Requests, sermons, confessions - and words left unanswered. Why do priests burn out and how can we help them? - Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov reflects.

The priest acts as a ritual and household servant

– Nowadays there is a lot of talk about employee burnout charitable foundations and volunteers, teachers, doctors, parents. There is less talk about priest burnout. Does such a phenomenon even exist? How widespread is it?

– To be honest, for me burnout is something that is an inevitable part of any person’s life. A person changes, not always better side, tired of life, profession, communication with people. It is no coincidence that life is finite. Therefore, the term is very vague and can be applied to any person, regardless of his profession and in relation to the circumstances of his life.

In the context of priestly ministry we can talk about many problems. For me, as a church historian, it would be more appropriate to give a historical excursion that explains a lot. I'll do it later. But still, being also a priest, I would first outline what should constitute the main meaning, the content of the activity of a priest, how this content manifests itself in our modern church life and what costs it may be accompanied by.

It would seem that what lies on the surface? A priest has certain responsibilities. And the first is worship. In order to perform divine services, a person must have an internal need to participate more actively in it, psychologically, morally, intellectually.

And, taking into account the complex structure of our worship, the deep theological meaning of many of our liturgical texts, a person must have the appropriate knowledge to understand what he is doing, what he is saying, what he is doing.

But now I can’t help but wonder: for most modern priests, what becomes the most important thing in worship over time? Moreover, preferred and even desired? It is by no means performing the annual cycle of worship in the church, or even performing the liturgy, but performing the necessities. There are a lot of tasks that they have to perform, which do not require special intellectual, psychological, or moral efforts. And they provide the most tangible and quick income necessary for the priest, because he is not an incorporeal being.

And most importantly, the service is a form of worship that does not require a deep, spiritual connection between the priest and the people who come to perform it. Having performed a prayer service, a memorial service, a baptism, a wedding and the much-loved sacred rite associated with the consecration of an apartment, an office, a car, and in rural areas also a threshing floor, a storehouse, and what not is consecrated, the priest quite quickly completes communication with the person for whom he is performing the task. . Or it may continue with a meal, which usually does not involve serious pastoral conversation. The priest receives a reward and then may not see this person for the rest of his life.

Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov. Photo: Vladimir Khodakov

And everyone is happy. Everyone has the feeling that the priest has fulfilled his duty. Our contemporaries with little church, near-church, and near-church feel that they have joined church life. And most importantly, there is a feeling that now there is at least some guarantee that the car will not crash, the well will not become moldy, and the apartment will not catch fire. And all this does not at all imply constant communication between this priest and these people, and these people with the priest in the context of general parish life and the celebration of the liturgy.

The priest acts as a ritual and household servant, completely devoid of any spirituality, fulfills the needs of people he barely knows or completely unfamiliar with.

Yes, he receives money for this, and on the basis of this money he can indicate his status in the diocese, pay diocesan dues and demonstrate that there is some kind of life in the parish. But most of the people who come to him are not even parishioners, but visitors.

And this cannot but devastate, or a person begins to condescend to the level of any servant: a hairdresser, a salesman. We have a lot of priests who, after serving for some time, begin to perceive themselves in this way.

– How long might this take, several years?

– Depends on the characteristics of a person’s personality, on the level of his culture. I'll get to this next. You and I have seen that in one of the main functions of a priest there are serious reasons for suddenly feeling like an empty, lonely person, to whom people treat exclusively as a consumer, and to whom he himself begins to treat in the same consumer way, expecting nothing from them except material reward for the time spent, the burden of pronouncing ritual words that are incomprehensible to them, performing ritual actions that are completely incomprehensible to them, which can sometimes be accompanied by a moderately sincere conversation if the performance of the ritual is followed by a meal.

– Doesn’t give anything away and doesn’t fill itself?

– In their relationship there is an imitation of church life. But, in fact, before us, yes, of course, religious life, but of a lower order, this is magic. To paraphrase the famous book of Archpriest Alexander Men, magism without monotheism. Christ in this case is not necessary, he may not exist.

He gets tired of a word that remains unanswered

– The second function of the priest, in addition to performing divine services, is also no less significant, although in our Church it is secondary and even tertiary. This is preaching a sermon, teaching people. We must remember that until the 2nd half of the 18th century, the vast majority of the clergy did not preach at all for centuries. And this area began to develop only in the 19th century, when we gradually developed a layer of educated clergy, accustomed to the idea that preaching is an obligatory component of worship.

And then the clergy was almost completely destroyed, disappeared from life, and if we remember that in the 90s the majority of our clergy had no theological education at all, it is quite understandable that when they came to ministry, many newly ordained priests limited themselves to what they had mastered purely external forms the performance of divine services and, above all, the requirements that made delivering a sermon unnecessary. The service is long, it’s over, and, thank God, we will leave in peace, but what should we talk about at the service? And so everything is clear. And this function was not performed.

On the other hand, many priests preach, and this poses its own problem.

You see, a sermon helps a priest to intensify his contact with people, to try, while talking about something, to see their inner world in their reaction to his words: of course, if they have any thoughts about Christ, about their own imperfection, and so on Further. Preaching contributes to this.

What if there is no sermon, or is it formal?

I can tell by own experience: I have been delivering sermons for many years, always after the Gospel reading, quite long, at least 15-20 minutes. Over the years, I got the feeling that this was not my monologue. I never prepare for a sermon, I go out and don’t know what I’m going to say. And in the process of conversation, an inexpressible contact arises between you and the flock, you begin to reflect with them on the Gospel text. And the Gospel, for all its simplicity, is a very rich text; there are a lot of layers and subtexts. And especially when the parishioners consist of people you know, you see their lively reactions, based on them you focus your attention on something.

Preaching is a church sacrament; it practically never occurs outside of the liturgy. Unfortunately, even for those who preach, a situation of a tempting nature arises: the priest speaks about things that seem obvious to everyone, everyone seems to understand these things in the same way, but, knowing their lives, he sees how little the meaning of those words is realized in them. which he pronounces. And he himself, often saying Right words, cannot help but see the distance between word and deed. But by pronouncing words from the pulpit, he takes on a certain kind of obligation. One of the main characters of sermons should be Christ, and, on the other hand, people.

I often hear from parishioners who have listened to my sermons over the years that there is more and more of an emphasis on people, how people respond to Christ. And it is precisely in this aspect of activity that the priest is faced with how little the word in itself means, not backed up by life and deed.

I remember one telling episode when I was still a young priest. The end of the 80s, a funeral service was supposed to take place, which was performed by a more respectable priest, a former actor. And he said: “I need to say something, but I really don’t know anything about the deceased, okay, somehow on autopilot.” I was internally outraged by this approach. But over time I realized that if you remove the almost cynical-sounding term, it is clear what was meant. The point was that, even when addressing strangers, you, as a priest, must tell them what the Gospel should proclaim. Without even knowing how it will be refracted in their consciousness and the circumstances of their lives.

This is a complex process that requires effort. And a person gets tired of it. Tired of words that often go unanswered. This is why it is important throughout the life of a priest to preach to the same parishioners whom you have known for years. But most priests don’t have this; they speak into the crowd.

– That is, they lose meaning in what they say?

- Yes. And there is a feeling of emptiness. Why would I tell God what he already knows? But people are not interested in this.

What makes priests bad psychotherapists

– And finally, one more function, no less tempting, but significant in the life of a priest. This is shepherding, one of the forms of which is clergy. One of the colossal problems of our church life is that our entire pastorate bears the stamp of clergy. All our priests have the right to confess, and all Christians are required to confess before communion.

But the majority of our priests do not know how to confess, and the majority of our parishioners do not know how to confess. This led to a colossal profanation of the sacrament of repentance in the form of confession. During confession, people repent least of all. And most of all, they are concerned about two things: getting a clear, simple answer to their most various questions and hear a word of reassurance, sympathy, talk about your problems.

– Get support?

- Yes. “Tell me how should I live?”, “Tell me what should I do?” And what can a priest, not even a young one, but an old one, know about the lives of people who are in many ways different from him? They have their own families, their own professions, their own social environment. And a strange combination of such pseudo-monastic directives “do this, do that” and a very unqualified psychotherapeutic conversation arises.

And you can spend hours, days, months and years in this. And many priests succumb to this, because sometimes they have no other forms of communication with people other than standing with them at the lectern, turning confession into a psychotherapeutic session, bad and unprofessional. Because the topic of confession is a person’s repentance in specific matters, the topic of pastoral conversation is the posing of specific questions, not to bless to undergo surgery, but how to act in a situation from a Christian point of view, from the point of view of the Church.

Moreover, it is not the opinion of the priest that is required, but the opinion of the Church. This all fades into the background. And this enormously breaks priests, turning them into bad psychotherapists. A person has no religious questions at all, but the priest does not feel the right to say: “This is not for me,” if, moreover, we're talking about about the conversation in confession.

But the priest is alive, and this empty chatter at the lectern is emasculating his soul.

He feels lonely again. This is one of the very important problems.

– Is your family supportive?

- Yes. But I imagine very well that for many priests the family is by no means such a quiet backwater. But rather, it is a reason for temptation when, for example, in the name of the family he forgets his pastoral duty. When a family, often even less developed than he is in a spiritual, religious sense, defines him as simply a breadwinner, it gets to him.

And, at the same time, any person in the family is also experiencing a certain kind of crisis. Such a concept as loneliness together is common to many priests. This aggravates his loneliness, to which he is doomed simply as a priest.

There is a flock that does not become a family. And there is a family, which in the general crisis of the family is often not a help, but a temptation.

See, I tried to explain the reasons for what is called burnout. As you can see, there are a lot of them. But maybe the most main reason burnout is that, and I say this as a priest who has been in the priesthood for almost 30 years, as a teacher at a theological school who has been teaching there for the same number of years, that most of the people who come to us have absolutely no idea what the ministry of a priest is and what is church life?

Why do these young people go to seminary?

– How do they imagine it?

– And here we must make a certain historical excursion. Just to understand what is happening and how this is possible. First of all, we must keep in mind that during the first six hundred-plus centuries of Christianity, the clergy did not study with us at all. It was hereditary, and the children learned from their fathers the purely external performance of worship, without understanding it, not knowing it, not being able to preach and educate their parishioners. They were the performers of worship and services. Completely, at the same time, thoughtlessly.

Finally, after the painful 18th century, when we finally created a system of theological education, in the 19th century the clergy appeared who realized that a priest must be educated and have special knowledge. I want to emphasize that we were talking about the children of the hereditary clergy. A certain way of life for the priestly family developed, different from the lifestyle of the men. They were the strongest, both in moral and everyday relations. The priest, after all, at some level was no longer identical to his ignorant flock peasant. Education gave a new impetus to the phenomenon, and our clergy began to develop further.

At the beginning of the 19th century, for example, the provincial mass of the nobility was inferior to the clergy in education. That is why even those priestly children who did not become priests, as a rule, joined the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia. And an understanding developed that a priest must prepare for his ministry. Not only having received a church upbringing from infancy in the family, but also having gone through theological school: a four-year theological school, a six-year seminary. And only after this a person can be a priest.

As a result, when at the beginning of the 20th century, when the class isolation of the theological school was largely overcome, an interesting, nascent process of influx into the clergy and Russian intelligentsia began - people who were already educated secularly, but who somehow realized for themselves the need for such study. As a rule, such people entered theological academies.

All this was destroyed in the 20s. This layer simply physically ceased to exist. And then the clergy that appeared in the post-war period were no longer hereditary, but of worker-peasant origin, because all other classes were destroyed as much as possible.

The first generation Soviet intelligentsia did not resemble either Russian nobles or Russian priests; their children were rather simple-minded. Our clergy did not even radically democratize, but became plebeian: people came from an environment in which external ritual piety had been preserved for centuries, but there was no understanding that the Church is a special culture, and the service of priests presupposes familiarization with this culture and tradition.

– That is, we have again returned to the “men” from which we came?

- Yes. But at the same time, we tried to restore the theological school. This is understandable, because those few representatives of the clergy who survived by the mid-40s, who themselves went through it, understood that it was impossible without it. But the level of the revived theological schools was immeasurably lower than those theological schools that once existed.

And, nevertheless, despite the difficult conditions of permanent persecution of the Church in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, the level of the clergy was still higher than in the 90s. Why? Because the authorities viewed theological schools as a kind of filter through which they passed future priests. After all, the attempt to take control of a future priest began when the applicant submitted documents to the seminary. Representatives of the authorities have already contacted them.

My first preventive conversation with the state security major took place when I had just passed the exam and did not yet know whether I had been accepted. And the authorities really didn’t like it when some active bishops appointed priests from people who had not gone through theological school. And in the theological school, surveillance began, and there were many people who performed information functions among teachers and students. The authorities were happy with this.

But something else happened: everyone went through a theological school, in which there were people who, perhaps, were not very educated themselves. For me, examples of high theological culture were Archbishop Mikhail Mudyugin, a candidate of technical sciences who had a higher secular education, but then graduated from a theological academy, and Archpriest Liveriy Voronov. These were people from hereditary, intelligent, church-going families, whose personalities conveyed to me the type of thinking, cultured clergyman. Now there are no such people among us. There are those who are educated by Soviet standards, but this style has already been lost forever.

But the worst thing happened in the 90s, when people began to be ordained to the priesthood without any education.

Two-thirds of our clergy at that time were uneducated. What did they have behind them? It would be good if some technical institute. What if it was a tractor driver or a turner? Who was this priest? And these people performed divine services thoughtlessly, preached from the wind of their heads, communicated with parishioners in their usual style, and talked about everyday things.

Another problem of the 1990s is emerging that is contributing to priest burnout. For many priests, even burning ones, filled with high impulses, the main task for many years was not the task of creating a parish community, not communicating with their spiritually motivated flock, but the task of building a church in a country that was experiencing a colossal crisis. The construction of the temple implied participation in sometimes dubious events, communication with dubious sponsors and government officials. This could not but morally cripple people, and undeveloped ones at that.

Now, when the next intake is taking place, I think: “Why are these young people going to the seminary?” They do not understand at all what priestly ministry is, and we very often do not have time to prepare them in our theological schools: a four-year seminary and a two-year academy.

Photo: Vk/Simbirsk Metropolitanate

They don't burn out because they never burned out.

– That is, the seed of burnout lies long before the priest begins to communicate with the flock?

– You see, burnout can be a tragedy, or it can go completely unnoticed by a burnt-out priest, and simply become a natural process. It did not burn out, and, in fact, did not catch fire. He didn’t burn, he came to work as a ritual and household servant, initially programmed for this.

And, even after going through theological school, he is limited to a minimum of knowledge, which allows him to create the feeling that he can be a servant more attractive than another priest: to say something, to portray something. That is why one of the terrible problems of priests is involuntary acting.

When you realize that you are the way you are, you bear little resemblance to a priest and begin to imitate someone, especially authoritative, elder priests. It's starting to get creepy role-playing game into a priest who cannot help but devastate.

There is no experience of church life, no theological education, much less theological culture.

And most importantly, he does not understand that in order to remain a priest, you need to live a spiritual life. He himself had not yet formed this spiritual life. He continues his ministry without this life.

– Then it turns out that burnout is the lot of a few, only those who are burning inside?

- Yes! Therefore, priests who burn out evoke in me much more not only sympathy, but respect than those who go on like this without burning out, because nothing has ever burned in their souls. Another thing is that this process, of course, will change historically. But now we see a very sad picture: priest burnout is a process that is very difficult for many of us to avoid.

Am I burned out or not? Hard to say. But I understand perfectly well that I am no longer the same as I was before. In some ways I have become better, in some ways worse, it’s probably difficult to talk about it. But, you see, a significant part of our priests have not even reached the point of burnout, and this is the worst thing. These people are unfit for professionalism. In every profession there are unsuitable people.

A person who cannot stand the sight of a dead person and faints at the sight of blood cannot be a doctor. From the very first year such people are expelled, or they leave on their own, and this is completely natural. Yes, the canon prohibits ordaining people whose bodies, for example, reject wine. But this is what concerns the external, physiological manifestations of a person. But there may also be spiritual contraindications.

– What spiritual contraindications could there be? If you imagine such a spiritual doctor issuing a certificate to applicants?

– Psychiatric diagnosis, for example. There is a good test system that helps identify people prone to negative addictions.

– Could alcohol be an attempt to escape burnout?

– As for drunkenness, this phenomenon accompanied the history of our clergy, as well as our entire people. It intensified in the 19th century when educated priests appeared in village parishes. They were alienated from the peasant environment and were strangers among the nobility. People with spiritual needs and a higher level of culture had complete isolation, which became a very serious problem.

And only at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, in the cities, especially when the educated clergy gradually entered the category of the intelligentsia, the priest began to communicate with scientists, public figures, officers, doctors, and his children were intellectuals. But in the villages, isolation remained, and the village priests drank much more because of this, of course. This anesthesia, typical for a Russian person, worked especially well in the clergy, especially since alcohol was always at hand.

– Can a priest be depressed? Real medical depression?

- Why not? He never ceases to be human, that’s one of his problems.

Don't be ashamed to ask for help

– Is it possible to somehow systematically help such priests?

– The priest must live in the context of a modern civilized society and must be ready to resort to help different specialists. It is difficult for a lay person to go to a sex therapist or psychiatrist; we still have few psychotherapists. It's difficult because it's embarrassing. There is no need to be ashamed. And the priest does not need to be ashamed to seek the help of certain specialists who can help him in overcoming his human weakness.

– For such burnt-out priests, could psychotherapy sessions help?

– It can support them psychologically, calm them emotionally, like an antidepressant. But it won't solve the problem. God cares for everyone, and anyone can repent. I fully admit that at the Last Judgment God will place burnt-out priests above those who never caught fire and therefore never burned out. It is most important.

And even if the priest experienced a crisis and left ministry, if he repents before God, then God, of course, accepts all this to a greater extent than the imitation of church life carried out by bearded, shaggy role players in uncomfortable archaic clothes, posing as seers, elders and spiritual mentors.

This church masquerade is especially disgusting, and is often the inevitable calling of those who find themselves a priest without understanding what it is.

– Isn’t the priest ashamed to feel tired? Unable to do this anymore, unwilling? Admit to himself that he is tired.

– You reason as if the priest woke up and saw himself burnt out in the mirror.

– It happens that you get up and realize that you don’t want anything. And so it has been for several mornings in a row.

– How many such morning awakenings should there be? Five, ten? To come to the conclusion that you are burned out. Everything here is so purely individual. There is one very good remedy against burnout, and cultural, developed, simply smart people they understand this: with age, a person begins to lose interest in himself. He digs less into own states, and more, especially if it is a priest, looks at the people around him.

The priest is inseparable from Christ. Any person, having lived his life, understands that he is quite ordinary, uninteresting, that everything that happened in his life has already been experienced a thousand times by others once upon a time, and he begins to more sensibly assess his capabilities. So he woke up with the feeling that he was insignificant and pitiful, entered into communication with a parishioner who was experiencing a tragedy, was in difficult situation, and suddenly saw in him a most worthy Christian, and he felt ashamed: how can I sink like that when a man has gone through such trials and is so spiritual.

Parishioners, on the one hand, are great tempters for the priest, and on the other hand, they are his great support, because this is the Church. There is no need to isolate yourself, you need to be open to the Church. Where can you see Christ? We all know this answer very well: Christ comes to us in the form of our neighbors.

Nastya Dmitrieva, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov

Georgy Nikolaevich Mitrofanov was born on March 19, 1958 in Leningrad, in the family of a captain of the 1st rank. Graduated from the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, Leningrad Theological Seminary and Academy. Since 1988 – priest. Candidate of Philosophy, Master of Theology, teacher of the history of the Russian Church at the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, professor at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul at the Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education.

From Tsaritsyn to Leningrad

– Like many Leningrad families, my family was formed as a result of my parents coming to the city from different places and due to different circumstances. My mother came here before the war to visit her uncle, who, after graduating from the Tsaritsyn Real School, came and entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, the brainchild of Witte, and became a shipbuilding engineer. She came to him in what had already become Soviet time communal apartment on Lomonosov Street, in Chernyshov Lane, where I was destined to be born. She did not then imagine that her fate would turn out in such a way that in the room where she stayed with her uncle, she would live with her son.

She also went here with her mother, my grandmother, who was already amazed at how much in Leningrad in the 1930s the atmosphere of that now-gone tradition of Russian cultural intelligentsia was still felt, which was associated for her with the very Russia in which passed the most happy years her life, I mean the years of her childhood, adolescence and early youth.

Well, then it happened that during the war, when my mother, and grandparents, like the entire population of Leningrad, found themselves abandoned in the city, thrown into the combat zone, and were doomed to either die or survive the nightmare of this terrible battle, they survived. Or rather, then a very significant event for our family took place. Like all the residents of the city, they, already deprived of the opportunity to live in their houses, destroyed and burned, huddled in basements and dugouts. And so my grandfather, no longer a young man, went to fetch water and, returning, was killed. His head was torn off by a shell fragment. This death in front of my grandfather’s family became in many ways a symbolic event for our entire family. I will try to talk about this, keeping in mind that it will largely explain the atmosphere in which I was formed from early childhood.

The fact is that my grandfather came from a very interesting family a very respectable resident of Tsaritsyn, a merchant who came from Moscow Old Believers, from Bespopovites, but converted to Orthodoxy. There was a very lively democratic atmosphere in the family. But my grandfather, whom my great-grandfather predicted to be his successor, represented that very category of merchant “golden youth” who simply dreamed of living cheerfully and happily in that same Russia, which, it seemed, would always exist.

Then came the civil war, the first World War, and he, who was then living in Moscow, interning with his uncle, a Moscow merchant, and having studied, it seems, at a commercial institute, chose to become an accountant at one of the military factories in order to get a reservation. He avoided participating in the First World War by spending time in restaurants, with gypsies, and at the opera. Hoping that this life will continue forever. The same goes for the Civil War. His stay at the military plant freed him from this need. And then, when it was all over, he returned to Tsaritsyn, his father had nothing left. And the potential successor to a great good business went to work at a Soviet plant, where he rose to the position of commercial director by the beginning of the Second World War.

All life in my mother’s family took place in the memory of this past, in which it was so good. His friends, who had not been repressed and had not left Tsaritsyn, gathered to visit their grandfather. They played preference, sang romances and mourned the life that my grandfather never even tried to protect.

And my grandmother carried in her heart the memory of another man who never became her husband, but who became her first love, a Denikin officer. When she just graduated from high school, the revolution began, the Civil War, and after the whites entered the city, she met Captain Ivan Georgievich Muromtsev, who commanded the armored train "Eagle". From my early childhood I remember the enthusiastic words of yesterday’s high school student who fell in love with a young officer. He was only 26 years old, he already held the position of colonel and commanded an armored train. Their romance did not last long. In the fall of 1919, the armored train was transferred to Ukraine, and soon she received news that he had died.

My grandfather was a different person, with a different fate. But what united them? I have already said that my grandfather died during Battle of Stalingrad, by accident, from a random shrapnel, and died on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, September 21, 1942. And then, many, many years later, my son, being in Paris, in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “The Sign”, in the museum, which was once headed by Andrei Dmitrievich Shmeman, discovered a story about how the commander of the armored train “Eagle”, captain, died Muromtsev. During an artillery duel with a Soviet armored train, his head was blown off by shrapnel. And this happened on September 21, but in 1919. Almost the same death. The only difference is that my failed grandfather died at the age of 26, defending Russia, which was so good for my accomplished grandfather, who did not bother to protect it.

That is why in my sermons and lectures I often dare to say that we, who now live in Russia, are descendants not of the best, but of the worst Russian people. For the best Russian people either did not have children or were born in exile. And most of the children born in the Soviet Union were from those who either destroyed historical Russia or did not defend it. This guilt remains today, in fact, unresolved and many of us are not aware of it.

To bring to the end my story about the family of my mother and grandmother getting to Leningrad, I want to remind you that out of two hundred thousand people in Stalingrad, about eight thousand people remained. They were deprived of everything. And so my grandmother’s brother, who was a shipbuilder at the Baltic Shipyard, came to Stalingrad and took them to Gorky. An indicative detail of that time. My grandmother was an accountant, and my brother suggested that she go to work at the shipbuilding plant where he worked, but she had to fill out a form in the first department. My grandmother went desperately to fill out a form, where in the box asking whether she had been to the occupied territory, she wrote that she had been. The head of the first department looked and said: how can this be, you were in Stalingrad, but Stalingrad was not surrendered. Write again. And so she wrote that she was not in the occupied territory, she was accepted into the plant. Soviet propaganda in this case turned out to be acting for the benefit of her fate.

And her brother died of tuberculosis in 1944, and since they had nothing but his room in St. Petersburg, they returned here. So, completely unexpectedly for myself, my mother’s family, a family with such long-standing Tsaritsyn roots, ended up here in Leningrad, in an apartment on Lomonosov Street that was well known to them.

As for my father, he had a different fate. He was more than 20 years older than my mother, and came from the peasants of the Tula province, and went from a workers' faculty member, a Red Navy man, a graduate of the Polytechnic Institute, to a captain of the 1st rank. He was a naval officer during the war, then graduated from the Krylov Naval Engineering Academy, in general, he had a fairly successful career. He felt himself, flesh and blood, a Soviet man. He truly believed that what happened in our country made him who he was.

Communal childhood

My mother and my father's marriage was probably doomed to fail. They were very different. However, I can’t help but remember one episode. They really divorced soon after my birth, but just when I was born, and I was born in 1958, of course, the question of my baptism arose, and this was the period of Khrushchev’s persecutions. My father was already expecting an admiral's star, so he insisted that I be baptized only at the dacha, in the most secret way possible.

And the story about my baptism is also very remarkable for me. My mother and grandmother decided to hide thoroughly. We rented a dacha in Marienburg, where there was active temple, but they baptized me in the church in Gatchina, which is nearby. Then two babies were baptized. One frail, thin one, who cried all the time, and the other, that is, me, almost the same as now - plump, with constrictions and very joyful. The priest plunged me into the font three times, and at the same time I not only was not embarrassed, but for some reason I laughed and tucked my legs, demanding further immersions. So they happened in this church, the church of the Holy Apostle Paul, exactly thirty years after my baptism; in 1988, I was ordained to the priesthood by our then Metropolitan Alexy (Ridiger).

My godmother was a colleague of my grandmother’s, who was a party member. Of course, there was no need to talk about any catechesis or any religious education during my childhood. On the contrary, I went through the typical Soviet kindergarten system. Because we lived in difficult conditions. After divorcing my father, my mother, grandmother and paralyzed great-grandmother lived in one room in a communal apartment. I was sent to kindergarten. And even then, in the depths of my heart, I hated any form of collective, collective education. It seemed to me that people who early years They encourage me to happily go to kindergarten, they lie. The children who are supposedly happy in this kindergarten are lying. Children lie in quiet times, pretending that they are sleeping, although they just want to play and live an active child's life. The feeling of this falseness surrounding me began to accompany me very early.

Another life

But at the same time, there was a city around me. The fact that I lived in the center of St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, constantly reminded me of the existence of some other life. And I must say that I spent a lot of time with my grandmother; we rented a dacha, as a rule, in Pavlovsk or Tsarskoe Selo. Even in the summer I was in the state of that very St. Petersburg Russia, which did not at all resemble the world that surrounded me. The feeling that I lived in a city in which there should have been other people, and there should have been a different life, accompanied me from an early age.

We lived in an apartment in rather difficult conditions. There were 27 people for one bathroom and one toilet. Basically, these were people of proletarian status. But there was one family, the family of the son of the last owner of the Red October piano factory, and once Diederichs, and we had a fairly warm relationship with them. So to speak, even in this situation the intellectuals felt themselves opposed to the environment. Their room with antique furniture was for me another window into that other world into which I was so drawn from the very beginning.

This feeling that I am living a false life, but a real life is possible, has accompanied me since childhood. And it was fueled, of course, by the fact that my mother, who, after a series of tossing and searching for herself, graduated first from the Institute of Culture with a degree in “bibliographer of technical libraries”, and then from the Institute of Patent Science, lived all her life in literature and theater. Just like my grandmother, who once dreamed of being an actress. And this literary and theatrical atmosphere, and within a 15-minute walk from me there were half a dozen wonderful theaters: the Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater, the Pushkin Alexandrinsky Theater, the Comedy Theater, the Komissarzhevskaya Theater, the Lensovet Theater - all this filled my life with the feeling that true reality - this is what is written about in books, primarily in classic works of Russian and European literature.

Of course, this was a completely false worldview, but it allowed me, one way or another, to resist the environment and not lose myself. I was never sent to a dacha with a kindergarten, I was never sent to a pioneer camp, and summer for me was always the most attractive time of the year.

School

I ended up in a school that was once outstanding. It was a commercial school, turned into the 206th comprehensive labor polytechnic school. That's what all the main schools were called back then. But what struck me in this school: along with such women, recognizable from the experience of kindergarten, who did not love children, I saw ghosts of the past there. Copper handles on oak doors. Antique desks. Very cozy classrooms, especially two classrooms: physics, filled with good quality pre-revolutionary teaching aids, and a biology classroom, in which test tubes with reptiles preserved in alcohol had Latin inscriptions on the walls. These were pieces of that same world that no longer existed in this school.

Actually, from this moment my interest in history began. From early school years I wanted to know the country that I was deprived of, so that I could at least imagine what could be in my life. This was facilitated, first of all, by the moderate anti-Soviet attitude of my family, and, of course, the confrontation between my mother and my father played a role. Of course, in any case of family breakdown, the child gravitates towards the mother who remains, rather than towards the father who leaves. But for me, my father was not only a man who abandoned me, but also a man who, with his entire lifestyle, personified the world that was hostile to me. This doesn't mean I didn't worry about it.

I remember how one day he came to school to talk to my classmates and talk about the war. I walked next to him along the corridor, so happy and proud. He walked in his uniform, with his orders. He had the military Order of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Red Star, which was quite a lot for a naval officer. With a dirk. This was the period when I was ready to forgive him everything, even the fact that he was like this Soviet officer. I was then in the fourth grade, my priorities were already set very clearly: whites are good, because my grandmother talked about this short period of her youth, when whites were in Tsaritsyn, reds are bad.

Unknown world

I read a lot and thanks to reading fiction and at the same time turning to the historical past, I began to think about religious topics. I remember another episode that suddenly made me feel that there must be some kind of proper peace. In kindergarten, I always opposed the informal leaders who appeared in the group. In this confrontation I was alone. Sometimes I started communicating with one or the other, but it was not possible to create any alternative group. I was always alone.

And so I remember when we were walking one day, it was in Shcherbakov Lane, there were few sleds, the sleds were torn from each other, I was disgusted to participate in this snatching of the sleds. I waited until most of the children were taken apart and finally decided to ride this sled calmly. But the teacher forbade: since everyone has already left, sit and wait for them to come for you. I lay down on a bench, burst into tears, and then looked at the gray St. Petersburg sky and reasoned that there must be a world somewhere where there are enough sleds for everyone. This was one of the first sensations that the false world must be opposed by the proper world, which I must get to the bottom of. I have it for a long time associated with historical Russia, which I, of course, idealized.

I first thought about a religious, Christian life when I started reading European literature somewhere in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade. I can even name the authors who turned my gaze towards Christianity. This is Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. We had at home New Testament, which was quite difficult for me to read. Even then I was aware that the Holy Scriptures require some kind of preliminary preparation for its understanding. And now I remember how I’m already late for school, but I’m reading one chapter from Walter Scott, and most importantly, I’m looking at the notes, which explain the image of certain biblical characters - who is Abraham, who is Samuel, who is this or that prophet and so on.

Through the notes to Walter Scott's Puritan-themed novel, I discovered the world of the Bible. Well, the book that turned me towards Christianity was, of course, “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, his image of Bishop Miriel, like the image of Jean Valjean, became for me examples of the very life that should take place in my destiny. It was about sixth grade.

My family encouraged me to become an engineer, and I stubbornly, studying with B grades in mathematics, physics and chemistry, looked towards the humanities, although the way history and literature were taught at school was completely unacceptable to me. I initially did not believe anything that history and literature teachers told me and tried to look for an alternative point of view to everything they taught me. It was definitely not bad.

From this time on, my even deeper immersion in history begins, and in the eighth grade a crisis occurs. The crisis associated with the fact that my grandmother is dying, and her death makes religious life quite concrete for me, in the sense that I start going to church. It's 1973. The experience of death as a reality that requires not just reflection, not just memories of the historical past, but a direct existential entry into the reality that I read about in history.

The church is the only thing left from the past, but it is the only thing that will help us survive in the present. In the ninth and tenth grade, I stopped studying altogether, I read only what I wanted, and slipped into grades of three. True, I answered brilliantly in history lessons, realizing that I was lying, saying what the teachers required. While studying in the tenth grade, I understood that those who went on the Ice March and who fought the Bolsheviks also studied within the walls of this commercial school. Here, of course, Soviet cinema played its role.

You probably remember films in which the bad Whites looked much better than the good Reds. And so I recalled certain images in history lessons, answering properly what was needed about the decisions of some congress. I sat, listened to the roar of footsteps along the corridor, and imagined how a detachment of White Guards was entering my class. And he says: “Who is with us?” Of course I would say: “I am!” - “Prove that you are with us, kill the school principal!” And he taught history with us, I imagined how I would put him on the bayonet of a three-line rifle.

Of course, this was all quite made up. I feel sorry that I and many of my other thinking peers were doomed in that world not to learn in a normal way. For me, a humanist, I would have to study languages, read texts in Greek and Latin, systematically study the humanities - something without which erudition is impossible. But none of this happened. I was deprived of a normal humanities school, which no longer existed in Russia by that time.

My entrance to university was largely flawed. I went there reluctantly, even then thinking about the theological seminary, which I had never even been to. But it seemed self-evident that I should get a higher education. I entered the university with conflicting feelings, assuming that there would be untruth and ideology. I missed half a point, entered the evening department, and after the first year ended up in the armed forces. Moreover, not just anywhere, but to the navy.

Army test

The curse of my childhood and adolescence was my father’s desire to snatch me from the bad influence of the women who raised me, and send me first to the Nakhimov School, and then to Naval Academy. He offered me a choice of Frunze or Dzerzhinka, respectable schools. But I fought off all this, and still, the fleet did not pass me by.

Three years military service for me they were, of course, very ordeal. I simply perceived it as Dostoevsky’s hard labor. I idolized Russian Imperial Navy, Imperial Army and hated the Soviet army, the Soviet navy. Taking the oath, I felt like an apostate. I did not dare to leave the cross that I wore when I joined the armed forces.

And I must say that the years of my service were years of rather difficult reflections; fortunately, it so happened that the service itself was not so difficult. After six months of training, which I completed in Arkhangelsk, at the former Solovetsky school of young boys, I then served for two and a half years in Liepaja, in the Baltic states. I didn’t have a good trusting relationship with anyone, except for one person. He was also a dropout student, a Lithuanian, who was a Catholic, a Lithuanian nationalist, and with whom we quickly found a common language.

My Russian nationalism, Orthodoxy, and rejection of the outside world were very much in harmony with his nationalism. I've read quite a lot. Not only anymore fiction, but also philosophical, fortunately there was such an opportunity. Of course, this was not a normal form of reading. When reading, say, critical studies on Kierkegaard, I looked for, wrote down, numerous quotations scattered throughout this study. When, reading a collection of contemporary authors who criticized existentialism, I again wrote out quotes. Trying to get to the original source without being able to deal with it.

It was the experience of an independent intellectual life, some kind of experiences, suffering, which somehow, in general, helped me, who was raised almost like Oblomov, by two women who loved me infinitely, to survive future contact with real Soviet life.

Well, then, after three years of service, I returned to the university, but after finishing my second year I decided to quit. And I didn’t give up only for the reason that my academic advisor offered me, since I studied with straight A’s, the option of completing the remaining four courses in two years, taking two courses a year. Provided that I pass with straight A's. Thus, I completed a six-year university course in four years and left its walls with the full conviction that I would not be a Soviet historian.

By inertia, I continued to work on my PhD thesis with my thesis opponent, Valentin Semenovich Dyakin, a fairly prominent historian from the Institute of History. The topic of my diploma was the formation of the Cadet Party, which was not taken by chance. After all, there were many Russian religious philosophers in the Cadet Party, and it was about them that I dreamed most of all in my student years.

It was their blind copiers that I read day and night. And he came, of course, to the wild conviction that Russian religious philosophy contains within itself the entirety of the world’s religious philosophical culture. But since many of them were cadets, I decided to combine my historical studies with my philosophical teachings to understand what motivated these people to take one or another position in the political field.

Church life

After returning from the army, I began to go to church even more actively. For the first time I began to go to church, where I not only attended services, but already communicated with some kind of environment. This was the temple of the Theological Academy. During the summer season of 1980, in connection with the Olympics, this church continued to function, which had not happened before during the holidays, and so I went there for the first time, listened to the sermons of the then rector Archbishop Kirill, the current Patriarch, and saw a whole galaxy of outstanding educated priests.

Then, in 1980, I met one of our closest teachers, who remained for me. It was he who subsequently gave me a recommendation for the theological seminary. Then I tried to combine my stay at the university with a visit to the church of the Theological Academy. At the same time and in the same church, I met a student at the Theological Academy, then deacon Georgy Kochetkov. Perhaps, communication with Father Iannuariy and Father Georgy Kochetkov was for me the most remarkable facts of visiting the academic temple.

Father Iannuarius insisted that I complete my studies at the university, which is what happened. He also said that it would be good to continue doing science. But the question arose not only about future work, with which, by the way, I was lucky: after university I ended up in the manuscripts department of the state public library, in the group of Russian collections of the 18th - 20th centuries. In Soviet times it was a quiet backwater. Then I even worked in a branch of the manuscript department, which was located in Plekhanov’s house, and there the funds of the professors of the Theological Academy were collected, absolutely everything that had been preserved by that time. Working in the archive freed the historian in Soviet times from an excess of ideology. It was possible, while dealing with source studies, to avoid historical and political agitprop.

Any half-truth was then no longer to my liking, and I was very burdened by my work. I abandoned my dissertation. And I took three years to work, so that the commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, who decided the fate of all those entering the theological seminary, would not pick on the fact that my diploma remained unfulfilled. That is, I prepared for entering the seminary in advance, very seriously, realizing that it would not be easy. For the government of that time did everything to prevent people with higher, and especially humanitarian, education from entering the theological seminary. But Metropolitan Nikodim was no longer there.

And I must say that the following story became such a very expressive episode in my life’s journey. I already graduated from university in 1982, and then I got married. Here, too, one probably cannot help but mention an episode that well characterizes me with everything positive and negative that was in me. After returning from military service, I broke off all relations with my father. He invited me to continue communicating, but I came from military service in an even greater conviction that people like my father, being professional military men, destroyed and are destroying my country, the Russia that I loved, and relations between us and him are impossible.

And then I met my future mother (we met in the historical archive), who struck me with her extraordinary personality. For me, she was a very bright woman. Then, of course, I thought about monasticism. It was very difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that at absolutely the wrong time some woman appeared in my field of vision who could prevent me from realizing my plan. I wanted the fullness of church life. And what kind of completeness can there be without monastic and priestly service at the same time?

After six months of communication, we had an explanation when I presented her with a choice: to remain faithful to me for two years and wait until I decide whether I will marry her or become a monk. She replied that this was cruel and that the question could not be posed that way.

We broke up. I remember this very hot summer day. I didn’t drink alcohol at all then. By the way, it is significant that in the army I did not drink alcohol (and at that time I was still influenced by Tolstoyanism and the Old Believer traditions that existed in the family), plus I did not participate in love affairs (and there, sometimes, there was a situation where they brought their beloved ones directly to the place of military service), did not swear, led them to the conviction that I was a sectarian. And when they heard me read the rule after lights out, they definitely decided that I was a Baptist.

Very revealing. It is impossible to assume that a young man can be Orthodox, only a Baptist.
So. I, such a very correct young man, after this explanation, bought a bottle of cognac, began to sadly watch “An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano” - one of my favorite films, and there was an episode that decided my fate. If you remember, during his hysteria Platonov runs, shouting that he will save everyone from himself, since his life was not a success, he will commit suicide. And his wife runs after him. Watching this scene, I suddenly felt that if this happened to me, my Marina Alexandrovna would never run after me, but would scream at me: I don’t believe it!

And she would have stopped me on the path of such idiotic self-expression and self-affirmation. I then realized that this is a person, thanks to whom I will not only, perhaps, be happy, but I will live some kind of active life. creative life and I will develop, improve, and I cannot lose this person. We restored our communication and came to a compromise. We decided to get married two years after we graduated from university.

So I got married, worked in a decent place. We didn’t think about children at all, we didn’t want children, so our child was born right after a year, apparently in order to experience the fullness of family life. At this time, with a small child, in rather difficult living conditions (thanks to the birth of the child, we were given another room, but we remained in a communal apartment), I suddenly encountered a situation where my scientific supervisor, like many prominent scientists, was an anti-Soviet person, but the one who wrote the right books - in particular, on the history of Russian liberalism - began to tell me about the need, while I was still a Komsomol member, to join the party. It seemed completely absurd. But I heard something similar from some priests, that yes, the Church needs people who would be connected with our science and culture, and here you cannot occupy any positions without party affiliation.

Elders and freedom of choice

And so, wanting to quickly receive sanction for something so improper, I went to the elder for the first time in my life.

In the summer of 1983 I came to. I met him in a completely atypical appearance for an old man. He was dressed in some kind of woman's coat, although it was hot, with galoshes on his shoes. Having learned that I had come to him for advice, he invited me to the temple, put on a cassock, and when I told him about my main question, that I was now deciding my future, whether I should continue my dissertation or not, they demanded of me joining the party, how to combine it with the Christian faith.

And suddenly he told me, although I, of course, cannot accurately reproduce the uniqueness of his speech: “If you are a Christian, you can do anything. A Christian can do anything. And different people come to me,” he named several academicians, party members, and Christ had secret disciples. – “A Christian can do anything. But think about it, do you need all this?

And after these words, I suddenly felt that I didn’t need all this. In general, I’m a very homely person, a very indoor person, I hitchhiked to get to him then, hitchhiked away from him. I left with a feeling of amazing freedom. A Christian can do anything. But does he need to do something? I can do everything, but not everything is useful. Actually, a version of these words of the Apostle Paul was heard here.

And this one-time meeting with Father Paul gave me a very important lesson that the essence of Christianity is freedom and responsibility. I went to the elder in order to free myself from my own will, and received instructions from the elder that I should not be afraid to take responsibility.

Around this time, my communication with another fairly famous priest, even an elder, began, which lasted until his death in 2007, almost a quarter of a century. I must say that this is also a very important lesson for me, because for the first time I heard the words from Father Vasily: “I am very afraid of what will happen to you in theological school. They’ll shut you up there.” This is such a strange word, over time I began to understand what it means.

He was aware of the rather rigid system that existed in the Soviet-era theological school that I went through. And it was not a matter of the seminary and academy as such, but of those external conditions, in which they existed, which were created not by the hierarchy, but, first of all, by those in power who allowed the existence of these theological schools. Yes, it was a serious test, but in this case I decided to live in harmony with myself, and decided to enter a theological school.

While I was working on my diploma in the manuscript department for the third year. And suddenly, at the end of autumn, in my opinion, Archbishop Kirill was abruptly transferred to Smolensk. And he was the only hope, because with his authority it was possible to expect that the commissioner would allow admission. In general, Leningraders were received very sparingly: there was a small quota, but with higher education, especially with the humanities, it was generally difficult to apply. And only the authority of first Metropolitan Nikodim, and later Archbishop Kirill, gave reason to hope that a Leningrader with a higher education would be able to enroll.

And suddenly he is transferred. His successor becomes Archimandrite Manuil (Pavlov), the current Metropolitan of Petrozavodsk. He, of course, did not have such authority, and while at a reception with him, I heard words that were the most, perhaps the most sincere, that a rector could say to an applicant. He told me: “Think about it, you have already completed your education, you have a good job. Some prospects, family, child. You submit documents to us, and we may not be able to accept you against our will. And all the bridges will already be burned.” The image of burned bridges, of course, inspired me, twenty-seven years old, even more. I said: “Moreover. I will do so."

Well, then the psychological preparation for this admission began. On the one hand, I was advised by Father Iannuarius, who was supposed to give me a recommendation. Why not Father Vasily? Because Father Vasily’s recommendations were fraught with refusals. He was considered very unreliable in the minds of the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region.

Father Manuel consulted with Metropolitan Anthony, a very cautious man, especially after his Belarusian ministry, a somewhat broken man, who also loved science and culture very much, and was drawn to such rare intelligent applicants who entered the seminary. A whole combination was invented. In June, I was recommended to resign from the manuscript department, to become a watchman, in order to enter the seminary from guards: a person with a higher education who became a watchman is some kind of strange, holy fool, probably just going to the seminary.

Another thing is that it was impossible for a person with a higher education to be a watchman or fireman for a long time. This was a sign of dissidence. A the main problem The problem was that due to my age I remained in the Komsomol, and it was impossible to pick up my registration card from the district committee; it was not issued in person. And so Metropolitan Anthony recommended that I not apply to leave the Komsomol before entering the seminary.

Of course, I was going nowhere, there weren’t many chances to get in, and I already had a family, and, in general, my son’s condition was such that it was difficult to imagine that he could be enrolled in kindergarten. This means that my future mother had to stay with him, but I lost my salary, and, in general, it is not clear what my prospects are. I moved to a watchman, where I began to earn seventy rubles instead of one hundred and thirty. I submitted documents to the academy.

Between the seminary and the KGB

Documents were accepted until August 1, and exams were at the end of August. I was aware that submitting documents implies that the applicant’s case immediately falls into the hands of the authorized Council for Religious Affairs, who, through its KGB channels, begins to establish the person’s identity. Father Iannuariy suggested that I would most likely be called by an authorized representative, or, as was most often done, I would receive a summons from the military registration and enlistment office, where some KGB officer would have a preventive conversation with me. Of course, contact with this department at that time was quite unpleasant, especially since I did not seem to have done anything illegal.

So I submitted my documents at the beginning of July and waited for almost two months to be called. But they didn’t call me. I passed the exams, after which I was given a certificate that I had passed the exams for the seminary, but was not yet enrolled. And it was proposed to go immediately to the district committee, submit an application for expulsion from the Komsomol, so that it would be as restrained as possible and at the same time lead to the fastest possible expulsion from the Komsomol.

I did this by going to the Kuibyshev district Komsomol committee in the Beloselsky-Belozersky palace. I met there not “Pavlov Korchagins”, but such rather imposing, lazy functionaries who did not yet know that in a few years they would work in all sorts of joint ventures and transform from Komsomol workers into shock workers of capitalist labor. But there was no ideological fire in them.

I brought them a statement with a request to expel me from the Komsomol, due to the incompatibility of my religious beliefs with the Komsomol program. He showed me a certificate from the seminary and said that there would be a big scandal if I was not expelled. And my personal file was transferred to the nearest bureau of the district committee.

Arriving home in the evening, I suddenly heard that they called me to the neighbors’ phone. When I answered the phone, I heard ominous words: “They are speaking to you from the state security department. We want to meet you." At such and such a time on Lomonosov Square near my house. “Come here.” Well what could I say? “So I don’t know you.” - “We will recognize you.” I didn’t say anything else, my head began to have some terrible pictures of how they would inject me with something, how I would sign some kind of cooperation document, and so on.

There were few cars then. When I appeared on the square, I did not see the black Volga. It was either a Moskvich, or a Zhiguli, or a Zaporozhets, something undignified, from which only one person came out, showed me his major’s ID, put me in the car, and the conversation began. Later I learned from conversations with students that this was the major in charge of the Theological School.

The conversation took place typical of the style of that time. We live in a democratically free country, we have freedom of religion, you decide to enter the seminary - your right. You are a completely trustworthy person, you graduated from the university with honors, served in the armed forces, everything is fine. Please do so. But, you understand that clergy remain citizens of our state, and they, too, must fulfill their duty. You probably know some at the academy - and here the names of three clergymen, now living, were named, about whom I still think about why these names were given to me as an example of people serving the wonderful Church and state. But there are others, such as this Georgy Kochetkov, he was expelled from the academy, otherwise he was all dusty here - I remember this word - “dusty” - with missionary work. I tensed, bearing in mind our acquaintance with him. But apparently he had no information on this matter.

I began to talk about how I wanted to be a priest, I wanted to study. “Yes, yes, you will study and take several courses at once. There are few people like you. Such people are valuable, in particular, in the international dialogues of the Church. This is all good and necessary for the state, keep in mind that there is no need to shy away from this” - “No,” I say, “I want to be a priest.” - “No, you must take part. And we will help you, this can contribute to your career. In the meantime, you will probably study intensively and quickly master the seminar course. But we will meet periodically. And you, of course, should not tell anyone about these meetings.”

Here again a significant moment came for me. I felt that it was impossible not to react to this phrase. I told him: “I have not had any communication with your department, for me this is a moral problem. Why, in your opinion, shouldn’t I talk about this in confession?” He looked at me, apparently assessing whether I had already gone crazy on religious grounds, or whether I was making it clear that absolutely everything would not be played by their rules, and said that there are things that they don’t even talk about in confession.

Then we parted. I was accepted into the theological school. I was expelled from the Komsomol. I completed the seminary course in a year, Metropolitan Anthony blessed me to be an assistant head of the library. It is noteworthy that the head of the library at that time was Professor-Archpriest Vladimir Mustafin, with whom we already had a very deep, trusting relationship. And his other assistant was Yuri Petrovich Avvakumov. A brilliant graduate of the department of classical philology, later a deacon, who came a year before me, also from the public library, after university to the seminary. Subsequently, his fate developed quite peculiarly. He is now a cleric of the Greek Catholic Church and a professor, it seems, in Germany.

Thus began, I believe, the happiest, most inspired stage of my life - the stage of being in a theological school as a student and library employee. I will also note an expressive detail. I came to receive my first salary, and we, of course, suffered a lot during this time, there were difficult financial conditions, we never sent our son to kindergarten. And suddenly I received two hundred rubles. At that time this was a huge salary.

So I received two hundred rubles for several months, and then a paper arrived from tax office about a very high tax. And it followed that out of two hundred rubles I had to transfer about sixty rubles to the tax office. This is how I first came across the taxation of the Church, or rather, those serving in the Church, by the Soviet state. It would seem that the Church exists on the voluntary donations of believers, that is, salaries and pensions that have already been taxed. And now there is such a brutal tax on them.

At the end of the second year of the academy, I took holy orders, even now I myself am surprised at how, in general, it was easy, maybe it was from age, from the general atmosphere in the country, and this was already the second half of the eighties - the beginning of changes, change. And these changes were reflected in my destiny. In the summer of 1987, when I was already finishing my first year at the Academy, I understood perfectly well from theological school which clergy were closely associated with the KGB, which were less so, which of the students collaborated with them, which were not - this, in principle, was not difficult to discover.

For us, the measure of frankness was, in particular, the ability to talk about our path of contact with them. And then in 1987 this voice called me again and said: “You finish work in the library then, come to the Moscow Hotel.” We'll talk to you there." During these two years, I had already forgotten that they exist in my life.

With longing I waited for the end of the working day. But unexpectedly inspectors from the Academy appeared, and this was a position that implied close ties with the fifth department of state security, and they said that the library could not be closed, because the assistant of one of the secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee, Ligachev, was coming to inspect the Theological Academy. Well, I remained in the library, waiting for this party official to appear. I sat there for about two hours, the party official appeared, walked through the library and left. And I concluded for myself that since the time for the scheduled meeting is over, going to the Moscow Hotel no longer makes sense.

After that, the KGB men no longer appeared on my life path. In this case, I am not deluding myself. It was 1987, they already had more than enough recruits and more respectable people in the Church than me. And the system was already beginning to exhibit certain kinds of failures. Well, after this I can only sympathize with those generations of clergy who in the fifties, sixties, seventies and early eighties were subjected to pressure from the KGB, who persuaded them to cooperate in a variety of ways.

A period of change was coming. And 1988 became a fateful year in the life of the Church. It became clear that state policy began to change dramatically. And it so happened that it was in 1988, on April 7, on the Feast of the Annunciation, which coincided with Maundy Thursday, that I was ordained to the rank of deacon by Metropolitan Alexy. And then, in the summer, on the feast of Peter and Paul, in the church of Gatchina, where I had once been baptized, I was ordained to the priesthood. And from September 1988, he began teaching at the seminary, while studying in the third year of the Academy, the course “History of Russian Orthodox Church XX century”, which I still read to this day.

About Archpriest Vasily Ermakov

I graduated from the theological academy in 1990, managed to serve in the church for a year and a half St. Seraphim Sarovsky at the Serafimovsky cemetery, where Father Vasily Ermakov was the rector. And all subsequent years, while he was alive, I always alternated my service in the church of the Theological Academy and service in the Seraphim Church. There I was formed as a preacher, there I gained experience in pastoral and parish ministry.

Actually, my stay in the Seraphim Church was not accidental. As a student, I often went there, discussing all the problems of theological school and my spiritual development. Father Vasily was one of two Soviet-era priests in Leningrad who was active and had quite a lot of children. He and Father Vasily Lesnyak are the two fathers of Vasily who were the most popular and authoritative in our city. Although their children often did not contact each other. They were different communities, but both had their own amazing spirit.

The words that Father Vasily often said when I was a priest: “when I die, the dead will be buried here,” unfortunately, came true. When he said this, I was indignant and said: “Why do you state this so calmly that after you there will be no community of yours? You can’t build a community just on your own personality. It is necessary to create conditions for the community to continue to live without a priest.”

But this did not happen. Therefore, I can say that the experience of priests like Father Vasily is irreproducible. He is unique. After the colossal losses that the Church suffered during the years of persecution, it was very difficult to find normal, decent priests. And any more or less worthy priest already seems like an old man of almost universal proportions. But this is far from true.

In addition, we need to be aware that at the turn of the 80s and 90s a huge number of people came to our Church who did so simply due to the prevailing circumstances. There are no serious, deep spiritual requests here. But they created the illusion of such a rapid increase in the number of Orthodox Christians and the flourishing of church life.

Father Vasily served in the St. Nicholas Cathedral for a long time, then his ordeals began in various small parishes, and it all ended in the Seraphim Church, where he served the last part of his life, almost as long as he served in the St. Nicholas Cathedral. This was the time when people who were truly church people began to give way to people who went to Father Vasily for completely different, not at all spiritual, reasons. The atmosphere in the temple began to change.

And now Father Vasily could not cope with this fully. Because for some it became a brand, I’m not afraid of this word, because Orthodoxy became popular. For some, he was a brand, because sometimes the powers that be came to him. Someone perceived him as a completely new version of such a prophet-political instructor in the reviving Holy Rus'. People who really did not expect Christ tried to introduce him into some of their ideas.

Moreover, this desire to find a person who will take responsibility for your life, your decisions, the desire to meet a miracle worker who will transform your life for you - all this led to the fact that the atmosphere in the temple became increasingly mixed with magic and completely unjustified deification of the personality of Father Vasily by the party. Where everything was done supposedly with the blessing of the priest, and meanwhile many people tried to manipulate his word, his authority. And it was difficult for him to cope with this.

I have never heard a single harsh word from Father Vasily. Not because I always did everything right, but because he understood very well how best to convey something to me. And his death in 2007 became very important for me. with a strong blow. Because only then, during the funeral service, did I understand how to describe our relationship with him at the time when I had already become a priest.

I have always seen a very respectful attitude towards myself on his part. It was not based on the fact that I was a person who came to the priesthood having left something, and not simply on the fact that he liked me. He had enormous reverence for culture. This may sound very paradoxical. Before culture, including in the Church.

And then, at the funeral service, I realized that my relationship with Father Vasily was comparable to the relationship between Grinev and Savelich. His words, “Make sure you don’t get bullied at the theological school, stick to me all the time,” reminded me of the situation when the Pugachevites captured the fortress, were about to execute Grinev, and then Savelich appeared. So he appeared in my life when some problems arose at the Academy, in the diocese. And he supported me. So I lost it.

After that, I was left completely alone, I do not have a priest whom I would perceive as my spiritual mentor. There are friends, like-minded people from whom I can also learn something, but I was left, in general, without a priest to whom I could come as my spiritual father. Although I never deified Father Vasily. Sometimes he entered into arguments with him, and he fully tolerated this. It’s so terrible that many of his spiritual children, who have now become priests, offer us some kind of bad version of Father Vasily, stylizing themselves as him, trying to reproduce what was irrevocably lost with Father Vasily. The style of pastoral activity that was characteristic of him.

On the one hand, he was the people's shepherd. On the other hand, he was a shepherd who combined adherence to some stereotypes with the ability to implement changes. He was a very lively person. And his problem was that he came, although formally he graduated from both the seminary and the Academy, but he came to the Church in an era when only security reigned.

The church did not develop creatively. We tried to preserve what was not destroyed in previous years. And within the framework of this faceless security, he, nevertheless, was a very alive person. He could give, at first glance, diametrically opposed advice different people. Precisely because it was based on their characteristics. This is impossible to reproduce: you need to have his experience, his boldness, this is not transferable.

But there was one very serious problem. Many people who followed Christ, meeting Father Vasily, stopped. And they accepted him as Christ in their lives. But this created for him very serious problems. He sought to lead people to God, and people did not need God; Father Vasily, whom they perceived as God, was enough for them. In a sense, this tore at him and led to the feeling that he articulated in these words about the transformation of his temple into a place for funeral services for the dead after his death.

That is why now we must be aware that it is not the individuals in the Church, although this is very important, not the individuals of priests, I would put it this way, but the individuals of all Christians that can ensure the full creative development of the Church.

Having been a teacher at a theological school for 25 years, I have never been divorced from reality, like some of our teachers who, although in holy orders, do not serve as parish priests. Having now had the parish in which I have been pastor for nine years, I am trying to somehow use what I drew from the Seraphim Church, while remaining myself. And I must say that the way of life in my church is very different from the way of life in the church of Father Vasily, and very few people, literally a few people, moved from his church organically to mine. Although for years I was considered one of the closest spiritual children to him who became priests.

I can point out one more thing. When I entered the seminary, I did not intend to be a teacher. Precisely because I was aware of how the Theological School was under enormous pressure under Soviet conditions. But already during the years of my studies the situation began to change. And I remember how in 1990, when my lecture load sharply increased, I graduated from the Theological Academy, and the question arose about what, exactly, to do next?

Father Vasily really wanted me to leave the Academy and serve in his parish. But I believed that it was much more important, especially when conditions for teaching became freer, to train future priests. And I stayed at the Academy. And his entire subsequent life was devoted to teaching.

About the Academy and Church Science

Yes, I did not develop as a scientist, like the vast majority of teachers at our school, even capable of scientific activity. Because in Soviet times, serious scientific work was not expected at the Theological Academy, and, unfortunately, in the next decade, conditions for this serious scientific work were not created. And we squandered ourselves on a huge number of lectures, on performing some kind of obediences, so, in particular, they ended up in the Commission for the Canonization of Saints, educational and missionary activities outside the walls of the theological academy. And of course, there was an effect from this activity. But as scientists it was difficult for us to work in the two decades following 1990.

Now the situation has changed somewhat. Unfortunately, we have missed a lot of time to transform our theological schools, especially the Theological Academies, into research centers. Now there is a good theological seminary, although out of the more than forty seminaries in our Church there are not even a dozen such seminaries. But to this day, we have practically no Theological Academies corresponding to their original status.

Having connected myself with history, as you can see, I turned out to be consistent: dreaming of getting to know the Russia that was taken away from me, I sat on Russian issues all the time. And many years had to pass for me to understand that the history of the Russian Church, the history of Russia, is one of, perhaps not even the most striking episodes in the world history of Christianity. I deprived myself in many ways by immersing myself in the Russian historical context, both as a historian and as a priest, essentially without receiving a full-fledged theological education.

Perhaps this will sound paradoxical, since today I have already become one of the most “graduated” teachers in our Theological School: I have a candidate’s degree in theology, and a master’s degree in theology, and I am also a candidate of philosophical sciences. Formally I am a scientist, but in reality, of course not. The words I once said as an aphorism as a student about our teachers of the Theological School, that some understand that they are not scientists, others do not understand that they are not scientists, are applicable to our time.

Father Iannuarius and I understand that we are not scientists. This separates us from those who for some reason consider themselves scientists without engaging in truly scientific work. This is also a problem. But I want to emphasize the following. Having devoted my entire life to studying the Russian Church, studying the history of the new martyrs, studying the history of Russia, I came to the most important conclusion for myself. That the history of the Church is not reducible to the history of the Russian Church, and the history of humanity, the history of Christianity - to the history of Christianity in Russia. And the sooner we understand that Christianity is something more universal, larger-scale, and universal than what was experienced in our history, the better.

In addition, one of the main conclusions for me, as a historian, as a priest, was when I realized that the same Russia, the dreams of which I lived most of my life, cannot be restored. She is lost forever. And attempts to connect the church revival in our country with the revival of Russia are flawed attempts. We must remember, first of all, that the Church is self-sufficient. And that the Church must, one way or another, think about its mission in any country in which it resides, including in such a disadvantaged one, in such a deeply destroyed one today, as modern Russia.

About meeting with emigration

Of course, the fate of the Russian diaspora was very significant for me. I read quite a lot, especially since it was very easy in the 90s, on this topic, read as a historian. I established contacts with representatives of the Russian Abroad. And it was no coincidence that I was invited at the beginning of the 2000s to an interview with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Because, in general, I was already somehow known to them, thanks to the fact that back in 1991, my lengthy article about the emergence of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad appeared in five issues of the newly restored Christian Reading magazine.

This article was written with the blessing of Metropolitan John, who, at the time of the emergence of foreign parishes in St. Petersburg, tried to start some kind of dialogue with them. And I must say that my view of the Church Abroad at that time was somewhat different than it is now. The fact that for the first time in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia I published their main documents, from which it followed how the emergence and formation of this Church took place, aroused a rather favorable attitude towards me.

And so I remember how, in the late 90s, Archpriest Nikolai Artemov called me at home and said that he had been trying to find my coordinates for several years in order to express gratitude to me for fairly objective texts, in which, however, he did not agree with everything . He called at a time when I was just making extracts from the Manifesto for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia - a document that was the first declaration of the Vlasov government, and one of the three compilers of which was the parent of Nikolai Artemov’s father, which I told him about. “Why are you doing this?” - he asked. - “So I will quote this document at lectures on the history of Russia.” - “And they won’t expel you from the seminary?” – he was surprised. “No,” I said. It was the end of the 90s.

Well, it was really no coincidence that I found myself in our motley company and took part in a trip to the All-Diaspora Pastoral Conference in Nyack in 2003, where Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), Archpriest Maxim Kozlov and I went. At the meeting, where almost all parishes of the Church Abroad were represented (it was a dialogue with the clergy), I, first of all, touched upon topics related to issues of canonization.

Because the work of our commission allowed us to solve two of the three problems that they saw in our relationship: the new martyrs were glorified, including the Royal Family, and most importantly, by glorifying the opponents of Metropolitan Sergius as saints, imputing all the punishments that he had imposed as nothing Sergius on them, we, in fact, demonstrated that we no longer consider the policy of Metropolitan Sergius as the only correct and possible one. This means that the demand for some kind of deliberate repentance in Sergianism has lost its meaning.

I remember these discussions and speeches. I remember how gratifying it was for me, especially after one discussion in the hall, one of their bishops came up to me, hugged me, and said: “how could you be formed like this in the Soviet Deputies? After all, you are a real White Guard in your worldview.” Then he looked at Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) and said: “Where did he dig you up from?”

Here I had to think. Indeed, I said what I was thinking about, talked about what I really do: about my memorial services for the cadets who died in Petrograd in early November 1917, and about the memorial services that I served regularly for those who participated in fight against the Bolsheviks during the Second World War. For them, this was a sign that if a teacher at the Theological School could talk about such things and perform this kind of sacred rites, it meant that the atmosphere in the country had really changed.

I communicated only with representatives of the Russian Church Abroad and with representatives of the Western European Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, visited the St. Sergius Theological Institute, and in general I saw that all the great significance that our emigration had for decades remained in past. Abroad was fading away.

And the Russians who came from Russian Federation to Europe, to America, did not in the least feed this very Russian Abroad in terms of continuing the traditions by which it lived, and which, it seemed, it preserved for us. Therefore, I can say that we really restored both church and, I would say, cultural unity with the Russian diaspora too late. She is no longer the same, and her potential is completely incomparable to what it was in the 1920s–1930s, even in the 40s. Everything came too late. And apart from their epistolary heritage, theological, cultural heritage, nothing remains.

This is probably quite understandable. Another thing is that now voices are increasingly being heard that we do not need this heritage at all. There is no need, for example, for the Parisian school of theology. Although the Parisian school of theology revealed all the best that we had achieved at the beginning of the 20th century. And what, unfortunately, ended so quickly without a corresponding nutritious culture, national church environment in Russian Abroad. We remain either ignorant or unwilling to know the heritage of the Russian Abroad, and the Russian Abroad has ceased to exist as an active bearer of this tradition. Therefore, if it is not perceived by us, it will go into oblivion, we must also be aware of this.

About historical Russia

And, of course, studying the history of Russian emigration in many ways allowed me to understand how, alas, vulnerable, I would even say, historically ephemeral, the experience of that very Russia turned out to be, which I continue to consider the best manifestation of our cultural and historical creativity. I mean imperial Russia, Russia during the imperial period of the 18th – early 20th centuries.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be very vulnerable historically. Our country collapsed because it could not withstand the war, first of all, not in military or economic terms, but in cultural, religious terms, oddly enough. And the Church’s responsibility for this is very great. Such a collapse of the country very thoroughly destroyed what had existed during the previous centuries.

And Russia, which is now resurgent, will more closely resemble Muscovite Rus'. Taking into account, of course, the civilizational and technical changes that have occurred during this time in the world. But not Imperial Russia. The features of Orthodox Eurasianism appear more and more in it, eclipsing the features of that very Orthodox empire that Russia tried to become by the beginning of the 20th century.

And here I can say that the experience of the previous two decades is very important for me as a historian, as a priest. Yes, he destroyed many of my stereotypes, but he sobered me up spiritually. And this is the most important thing that a Christian should keep in mind, and even more so a pastor who reflects, preaches, and writes on topics related to Russian church history, and Russian history in general.

About St. Petersburg

I think that in general many traditions of our church life have been destroyed. In the provinces they are destroyed a little more than in the capital, but in St. Petersburg they are destroyed more severely than in Moscow. We must proceed, firstly, from the fact that in St. Petersburg the repressions were in some ways more severe than in Moscow.

Population of Petrograd in years Civil War decreased by half, not because a lot of people died there - of course, a lot died, but people left the city, there was a very difficult situation, in particular, hunger. Before the great terror that took place in 1937-38, there was a very important stage when, after the murder of Kirov, fifty thousand residents were expelled from the city, whose origin, in fact, was St. Petersburg, those very “former” ones, that layer, who, in general, was the bearer of some higher culture, including church culture. In addition, we must remember that the anti-Sergian opposition in Leningrad, the Josephites, began to be subjected to repression even earlier, in 1928. Then, of course, great terror, and then the blockade.

The overwhelming majority of modern St. Petersburg residents have nothing to do with this city, including its traditions. Moreover, being natives of the Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov regions and more distant places, they, having broken away from their roots, as they say, lagged behind the crows, and did not stick to the jackdaws. Pay attention even to the clergy of our city. There are almost no hereditary priests there, especially with St. Petersburg roots; there are only two or three exceptions, whose ancestors were priests in St. Petersburg even before the revolution.

Compare in this regard, for example, with the group that runs St. Tikhon’s University - Father Vladimir Vorobyov, Father Dmitry Smirnov, Father Alexander Saltykov. We do not have such a layer of our own intelligent priests. Therefore, to a large extent, the clergy, especially in Soviet times, was dominated by newcomers from villages, mainly Ukrainian. This left a certain imprint.

And then one day we sat with Father Vladimir Mustafin, thought about the Academy, and came to the conclusion that in the eighties, in terms of its teachers, it was much more interesting and bright. Archbishop Mikhail (Mudyugin), Archpriest Liveriy Voronov, they are already in another world, Archpriest Arkady Ivanov, who is now dying - these were St. Petersburgers, with cultural and church roots. Now there are none.

Therefore, we can say that, like this temple, in which the interior is completely modern, our church life is born, in some sense of the word, without being deeply rooted in the soil. Maybe that's even a good thing. You know how much easier it is to hide from yourself in such an old, beautiful and majestic temple. And how much more difficult it is to do this in a temple like this, with large windows that resemble an aquarium. Here the Church is the same as the people who came to this temple make it up. And the fact that we now find ourselves in some kind of cultural and historical desert, against the backdrop of these St. Petersburg churches, gives us the opportunity to see ourselves much more realistically.

It seems to me that this collapse of church continuity is, of course, very difficult, but not fatal for the Church. The Church will remain the Church. We live not only by tradition and continuity, we live, first of all, by Christ, who remains unchanged at all times, ready to enter our lives and manifest himself in our lives. Therefore, there is no need to be so sad about the break in cultural and historical continuity. This is said by me, a historian, a person who for many years only tried to train future priests, introducing them to church life, to church thought through the history of the Russian Church.

Video by Denis Grechushkin

Photo by Vladimir Khodakov

(1958) - St. Petersburg priest, publicist of the modernist movement.

In 1982 he graduated from the history department of Leningrad State University. In 1982, Jr. n. employee of the manuscripts department of the State Public Library. In 1985-1986 – studied at the LDS, worked as an assistant to the head of the library of the Academy and Seminary. In 1988 he was appointed teacher of the history of the Russian Church at the LDS. In 1990, he graduated from the Leningrad Academy of Arts with a candidate’s degree in theology, for his course essay “The Religious Philosophy of Prince E.N. Trubetskoy and its significance for Orthodox theology" In 2004 he defended his master's thesis on the topic “The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the twentieth century.”

Doctor of Theology (decision of the Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of September 4, 2013). Dissertation: “The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century.”

In 1988 he was ordained to the rank of deacon, then priest. From 1989 -1990 - priest of the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov. In 1991 - priest of the St. Sophia Cathedral of Tsarskoye Selo. Since 1996 archpriest. Since 1999, the rector of St. Apostles Peter and Paul at the Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education.

Since 1993 he has been a member of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints. In 2003, he was a participant in the All-Diaspora Pastoral Conference of the ROCOR in Nyack (USA) on the issue of reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate. Member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 2009, member of the editors. advice on writing a textbook and teaching materials for the training course “Fundamentals Orthodox culture” for high school.

Participated in ecumenical contacts, for example in the Ecumenical Forum organized by the Evangelicals of Westphalia on June 14-20, 1993.

In 2004, he was elected to the Diocesan Council of the St. Petersburg Diocese. Author-presenter of the diocesan radio of the St. Petersburg Metropolis “Grad Petrov” (www.grad-petrov.ru), one of the regular authors of the official magazine of the St. Petersburg Metropolis “Living Water”. On August 6, 2009, he was expelled from the membership of the Commission for the Canonization of Saints of the St. Petersburg Diocese.

Ooh. Mitrofanov and Iannuariy (Ivliev) (right) the Synod pointed to the door

In his views, he is a soil scientist in the spirit of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. In 2007 he came out with an apology for euthanasia. He stated in an interview with the website “Living Water”: Suicide or a person taking his own life is not always perceived by the Church as a sin, and committing a murder in some cases is considered a lesser sin than not committing it. According to O.G.M., not every person taking his own life can be considered a sin.

O.G.M. describes euthanasia this way: Let's say a person becomes convinced that he has an incurable disease - and this is possible, fortunately, diagnosis is in modern world It's developing better and better. He learns that this disease will lead him, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few weeks, to a painful death, which will deprive him of the opportunity to die in peace and consciousness and burden his loved ones with material and moral costs for a meaningless prolongation his life. And a person wants to say goodbye to this world, to loved ones in full consciousness and not to experience severe physical torment that turns him into a suffering piece of meat. And so, when he himself makes the decision to die, having resolved all his legal and moral obligations to people, indicating his last will with very specific and clear decisions, saying goodbye to his loved ones, receiving parting words from a priest - how can we compare this conscious choice a person committing suicide in the classical sense of the word?

On April 26, 2007, at the round table “Family in the Modern Church” he spoke in defense of abortion and contraception: the purpose of marriage is not the birth of children, but the relationship between spouses, who under certain circumstances may not have children at all or have limited(implied – using “non-abortive” contraceptives) amount of children. At the same time, carnal relations between them can exist. Traditional teaching on Christian marriage by O.G.M. explains that people who, deep down in their souls, have not known marriage, want to maximally poison their lay people’s life in marriage of this kind simply by humiliating discussions and reasoning.

Conference “The Sacrament of Marriage - the Sacrament of Unity” (St. Petersburg, January 2, 2008). O. Dimitry Sizonenko, Fr. Vladimir Khulap, Fr. Iannuariy (Ivliev), Fr. Georgy Mitrofanov, Fr. Dmitry Simonov.

During the “educational” conference “The Sacrament of Marriage - the Sacrament of Unity”, held on January 2, 2008 in the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in St. Petersburg, Fr. G.M. claimed that For centuries, the idea of ​​marriage as a Sacrament was alien to the Russian people. Until the 15th century, the Sacrament of Marriage, weddings, as a rule, were not performed at all in the families of Russian peasants. That is, during the time of St. Alexy of Moscow and Sergius of Radonezh. According to the official organ of the St. Petersburg diocese, “Living Water,” when asked about the legendary saints Peter and Fevronia as an example of an ideal married couple in Russian hagiography, Father George replied: We do not know for certain whether these people even existed.

About him

Quotes

The essence of the legacy of Fr. Alexander Schmemann is that he calls us not to create illusions, calls us to create church life, without trying to preserve some exhausted forms, but to develop church life, believing in its inescapable content, which is given to us from God in its entirety .

Major works

Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and in exile in the 1920s. On the question of the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian church emigration in the period 1920-1927. (1995)

History of the Russian Orthodox Church. 1900-1927 (2002)

Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev. Russian theologian and church historian, state and public figure// Posev, 2002, No. 10-11.

Russia of the 20th century - the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ. The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century (2004)

Russians religious philosophers on the spiritual and religious consequences of communism in Russia // Annual Theological Conference of the Orthodox St. Tikhon’s Theological Institute. Materials (2005)

Death by choice. Water is alive. St. Petersburg Church Bulletin. Official publication of the St. Petersburg Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2007. No. 6

Sermons (2009)

The tragedy of Russia. “Forbidden” topics in the history of the twentieth century (2009)

Sources

The image of the Church in the diaries of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann // Church Bulletin. 2006. No. 6, March

On Easter night from the third to the fourth of April, Vladimir Khotinenko’s film “Pop” is released in wide release, dedicated to one of the little-studied pages of the Great Patriotic War - the activities of the Pskov Orthodox mission, which revived church life in the German-occupied territories of the north-west of the USSR. Many clergy have already had the opportunity to get acquainted with this picture as part of special screenings. Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov, who studies the history of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th century, in an interview with RIA Novosti correspondent Dina Danilova, expressed his opinion about how controversial this film is from a historical and spiritual point of view, and also about whether polemics about the events of that time are necessary.

- Father George, how reliable is the film from a historical point of view?

The film by director Vladimir Khotinenko “Pop”, unfortunately, is distinguished (which may be acceptable for a feature film) by significant arbitrariness in terms of depicting historical events. I must say that main character This film - Father Alexander Ionin, was named so not by chance. Here, of course, there is an allusion to one of the leading clergy of the Pskov mission, Archpriest Alexei Ionov. And already from this point of view, certain contradictions arise.

Born in 1907 in Dvinsk, father Alexey Ionov, in fact, never lived in the Soviet Union, with the exception of one year - the period of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states - from the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1941. He studied at the Theological Faculty of the University of Riga, then graduated from St. Sergius Theological University in Paris. He least of all resembled a village priest, and certainly could not “okay” in any way. This, to a sufficient extent, rather artificial moment immediately causes a feeling of unreliability in relation to the main character and to many events.

It must be said that, being an active member of the Russian student Christian movement, Father Alexey Ionov was indeed an active educator and missionary, but, in addition, he was a consistent anti-communist, for whom the Soviet regime seemed to be the main enemy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Actually, these were the sentiments of many other participants in the Pskov mission...

Metropolitan Sergius of Voskresensky, who appears in the film, arrived in the Baltic states in March 1941, and was initially perceived by representatives of the local clergy simply as a Bolshevik agent. And it took him very great efforts already during the occupation, taking a consistent anti-communist position, in order to gain the trust of this clergy, as well as the German occupation authorities.

From 1941 to 1944, Sergius Voskresensky consistently called on the Orthodox clergy and Orthodox Christians to support the German army, emphasizing that only the defeat of Bolshevism in the Soviet Union would help preserve the Russian Orthodox Church. Prayers for the granting of victory to the German army have been served in churches in the Baltic states and the Pskov mission since 1941.

So the atmosphere that accompanied the beginning of the Pskov mission and its subsequent activities was quite definitely anti-communist. And the overwhelming majority of missionaries had no hidden sympathy for the Red Army. And it is no coincidence that both Father George Bennigsen, who also appears in the film, and Father Alexey Ionov (the prototype of the main character), left with the Germans. Father George served in cathedral in Berlin in 1944 -1945, Father Alexei Ionov performed prayer services in the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, which was led by General Vlasov, and then, once in America, he ended his life in the Russian Orthodox Church abroad...

OCCUPATION: TRYING TO SURVIVE

The strange village, more like a farm, which appears in the film, raises questions. Just look at how the young collective farm women dressed in the club: in cities they didn’t dress like that. We must be aware of the terrible situation the Pskov region was in on the eve of the war...

As for the general situation. We must be aware that about 70 million civilians were left behind in the occupied territories. Mostly old people, women and children, there were few men there... And these people, basically, only dreamed of surviving, surviving with their children and old people. They lived in difficult conditions.

It must be said that the occupation regime in the Pskov region and in general in the regions of the Russian Federation was softer than in Ukraine and the Baltic states, because the occupation was under the jurisdiction of the military administration. And in general, in many areas, if there were no partisans there, the situation was quite calm. Where the partisans appeared, the robberies of the civilian population, who were already paying a considerable tribute to the German occupation authorities, began, on the part of the partisans, the Sonderkommandos began to operate, and the population was drawn into the most brutal war that can be - a partisan war.

Therefore, the majority of the population perceived the partisans as a great misfortune, and therefore policemen from the local population were often perceived simply as people who protected both from the tyranny of the partisans and from the tyranny of German soldiers. Of course, policemen could also be used in punitive actions against civilians, of course, among the policemen there were quite a few who could be considered war criminals, but the bulk of policemen were local residents who tried to maintain at least some peace and prosperity for their villages, their families.

That is why the picture seems very strange when a priest refuses to perform a funeral service for policemen, meaning that these are the sons, brothers and husbands of his flock, the peasants of a given village.

At the same time, this attempt by the priest to prevent the hanging of four partisans looks quite far-fetched. For the majority in this village, the partisans were, in general, a misfortune; residents could cry about their relatives - the killed policemen, but it is doubtful that they cried about the partisans, who through their activities caused their own problems. That was it terrible truth about the war in the occupied territory - people tried to simply live, survive.

And here only one thing can be amazed - if such a punitive action were carried out by the NKVD - this speech of the priest regarding the defense of the four executed would have led to a fifth gallows - for him. And here he is generously released... This inadequate perception of some aspects of the occupation reality, apparently subordinated to the usual ideological stereotype, of course, gives a conditionality.

In general, the picture turns out to be, to some extent, ominously expressive. The peasants who are restoring the temple have difficulty remembering when it was closed, although they are talking about 1930. Then they joyfully take out the bell, which they themselves threw into the water... And later, upon arrival Soviet troops when a priest is arrested, no one tries to react to it in any way. Only his unfortunate adopted children offer to donate blood to save him, a rather hopeless picture... The question arises, what was the priest actually doing all this time in relation to his flock? That is, the village very easily returns to its downtrodden Soviet state...

Therefore, the image of the village, although there are many deliberate scenes imitating documentary footage, for example, the appearance of the Germans and so on, also seems, in general, quite artificial.

SHEPHERD OR AGITATOR?

- In your opinion, is this convention justified by the way the film as a whole turned out?

Vladimir Khotinenko is undoubtedly a talented director. I believe that he made the best film on a religious theme in our cinema - the film “Muslim”. And this alone already aroused in me an absentee affection for the film “Pop”. Moreover, we have not yet had a film that would try to depict the activities of a clergyman during the war in occupied territory; there has not been a film where this would be seriously shown.

Of course, there are very successful episodes in this film, for example, a conversation between a clergyman and a Jewish girl, and then her baptism at the moment of German troops entering a Latvian village. The revival of the temple, the Easter procession of the Cross, is a very expressive scene when we see this procession surrounded, on the one hand, by a ring of barking dogs, and on the other, on the other side of the river, a commissar pumping up hatred for this priest and everything that is happening. We see two rings of evil around the church - Nazi evil and communist evil.

The scene that ends the film is incomparable, when a past camp, already a decrepit old man living as a monk of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, sees a group of young people... He sees that his work on the Pskov land has been crossed out. A godless generation was born on this land enlightened by him and baptized by him...

This is a very strong scene, which largely contradicts the general context of the film, where the main character acts not so much as a priest, but as an agitator and social worker, carrying food to prisoners. Yes, this was done by representatives of the Pskov mission, but they still served the liturgy to the prisoners, confessed to them, and instructed them somehow in the most difficult conditions. Nobody dealt with them; the Stalinist regime betrayed them. But we do not see the main character as a shepherd, as a missionary, we see him constantly preoccupied with one thing: to carry out his ministry under the rule of the Germans, and try to denounce the same Germans, in an attempt to remain a patriot of his country, although which country is quite difficult to say. There is such an ambiguity here - every Christian has, first of all, a heavenly fatherland, which can be persecuted in one or another of his earthly fatherlands.

In any case, to sum it up, we can say that this film gives me the feeling of a half-truth. So I often think about what is better - truth or lie? It's certainly true. But when it comes to half-truths, a certain kind of doubt arises.

The participants of the Pskov mission were terribly slandered. They then divided into three groups. Some of them went with the Germans to the west, a little more than half remained here, and most of them were repressed, but not all.

I had the opportunity to communicate for many years with two members of the Pskov mission. Archpriest Livery Voronov, professor of our St. Petersburg Theological Academy and Archimandrite Kirill Nachis, confessor of our diocese. Both of them were participants in the Pskov mission, both of them later spent time in camps. And both, especially Archimandrite Kirill, had the feeling that this was one of the happiest periods in their lives.

At the same time, we must be aware that many members of the Pskov mission were Russian emigrants who dreamed of coming to Russia. They crossed the border of the Pskov region with Easter chants. They did not discuss how to outwit the “sausage traders”; they rejoiced at the opportunity to come to native land and begin pastoral work, as was in many ways characteristic of the first wave of emigrants. The film does not evoke this feeling. This sometimes gives rise to the feeling that the author is practicing some kind of political self-censorship: not to deviate from ideological stereotypes when taking on a topic that has not really been discussed before.

And now, after watching this film several times, I still come to the conclusion that a half-truth is almost the same as a lie. And the feeling of the half-truth of this film gives me a very complex attitude towards it, despite the fact that I repeat, this film has brilliant episodes, wonderful acting work.

But overall the film is very contradictory and uneven. It is very good that such an outstanding director turned to such a until recently taboo topic, but it is very sad that I did not feel complete freedom, both artistic creativity and the desire to convey historical authenticity, this desire there...

In general, the film is vulnerable both from a historical and spiritual point of view, because the historical reality is presented far from reliably, but from a spiritual perspective - we do not see in the main character, first of all, a shepherd, preacher, confessor, missionary, educator, but we see him only as an agitator and social worker.

SECOND BAPTISM OF Rus'

- What did the Pskov mission actually do?

The Orthodox priests of the Pskov mission, created on the initiative of Metropolitan Sergius of the Resurrection, who worked in the occupied territories of the North-West, received such enormous freedom for activity that the Orthodox clergy did not have either before the war, or after the war, never during the Soviet period. This, in particular, was manifested in the fact that the clergy of the Pskov mission had the opportunity to teach the law of God in schools. It was Father Alexei Ionov who created an entire system of teaching the Law of God in schools, for example, in the Ostrovsky district of Pskov.

They spoke in newspapers, on the radio, organized kindergartens, various kinds social organizations, in particular - children's and youth. Such broad freedom and rights of educational and social work Russian Orthodox clergy never existed in the USSR. By the end of the mission, there were already 400 parishes in the Pskov, Novgorod and Leningrad regions.

And this, of course, awakened many members of the Pskov mission to consider their activities during the war as activities for the second baptism of Rus'! And the main thing that they did was, of course, pastoral, educational, missionary activities, and not some kind of socio-political. Unfortunately, these moments are not sufficiently represented in the film.

BETTER A LIVING CONTROVERSY ABOUT WAR THAN SOVIET MYTHOLOGY

Don't you think that this film will cause a new wave of controversy between the Soviet and anti-Soviet views on the history of the Second World War, our society is already divided, is this good?

We have already been in unanimity for too long, which has weaned us from thinking about anything seriously and experiencing anything seriously. Therefore, a lively, sincere and interested debate will only be useful to us. Unfortunately, we must admit that the last undebunked myth of Soviet ideology is the myth of the Second World War, as the communists understood it. And any honest conversation about the real Second World War, about those aspects of it that were either subject to default or given in a completely perverted way, can only be useful for our society.

Moreover, I am very alarmed by the desire to form a new national ideology only on the basis of the experience of victory in World War II. I am deeply convinced that any national ideology will only be truly creative and fruitful if it is addressed not to the themes of war, that is, destruction, but to the themes of the creation of Russian statehood, Russian culture, the Russian church, including.

ACTING LUCK OF MAKOVETSKY

How do you, as a clergyman, feel about the fact that main role, the role of the priest, was played by an actor who has played a variety of characters in the past, including a thief and a seducer?

I have always been aware that art presupposes an element of a certain kind of convention. That’s why I’m very concerned that our cinematographers leave an idea of ​​history... But at the same time, this is quite conditional and I can say that since cinema exists, then there can be the playing of the roles of priests and maybe even saints. Let’s say Harris in the film “The Third Miracle” creates a wonderful image of a priest, although no one has played this Hollywood actor, or, for example, Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro in the film “The Mission” create a very expressive image of monks.

In the film “Pop” there was an element of artificiality (in the portrayal of the main character), but in general, it seems to me that this was more an acting success of Makovetsky than not. In general (in our cinema), the image of the priest has been unlucky: it is difficult for actors to enter into this image, and this shows how deeply secularized our society is. Any actor is a performer in the sense that, while in life, he adopts some characterological traits of people of different socio-psychological types. But, apparently, the vast majority of actors have no experience communicating with priests...

Do you think this was an attempt to make a film about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church during World War II, or is it a film about a specific character?

I think it's still the second one. That is why at the end of the film the version that Metropolitan Sergius of Resurrection was killed by the Germans on the road from Vilnius to Kaunas is presented as an absolute truth. Historians still argue on this topic. And I, as a church historian, am inclined to the version that dominated all previous years, that it was the partisans who killed him, or rather even a sabotage group thrown into the rear. That is, there, of course, they treat the history of the church very loosely, and not at all convincingly. Thus, Sergius Voskresensky, who was a major figure in the Russian church, could be the hero of a separate film. But here, apparently, it was important to show the main character, and everyone else is simply foil to him, even the clergy.

- Will you talk about that film with your flock and advise them to watch it?

Many of my parishioners have already watched this film during two screenings that took place in our diocese. We have already discussed this film with some and will continue to discuss it as we watch it further. We have too few films with a church theme, so the film "Pop" this moment is one of the most informative and interesting.

March 15, 2019
19:00

Lecture series “THE WORLD OF ICONS”

There is nothing clearer and, at the same time, more incomprehensible than an icon. This is a prayer image, a decoration for a temple and a home, and a work of art. Immersing yourself in the world of an icon, learning to navigate this world, learning the basics and history is the task of the lecture series “The World of Icons.”

In the second half of the 2018-2019 season, we offer you lectures:

• 15.01 – The image of the monastery in Russian icon painting

Panoramic images of northern Russian monasteries are interesting from the point of view of artistic vision and techniques for depicting real architecture by icon painters. The lecture offers an overview of iconographic images of the stone ensembles of the Solovetsky, Trinity Sergius, Novgorod Antoniev and Tikhvin monasteries and the long-vanished wooden Alexander-Oshevensky and Verkolsky monasteries.

• 15.02 – Image of Sophia the Wisdom of God: iconography options

The image of Sophia occupies a central place in the cosmological picture of the world created by the Fathers of the Church on the basis Holy Scripture. What does the image of Sophia symbolize? What does this image show to the world? Who is depicted as a fire-faced angel? What principles guided the icon painters when creating this image? What is the main idea of ​​this complex composition? The lecture will provide an analysis of the main semantic and, accordingly, iconographic lines that determine the completeness of the symbolic sound of the theme of Sophia of the Wisdom of God.

• 15.03 – Moscow isographer Simon Ushakov

Russian icon painter of the 17th century Simon Fedorovich Ushakov for many years headed the Icon Painting Workshop at the Armory Chamber in the Kremlin. His brush is the very first image of Moscow in Russian art - the view of the Kremlin wall with towers and the Assumption Cathedral on the icon “Tree of the Moscow State”, which is rightfully considered a programmatic work in the work of Simon Ushakov. The lecture will provide an analysis of the “Tree of the Moscow State” icon, as well as an analysis of the main iconographic images created by Ushakov.

• 19.04 – Iconography of the era of Ivan the Terrible

The iconography of the era of Ivan the Terrible is characterized by both the appearance of new multi-figure constructions and the demonstration of complex theological subjects: the “Four-Part” icon of the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the icon-painting “Blessed is the Host...”

Place: Educational Center of Feodorovsky Cathedral

Time: 19:00

Lecturer: Semenkov Vadim, Ph.D.

Reporting exhibition of participants of the Christian art studio ART FEO: “In search of a legend.”

March 16 - 17, 2019 / 12.00 - 18.00

On March 17, 2019 at 13.00 in the exhibition space of the choirs there will be a presentation of the exhibition of participants of the Christian art studio ART FEO “In Search of a Legend”.

The studio's exhibition is dedicated to church holiday week "Triumph of Orthodoxy".

The key theme of the works is the free copying of famous Christian masterpieces in various styles.

Two projects will be presented: “In search of a legend. In the footsteps of Manuel Panselin” and “New Renaissance. Ancient beauty.”

Exhibition organizer: Christian art studio ART FEO.

Open from 12.00 to 18.00 March 16-17. Free admission.

All detailed information about the event is at the link - https://vk.com/event179566873

The theme of the trip: “The Wrath of a Good God.”

Punishing and forgiving, omnipotent, but humbled Himself to the end. How do I see God, and what is my idea of ​​God based on - fear or love? If God is good and merciful, how can He be angry? If He is just and opposes evil, how can He not punish and not punish?

The format of a feudal retreat, a parish weekend, involves the departure of parish members to the countryside, where participants are offered special program: lectures, master classes, communication. Participants in feudal trips participate in divine services, and the Divine Liturgy is celebrated on Sunday.

About how the fairy trips went.

We will gather to read Scripture together, spend time in fellowship and prayer, so that by getting to know each other better we will draw closer to God. The program involves communication, acquaintance, speeches by authoritative speakers, work in groups, as well as time of silence and personal prayer.

Location: village Komarovo, Lieutenantov St., 31 "House of rest and creativity "Komarovo"

Cost of participation: 3400 RUR/person (for double occupancy. Additional payment for a single room is possible).

Pre-registration is required.

You can sign up by calling Angela (8-921-5964147) or Ekaterina (8-911-1520368).

Coordinators project: Archpriest Dimitry Sizonenko, Priest Alexy Volchkov.

Lecturer: Semenkov Vadim, Ph.D.

The Concert Choir of St. Petersburg is a famous world-class concert choir. He performs regularly under the arches of the Feodorovsky Cathedral. Rachmaninoff's "Vespers" and other masterpieces of Russian sacred music are regularly performed here.
The musical cycle “Holy Week” by Alexander Grechaninov (1854 - 1956) is based on ancient church tunes (Greek, Bulgarian), harmonized in the spirit of musical discoveries of the early 20th century, when many areas of art began to seriously rethink the heritage of antiquity.
The musical cycle includes:

1. “Behold the bridegroom is coming.” Troparion of the first three days of Holy Week


2. "Thy palace." Svetilen (exapostilary) of the first four days of Holy Week


3. "In Your Kingdom." Sung throughout Lent until Great Wednesday


4. "The world is quiet." Evensong to Christ


5. “May my prayer be corrected.” From the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts


6. "Now are the powers of heaven." From the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts


7. "Thy secret supper." Instead of the Cherubic Song at the Liturgy on Maundy Thursday


8. "The prudent robber." Svetilen (exapostilary) of the service of the Passion of Christ (12 Gospels) on Good Friday


9. “Getting dressed for you.” Stichera for the veneration of the Holy Shroud


10. “God the Lord” and “Good-looking Joseph.” Troparion of Holy Saturday


11. “Don’t cry for Me, Mati.” Irmos of the 9th song of the canon of Matins of Great Saturday


12. “Elites were baptized into Christ” and “Arise, O God.” Baptismal hymn and Easter verses instead of the Trisagion at the Liturgy on Holy Saturday


13. “Let all flesh be silent.” Instead of the Cherubic Song at the Liturgy on Holy Saturday

Upper Temple
Sunday, April 21. Starts at 19:00.

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