the gathering place. We got on the bus. An officer came up and counted. There are 36 of us, but you need 35. "Borodin - come out." My last name was first on the list, there was no one on "a". Then, by correspondence, I learned that everyone ended up in training in Fergana, and then in Afghanistan. The Lord saved me. After all, even if he even returned, but killed someone, he could not become a priest according to the canons.
Comrade Captain, bring back the Gospel!
- What did the service in the army give you? Is army service necessary now, is it useful?
I believe that one should serve if the child is healthy. In the army, there is a sharp maturation. The young man has to learn to take responsibility and make decisions. The very same parents with such a son will be calmer and safer to enter old age. If something is wrong with health, then only then it is necessary to save from the army. Hazing? When I served, the hazing was terrible. Of course, it is scary to send a child to the army then and now. You have to pray. My elder is serving now. We pray with the whole family.
Both in the army and in the last grades of school, as a believer, I had to keep a tight line. In the 9-10th grade, I already clearly understood that I was different and live by different laws, there are things that I will not do. Served in the Airborne Forces, sergeant. I was the only believer in the company, I had to defend myself. They "calculated" me in the dining room, realized that I do not eat oil during fasting, I give it to someone.
Then they found the Gospel. It was 1987. Then my mother worked in the baptismal hall of the Yelokhovsky Cathedral, and the priests, who themselves were not allowed, asked her to conduct at least a short catechesis, at least 40 minutes to talk about faith. But what is confession without the Gospel? And my mother rewrote the Book several times at night. She let me read for a while with a return. These handwritten texts, as in ancient times, were read by many people. And then with the blessing of Fr. Kirill Pavlova's mother became a manufacturer and distributor of spiritual literature.
Bound photocopies in plain cover - St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, letters from Ambrose of Optina and other books. People who entered our house through acquaintances secretly and fearfully took them in their hands, holding their breath, and carried them away like a great treasure. Chernyakhovsky Street, 15 - for many of today's bishops, archimandrites and archpriests, their theological libraries began there. Such a handwritten Gospel was given to me by my mother in the army.
The company commander found the Gospel from me, took it away, locked it in his safe, in order to return the book, I opened his safe. "Righteous" theft! The company officer pushed me to the floor, kneeling on my chest: "Did you take the book?" I answered: "She is mine, Comrade Captain!" When at the end of the term there was some kind of freedom, I went into the woods to pray.
By the way, when I entered the seminary, I learned that they did not take documents from those who did not serve in the army. When it began to float in the air that the Churches would soon return the churches, the recruitment to the seminary increased. On our parallel there were four classes, and there was only one applicant who did not serve in the army. Firstly, becoming a priest at 22 is not only a great responsibility, but also a risk. Secondly, how can you serve the heavenly Fatherland if you have not served the earthly one?
It used to be believed that if you did not serve in the army, then something is wrong with your conscience or with your head. Then, military service is, of course, a matter of discipline and growing up. I believe that the army is absolutely necessary.
Father's tricks
- What is the main thing for you in family life? What is the role of the father? How did your parents' example help you?
We have six sons and a daughter. The eldest, twenty, has recently left to serve in the army, and the youngest is a year old. Our marriage is soon 22 years old. The example of my parents helps me, I repeat, we were engaged. It was a rarity in those years. Then adults lived their own lives, my friends spent their vacations in pioneer camps, and Sundays - with grandmothers, their parents existed according to the principle of "TV-slippers-newspaper", and they studied me from childhood, so I have a taste for this and joy.
Working with children is not a heavy duty for me. I understand that this is a time that should not be missed. Following the example of my father, I tell my children serial fairy tales.
- Is there something that you did not know about fatherhood, and that you only learned from your own experience?
It seems to me that every child requires a heart. And not divided by the number of children, but - total. This bond must never be broken, it must remain. You must periodically reunite with each of them. This can be once a year or every six months or once a month. If you feel that something has begun to "crack" in the relationship, that the child is growing and moving away, you need to find time to be with him.
This is what I understood.
And I also realized that all children are very different, that it is impossible to approach them with one measure, with one set of requirements. What is elementary for one is very difficult for another. What is open to one from childhood, to that of another must grow. We, of course, very much interfere with the children with our pride, our ideas about what they should be.
- When there are more children, don't you pin such hopes on one person, are they evenly distributed?
You know, I have an amazing wife, she has every child as one. Tracked, comprehended, well-groomed. She is very good at it, despite the fact that she grew up virtually without a father and mother. My wife's father left the family when she was three years old, my mother tried to build her personal life and gave her daughter to her grandmother and uncle for a long time. I can say that in this sense, my wife is an absolutely clear miracle. A woman who did not see how people live in a family, did not have any behavioral scenarios, by the grace of God became a good wife and mother. In many matters, she understands children much more subtly and deeper than I do. I admire her. But what an inner feat it cost her, only the Lord knows.
In the sacrament of the wedding, they ask for gifts for the upbringing of children. If a person accepts them and works, then God will replenish everything that people did not give. For me, my wife is an example of the fact that all that is God-given in a person can gracefully sprout, and everything will work out, even if it seemed that it was impossible.
- What role did the church of St. Nicholas in Klenniki play in your life?
I was very lucky that the first church I got to was the church of St. Nicholas in Klenniki. This is the grace of God to me. I served there as a deacon for six months, and then, as a priest for three years, I served in parallel in two churches on Maroseyka.
In the church of St. Nicholas, then and now everything was imbued with the spirit of Fr. Sergius and Fr. Alexy Mechevs, there were shrines, things from their hands. I found the daughters of Father Sergiy Mechev, the granddaughters of Father Alexy. We went to the grave of Father Alexei at the German cemetery, then the relics were transferred to the church.
Irina Sergeevna Mecheva is a person who has lived an incredibly difficult life full of hardships and toil. She described her working day to us, as in comparison with her I live on constant vacation. This woman had time for everything and kept the sharpest mind until the last day. And the other sister, Elizaveta Sergeevna, was outwardly very similar to Father Sergius, just a copy. When we looked at her, we saw a photograph of him come to life, these large wide-set eyes, and even the expression on his face.
My mentor was Father Alexander Kulikov, a true bearer of the Marosei tradition, wise, humble, loving, when necessary - strict. A man who lived and breathed worship. An amazing confessor is absolutely amazing.
Leave everything and serve God
- What is the difference between the time you started serving and now?
Then there was such an impulse - to leave everything and serve God. This is typical of our entire generation. Nowadays, there are no so many inspired young people. But there are a huge number of children who grew up at the temple.
- They're not leaving? At least - are they coming back?
Of course, someone leaves, but there are almost no people who would break with the Church. There are those who are attracted by life, sucked in, but they sometimes appear. In our church there is a group of so-called “veterans of the Sunday school,” there are about twenty of them, sometimes more.
- What hopes from those years did not come true? What happened differently than you saw then?
It seemed to us then that the Bolshevik-communist lie had fallen, and soon Russia would become Orthodox again. We were not ready for the possibility of a new lie. Of course, we talked about this, but we believed that it would not be so. It turned out that everything is much more complicated than it seemed then.
Cosma and Damian
- Tell us about the parishioners of the Church of Kosma and Damian
In the center of Moscow, there are few inhabitants, but there are a lot of churches. We have practically no parishioners “at their place of residence” - 3-4%, no more. Most come from residential areas. It turned out that many of my classmates became parishioners of our church.
The peculiarity of our church is that we have a lot of children, many large families, and every Sunday about half of the church are children. It happened so.
- And before there were only grandmothers?
When there were many children, the grandmothers left, now we have few of them. This is the result of the fact that we slightly adjusted the liturgical life to meet the expectations of mothers.
Imagine a mother is going to church with her child. First by bus, then by metro. In the church there is no changing table, no place to feed the child, everyone is chuckling at mother and child, and hissing. But there is a room for a mother and a child in any hypermarket! This mother accomplished the feat, she herself came to church and brought the child, and the father will take her and will not confess her, say: "Come to the all-night vigil."
In Soviet times, Sunday services were organized with the expectation of one non-family, childless person, usually an elderly person, and now this trend continues. Imagine a family with six people, where dad works hard all week. If you force him to come to the all-night vigil on Saturday, he may faint on Sunday in church. Yes, and he needs to rest on Saturday, things have accumulated at home. Of course, if dad is getting ready to take communion, then we ask him to come to the all-night vigil in the church next to his house. But the attitude towards mothers can be completely heartless. Every now and then you see some mother, whom the young priest chastises for being late.
The temple in the center of Moscow is not chosen according to the place of residence, but because the Lord has called here. If a person has come, then it means that we must deal with him and thank God that it was he who brought him to us.
Young cattle area
- Do you find a common language with the new generation?
It's not easy for me with them. In the Soviet Union, we were all alike, but the current ones are different. Each generation will now be very different from the previous one, but if you show them Christ, tell them about Him, then many will still believe, because the soul recognizes its Creator. It seems to me that it is important to be extremely sincere with young people. From any falsehood, they immediately close their ears forever. They also cannot stand an arrogant tone, they do not tolerate being condescended to. The modern teenager should feel that the priest respects him, ideally loves him. It's difficult. Sometimes they barely endure their own in a transitional age, but here - strangers, with words, hairstyles and negation.
And we also need to give them the opportunity to meet somewhere at the temple. If you give them a platform so that after your lesson they can just drink tea with each other, then they will become friends, it will be easier for them to stay at the temple, to keep in faith when they go to college. In our parish, as elsewhere, young people get to know each other, families are created. They get married in our church, we play weddings with the whole company.
But you need to understand that we cannot completely fix them. All of them, even those who grew up in Orthodox families, have everything broken. Now there are only one or two normal families per church. Many have broken families, second or third marriages. And all this is reflected in the children.
Therefore, you need to be sincere with them, not hide yourself from them, not pretend to be anyone, but just love them. When young people feel that they are sincerely loved in the church, that they are expected here, they rejoice, begin to communicate, make friends. What is the problem? A child comes to Sunday school, he has been attending it for 10 years, he is stuffed with knowledge, and the opportunity to make friends with peers is not given, "came and gone."
And so he graduated from Sunday school, adolescence begins. Our boy was taken to church by his mother, or grandmother, and his father was not a church member! And the teenager says: "I will be like dad." Then he enters the institute, where all the unbelievers, and that's all, he forgot the temple. Therefore, the church should have a platform where young people can communicate. Young stock area. This, of course, is hard, you have to invest in it, it is very difficult with them, they do something wrong all the time, but it’s that O it!
Mom, everyone here is wrong
In the summer, the parishioners and I go out into the countryside, to the camps. A hundred people are going. We take children from the age of one month, from the age of ten we take them on kayaking trips. We conducted role-playing games with the children on the road for three years in a row, we have a wonderful parishioner who did this.
What is the camp for? Children look at adults, imitate them, learn. In part, this is how it is possible to compensate for what is not received in the family. Now there are many broken families, most often, of course, the father is out of place.
- And what is happening with men now? Is the imbalance that has existed since Soviet times even out?
In our country, during the repressions, during the war, millions of men left their families. Whole generations have been raised by women. For example, my father and mother grew up without fathers. Maybe this is largely why they divorced, because in childhood they did not see what a family is. Even when people go to church, they carry all their wounds with them for a very long time.
The most common male problem is the inability to take responsibility.
We had one family in our parish, which, unfortunately, nevertheless fell apart. When the disorder began, for a very long time, sitting on a bench in the church, I tried to talk to my father. But from whatever side you come in, the wife was to blame. This is such a common occurrence. You start asking: "Is there anything your fault?" He says: "Yes, I was too soft!" - This is such a standard approach to family breakdown. And when I had exhausted all the arguments, I asked this person: "When did you get married, did you want to make your wife happy?" He looks at me in surprise and says: “I didn't even think about it. How interesting!".
Most families are created by people who do not understand that family is service to another person. Nobody wants to understand that the principle of Christian love is selflessness and service to another person. And when you need to make an effort, to overcome something in yourself, then the person simply leaves this problem. And then the children of these people come to the temple, we bring them to the camp, we have to make tremendous efforts to bring them to their senses to teach discipline.
One more case. We have a boy, he grew up in a family with a difficult dad. On the campaign, this boy managed to ruin relations with everyone. He came to his mother in the tent and said: “Mom, everyone is wrong here. I will never marry and will not come to the temple! " This is "Mom, everyone is wrong here!" has become our proverb. And there were almost 70 people on the trip!
But I will repeat once again that if a person sincerely comes to God, then God will help to see all this first, and then - to overcome. I, too, in my family and children, as in a mirror, my flaws are visible. I learned a lot in my family.
- If you did not become a priest, who could you become?
As a child, I wanted to be an artist. In the 9th grade I got to Archimandrite German (Krasilnikov), he was such a perspicacious confessor. He served in the village of Shemetovo behind the Lavra. When he first saw it, he called my sister and me by our first names. And he said that my sister would enter the philological faculty of Moscow State University - and so it happened. And he told me that being an artist is not my way, but my way is different - the priesthood. I was so unprepared for this that I did not even think about these words. He returned to them already serving in the army. And so…
The Lord brought me to become a priest, and I cannot even put anything next to the service of the liturgy.
- Are you happy?
When I serve the liturgy, absolutely. These are the happiest moments in my life!
Often, young priests “poke” elderly parishioners, forbid parishioners to receive communion without reason, and can cause real pain to people. Archpriest Fyodor Borodin, rector of the Church of Cosmas and Damian on Maroseyka (Moscow), discusses the boundaries of the priest's authority.
Photo: tatarstan-mitropolia.ru
The priest must earn respect for himself
- Can a priest not allow a person to take part in the sacrament because, for example, he did not read the rule?
- The priest can only refuse if the person commits some mortal sin.
In all other cases, the priest has no right to refuse to take the sacrament. This was confirmed by the pre-revolutionary synodal decrees of the first half of XVIII century. Moreover, if my memory serves me, then in these synodal decrees it is said that the issue of not allowing a person to participate in sins due to their sins should also be decided by the ruling bishop.
Technically, this decree is impossible to fulfill, but it is clear that it was born of a situation when priests allow themselves too much.
Alas, we are faced with such a picture when a priest does not allow a person to take communion without any canonical reasons, and this sometimes painfully wounds a person's soul.
This was the case with my mother when she was not allowed to participate in the sacrament, and for the first time in her life she was preparing to begin the sacrament. She had a very difficult period in her life. The family broke up, I remember how she lost 16 kilograms in a month. She came to the unclosed church, and there was such a crowd of people that we had to push through to communion. When she nevertheless realized that the Cup was being carried away and began to push through, the priest who received the communion saw her and said: "You cannot." And he went with the Chalice to the altar. He was too lazy to turn around to face this suffering, grief-stricken woman and teach her the Body and Blood of Christ. Although she fasted, and confessed, and read the rule.
It was a terrible test for her. Thank God that this did not turn her away from the Church.
– That is, the priest in such cases is essentially abusing his power?
- Often a priest simply does not understand the nature of the authority that dignity gives. The nature of the priest's authority is likened to Christ's authority. And the authority of Christ is to die on the cross for people. This power was exhaustively explained by Him at the Last Supper, when the Lord, like a slave (because only slaves washed the feet of the guests), washed the feet of his disciples.
Let us recall the reaction of the holy apostles. They were totally against it. They can be understood. They were scared. This should not have happened, their Master could not wash their feet. But He insisted and then explained: “So, if I, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, then you must also wash each other's feet. For I have given you an example so that you also do what I have done to you. " (John 13: 14-15).
This is just about the power of the priest. The apostles were so opposed also because Christ exercised the previous leadership of that community in a completely different way. First, He unconditionally guided them, He did not consult with them. He did not listen to their opinions. He was a Teacher for them unconditionally. Moreover, He was very strict with them. He did not indulge their mistakes, passions. And it is enough to remember the words that He says to the Apostle Peter: "Get away from Me, Satan!" (Matt. 16:23). Perhaps these are the harshest words in the gospel. He speaks to the most devoted, the eldest of His disciples.
This model of behavior between the teacher and the students was completely broken by Christ at the Last Supper by washing his feet.
The priest in relation to the parishioners should be guided by both. And washing your feet - as a principle of serving parishioners, must always be implemented.
But the priest must earn and earn respect for himself as a teacher. He has no right to insist on it.
When a priest pokes an elderly parishioner
- It happens that a priest addresses a person who is almost twice his age ...
- When a young priest who graduated from seminary yesterday “pokes” an elderly parishioner who suits his grandmother and calls her “you”, points out her usually imaginary sins to her, I am sorry that his father is not around, who would whip him well ... Because a person who has not learned to be just polite cannot be a priest of God. This is unacceptable, just disgusting. I cannot find another word.
A priest is a person who must first become a perfect Christian. And an impeccable Christian is a person who must first learn to be a good, decent and well-mannered person. A well-mannered person cannot be a boor.
So - you can't be rude and be a good Christian. Moreover, one cannot be rude and be a priest.
Recently, my twenty-two-year-old son said, "Dad, I don't want to be a priest." I do not put pressure on any of my sons, they will decide this issue themselves, but I asked: "Why?" And he told me that he witnessed the next episode in a church near Moscow.
After the service, a young priest is sitting on a bench in the church - a strong, stately man, about thirty years old. He comes up to talk bent over with grief old woman... The eyes are all cried. And, sobbing, she begins to talk about how her husband drinks, her son drinks, her daughter's family is falling apart, also because of drunkenness, they don't give her grandchildren, they walk, they don't study.
In general, the whole fabric of life in her hands is crumbling from her beloved people and from herself. And this priest loudly, to the whole church, answers her, of course, to “you”: “Yes, you yourself are to blame for everything. This is all due to your sins. Go repent! Aren `t you ashamed. That you came to me. You have to look at yourself. "
I think that sooner or later this priest himself will rest on his own grief, and if he does not change by that time, no one will console him, no one will support him. In order not to understand that a person is bad, and at the same time to speak so boorishly from top to bottom - it is necessary to have such a heart, such a callous soul!
All this shocked his son so much that he said: “I am scared even from the thought that suddenly you can become like that. I don’t want to sin so hard. ”
This manner of judging, immediately, immediately denouncing everything, often without any experience, kills people's trust in the priesthood. It is no coincidence that in Greece, for example, a very small number and only experienced and elderly priests have the blessing of a bishop to confess. Because if a priest does not have enough humility to understand his place, then the consequences of the pain he can bring to people from his self-righteousness, pomp, self-confidence can be simply terrible.
We all know many cases when the revealing words of a priest became an exorbitant burden for a person, bent him to the ground and trampled him into terrible despondency.
I know a story about how a “meeting” with a priest in a church was the last straw for a young man, after which he killed himself. I don’t know what priest we are talking about, I don’t want to accuse anyone of such a grave sin, but the fact remains that a person came to church with the last spark of hope ... After the priest “accepted” him, there was no hope left ...
- What to do?
- It is not by chance that there is age qualification for ordination - 30 years. It is no accident that the apostle Paul says: “Lay hands on no one hastily” (Tim. 5:22). That is, it is impossible to hands over a person without testing it.
A person must have a certain life experience... Moreover, it is spiritual life. He must have time to be humbled by this experience before ordination. Why is the apostle Peter given the keys to the Kingdom of God? Because Christ knows that he will betray and be forgiven. And here is a symbol of spiritual authority - these keys of Christ can be given to such a person. And to the other apostles, because they also rejected Christ and returned to Him.
When a person is young, when it seems to him that he will easily turn mountains, when he has not yet cognized his weaknesses, as a Christian, he has the illusion that since he is serving the Liturgy, he has power over people, the power to decide what to do, because he then knows how to do it right. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Vladyka Anthony (Bloom) splendidly said that in the sacrament of ordination, a person is given the grace of sacred rite, but wisdom is not given.
You have to be a very smart person to get into someone else's fate. And not everyone has this dar-dar spiritual wisdom. Someone preaches, someone serves, and there are confessors. And if you understand that you are not a confessor, you do not have this gift or do not have this experience yet, just tell me that from the Scriptures, from the canons, from the Commandments of God, I would give such an answer, but I cannot insist.
The priest breaks the habit of thinking that he may be wrong
- It is difficult for a priest not to break down if the parishioners themselves almost look into their mouths and listen to every word as if it were true ...
- Yes, it has been said many times that demand creates supply, and some parishioners themselves are looking for spiritual lack of freedom. Indeed, it often happens that a person really wants to make someone responsible for the decisions that God requires personally of him. Yes, there are people who ask the priest's blessing for all-all everyday questions.
And there are priests who succumb to this and are happy to accept such leadership by people. But there are very few priests, literally a few, who can really lead this way. More often than not, such "leadership" is simply a misunderstood, in my opinion, priesthood, implicated in lust for power.
I, as a priest, over the years could offend or alienate a large number of people. They left in silence, without quarreling or arguing. They just disappear from sight. And those who remain are ready to agree with me. And I can get the illusion that I am always right, because I am surrounded by people who confirm this. This is a great temptation for a priest. Because the priest breaks the habit of thinking that he may be wrong.
A Christian is, first of all, a free man. And the task of the confessor, the task of the priest is to try to make sure that each parishioner knows how to use his freedom correctly, so that a person can make the right decisions. That is, the task is exactly the same as that of the parents. As parents, our task is to raise children and teach them to use their freedom correctly, to act correctly without making mistakes.
If a priest makes decisions for his parishioner or parishioner for many years, he will not teach him to be free as a Christian.
The Apostle Paul says: "You have been called to freedom, brethren, if only your freedom was not an occasion to please the flesh, but serve one another with love." (Gal. 5:13)
A priest can only testify about how he understands what it means to act in a Christian way in a given situation. And then the person must act on his own. And this should be manifested in everything. Including in preparation for the sacrament. The priest must help a person grow up so that he himself knows how to properly prepare for the sacrament.
Let me remind you that the conditions, without which it is impossible to receive communion, are as follows: First, right faith. The second is the desire to receive the Holy Communion. The third is a broken heart. And the fourth - if possible, peace with everyone, the fifth - the absence of mortal sins. In addition, it is required to observe the Eucharistic fast (except for situations when a person needs to take medicine) and marital abstinence the day before. Canons and fasting are not necessary condition to the sacrament. They are only instruments for attaining heartbreak.
And at the beginning of our journey, we offer a person well-known, well-working tools. Such as the three canons, fasting, akathist ... Then the person himself must understand what helps him to meet Christ more correctly. And if a person has been going to church for 10-15 years, but still does not feel what helps him, and what does not help him and adheres to one single rule, then this is a bad indicator for him and for his confessor.
Because all people are different. Someone needs to read the Holy Scriptures before the sacrament. Someone - only the Psalter. Someone - the Gospel. Someone should just read the Jesus Prayer. And someone should just stand in silence in the holy corner. And now, in this period of his life, in the state in which he is, this will best prepare him for the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. And he himself must know what helps him to prepare, and what gets in the way, devastates the soul.
Therefore, when a young priest, who not so long ago began his Christian spiritual path, says to a person who has been going to church for 50 years: “You are not ready,” it is strange. It's like a graduate medical institute, who came to the hospital, will explain to the surgeon with 30 years of experience that he does the wrong operation.
Here you just need to treat yourself with humility. The parishioners respect the priest who can say: “I don’t know the answer to this question. I don't have the answers to all the questions. Here it seems to me so, but I could be wrong. " And the absolute perpetual self-confidence of people from the priest quite rightly repels people.
The priest must get used to the fact that people will disagree, argue, maybe talk boldly with him. And it is useful for him, because everyone needs to humble themselves. But it is possible to earn such authority that one can truly obey him from a good, kind and free heart in the parish only through decades of zealous service, immersion in personal prayer and a repentant, contrite heart.
The Lord will humble a domineering priest
- How can there be a person who was not allowed to take part in the sacrament because he “did not read the rule”, “often sits on Facebook,” or something else that clearly does not belong to mortal sins?
- It seems to me that it is necessary to tell the abbot about this and discuss this situation. And why should a person endure all this if a priest violates his authority? After all, a priest is also a brother in Christ.
I have great story about one elderly woman who has already died, who lived a very difficult life, who suffered the loss of her husband after the camps. They came to arrest her herself several times, she was saved only by a miracle ... And in the sixth decade of her life, she began to church. And somehow she came to the service in an unclosed Moscow church.
At confession, the young priest, who was fit for her grandchildren, again to “you,” loudly so that other people would hear what is also unacceptable, says: “When did you receive communion in last time? ". The woman replies: “I received communion a month ago. But today is Angel's Day, and I also want to receive communion. "
In response, the priest says loudly: “Do you want to burn in hell? Aren't you afraid to burn in hell? " And this elderly woman was a lively character, sharp on the tongue, therefore, without hesitation, she replied: "Where am I before my dad in hell?" He choked, looked at her and said already quietly and to "you": "Well, go ahead, take communion."
- What can a person do if there is one domineering priest in the temple, and this temple is the only one (say, in a village)?
- Take this as a test of God. Such a priest, perhaps, should be pitied, pray for him, because an imperious priest is so abnormal that, obviously, the Lord will one day very much humble him. There will come a period in his life when he will have to see all his selfhood, his pride broken.
In the sacrament of unction there are the following words: "Every truth is ours, like a ruble defeated before You, Lord." Rub is rags, dirty, smelly clothes that are so bad that they have even already thrown them off. And the priest should be the first to understand this about himself.
A priest who does not know how to repent will not teach people anything in confession. A priest who does not know how to pray will never teach anyone to pray.
Therefore, a real confessor is a person who, firstly, regularly confesses himself, and secondly, who prays very deeply. And the outer ones are beautiful correct words that we can take from the preachers, from the holy fathers and quote, they are good and beautiful.
But the priest will have authority only when they are confirmed by him. own experience... And people feel it perfectly. As, for example, a person who seeks prayer always senses whether the choir of mercenaries is singing or the faithful parishioners of the temple are singing for whom the spoken words are precious.
The same can be said about the priest: how he confesses, what he speaks in confession, empathizes with the person, whether he accepts him in his heart, whether he loves him, whether he prays for him - people immediately feel this. Therefore, you can sometimes see that 40 people stand for confession to this priest, and two to this one.
Photo: VK / Simbirsk Metropolis
Respect another person's choice
- If the priest is categorically against what the parishioner likes in his life. It is clear that we are not talking about sins, but, say, about love, say, for street art, or punk rock, or something else?
- A priest should have a broad outlook. A priest is a person who must be able to see a parishioner moving from godlessness to God, from non-church life to church life. And on this movement it is unreasonable, of course, to demand immediately from a person so that he understands everything at once and immediately break everything that is dear to him. Sooner or later, a person himself will give up what is superfluous, but this can take years and decades.
Well, the love of street art is not an obstacle to communion. The priest must know the chapels of his power. The priest does not like street art, for example, he loves academism first half of the XIX century. If he knows how to appreciate art, he will respect the choice of another person.
- So, after all, what should a priest be if parishioners ask: "Should I send my child to kindergarten?", "Should I move in with my parents?" etc?
- Just say: “I think about it this way, I think about it this way, here I would do this. But this is purely my opinion and I cannot decide for you. You must decide for yourself and this is the will of God, so that you learn to solve these issues yourself. "
If a person goes to church for the first time, maybe he really needs to help him make a decision in many ways. But, gradually, it is necessary to cultivate and educate his will in him. Of course, it is good to be cared for by such a spiritual father as Father Kirill (Pavlov), Father John (Krestyankin). When you came to the person, you still didn’t open your mouth, and he may already have answered many questions for you. This is good, but they are the exception. There are very few of them in the Church. And now there are fewer and fewer of them. And the fact that there are so few of them is also the will of God.
God made us free, and if a priest encroaches on this freedom, he opposes the will of God. An analogy can be drawn here with a family. The husband is the head of the family. But, he must earn his authority in this way and so build a relationship with his wife, without forcing her, without torturing her, without throwing quotes from her at her. Scripture like grenades, so that she herself understands that if her husband insists, then he must be obeyed.
How can a wife learn this? If the husband knows how to obey his wife when she is right. If the wife knows that the husband is capable of this, then it is much easier for her to obey him when he insists. Because she understands that it is not out of passion. We priests very often act according to our passions. In a parish, a priest may take offense, not talk to someone, bring some closer to himself, remove others, listen to some gossip. And this does not correspond to the spirit of the Church at all, but is a projection of the passions that rage in the soul of the priest. Because if there were no such passions in him, then neither gossip, nor everything else, would simply be inappropriate at the parish, would not develop.
That is why a priest is needed who conquers passions in himself, who fights against them.
Of course, it is also very useful when we, priests, read a prayer before confession: "Behold child, Christ invisibly stands, accepting your confession", remind in again to myself that it is Christ - the Creator and Master of everything. And now a man came to Him, and not to a priest. And the priest is only a witness. A priest can be silent all the time and speak only when something in the dispensation, or in action, or in the intention of a person does not correspond to the Gospel, the Commandments of God.
The priest must say: "You know, dear, this is not how it is."
Let's say a man comes to me for confession and says: “I want to receive communion. I'm all Great post I'm not cheating on my wife. " If I remain silent in this situation, then he will think that after Easter he can return to this sin. Therefore, in this situation, I was forced to say to such a person: “Dear, nevertheless, you must make a decision for yourself. If you forsake this sin altogether, you can receive communion. And if you don’t leave, then you cannot receive communion even now. ”
And in general, all of us, priests, must remember that the Monk Mary of Egypt, after 16 years of a terrible, depraved life, was admitted to communion. She did not fast for three days, she did not read the canons and received the Holy Communion after her repentance.
Most likely, her whole appearance, all her clothes, the smell of perfume - everything was thought out by her in order to evoke lust. This was her life. And in this form, only with repentance in her heart, she came to the monastery on the Jordan, where the strictest ascetics lived. Probably, the priest, who carried the Cup, was forced to talk to her. I suppose: life is silent about this. But, for sure, he asked her. And if he didn’t ask, then he probably saw her repentance and allowed her to take communion. That is, three or four days ago she still fornicated, but now she was allowed to take communion, because her repentance was so strong. We talked about the fact that the main condition for the sacrament is a broken heart. Here the priest saw that the heart was broken. The person was reborn and became different.
Therefore, she could be admitted to the sacrament.
But we, priests, should not bend in the other direction. Because if you read the book of canons and choose from there those rules that relate to the teaching of the sacrament and refusal, then very often you come across the wording: "Let both the one who received the sacrament and the one who received the sacrament be punished." Therefore, for example, if a priest refuses to teach the Holy Mysteries to a person who lives in fornication or who has had an abortion, then such a priest must definitely understand that he is doing the right thing.
Or, for example, a church person brings repentance that he sinned by committing adultery. If the priest immediately admits him to communion, it may not be useful for this person now. He has to bear some penance. Not the canonical seven years, but maybe three months. Holy fathers pro Holy communion they say that fire burns up straw, but iron makes it harden. Now the soul of this person is like straw, and if in such a state he is allowed to receive communion, then maybe this will give birth to a destructive cynicism in him, that everything is possible, that he will be allowed anyway.
Photo: VK / Simbirsk Metropolis
You need to humble yourself in front of a person
- Did you have a test of power in your youth?
- I didn’t want to become a priest early, but I was ordained at the age of 24 with the urgent blessing of the bishop and was very afraid of the responsibility that the dignity imposes. So I kept myself in control.
Once, perhaps, I expressed my opinion too strongly to one woman that she should not marry the man who proposed to her. It seemed to me that I was saving her from trouble. And so until now I am ashamed of it, not because I was wrong or right in everyday life, but because this was the area in which, according to God's will, she herself had to make a decision, and I intruded into it. She made the decision anyway, but I had authority and expressed my opinion too strongly. And it's still hard for me to remember this.
And so, it seems to me, I saved myself from this. He did not fit in, did not marry, did not bred people.
- How can young priests resist the temptation of great power?
- You have to humble yourself in front of a person. Christ humbles himself before each of us. We come to Him in such sinful filth, and He listens to each of us. We want Him to love us so that He does not see our sins. We say: look here, don't look there. We say: "Cast me not away from Thy presence," and next to it: "Turn Thy face away from my sins." Like a small child: "Look here, don't look there." We ask Him to identify us with our sins.
The parishioners should be treated in the same way.
And in general, remember that man is a great shrine, the most important icon of God, a treasure, this is the whole universe.
And suddenly this person, this value of God, comes up to you and asks you something with confidence. And you should not be a source of tears, sorrow, trouble for him. And even when you are forced to talk about something harsh for a person, that it is impossible, that this is impossible, all the same it should be done not with a rude, patronizing intonation. This should be done with love and humility.
