His Holiness Patriarch Kirill: Modern man suffers from an acute lack of true love... Patriarch Kirill told young people about love
IN interview to Serbian writer Goran Lazovic, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' answers questions about Serbian-Russian relations, problems of modern society and the challenges facing the Church today.
— You always spoke about Serbia and its saint with great love. What is Serbia for you, how do you look at it?
— I always remember Serbia with a special feeling. I had the opportunity to visit hospitable Serbian soil more than once when I was chairman. The Lord has vouchsafed me to visit your wonderful country twice as a Patriarch: in 2013, when we, together with the Primates of the Local Orthodox Churches, celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the signing of the Edict of Milan, and in 2014, when, at the invitation of His Holiness Irenaeus, I came to Serbia on an official visit. We had a very busy program back then. And I keep the kindest memories of past meetings and fraternal prayerful communication with His Holiness, the clergy and the Orthodox people of Serbia.
You know, an amazing feeling comes to a Russian person who comes to Serbia. There is no feeling that you are in a foreign country. On the contrary, there is a feeling that you are at home, and your brothers are next to you. Our countries really have a lot in common. First of all, of course, this is a common faith, common spiritual and moral values, close cultures and close historical ties. There are long-standing and strong bonds of love between our peoples, and these bonds, which is important, are manifested in the most direct way at the everyday, private level, in personal communication between people.
That is why visiting Serbia, worshiping its shrines and communicating with its Orthodox people always becomes a joyful and anticipated event for me, because every time you experience this unforgettable feeling of sincere brotherly love and spiritual unity in Christ.
— The Russian Church and the Church are sister churches, but what are the Russian and Serbian brothers like?
— As I already said, there is a very deep spiritual kinship between our peoples, stemming both from the Orthodox faith, which Serbs and Russians profess, and from the common Slavic origin. The history of Russian-Serbian relations goes back to the very origins of the pan-Slavic Orthodox civilization.
If we turn to history, we will see how closely the destinies of our peoples were intertwined by God’s providence. Saint Savva, who took monastic vows in Stary Rusik on Athos, translated into Church Slavonic language I feed the book, and according to this translation the Russian Orthodox Church lived for several centuries. The outstanding spiritual educator Pachomius the Serb worked in Moscow at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, where he was engaged in compiling lives and rewriting books.
Throughout history, our peoples have stood together in years of difficult trials. Russia supported Serbia during the First World War. When a revolution occurred in Russia and militant atheists seized power, Serbia, although it itself suffered from the consequences of the war, accepted many refugees from Russia, whom it treated as family.
Today we face new serious challenges. In some European countries, forces are gaining increasing influence that seek to push religion to the margins of modern life, devalue traditional moral principles by declaring the relativity of moral standards, and are trying to impose sinful standards of behavior on society, including in a number of Orthodox countries.
We, Orthodox Serbs and Russians, are called, as before, to stand shoulder to shoulder in this battle for our spiritual identity, for the preservation of Orthodox civilization, defending the understanding of divinely established marriage as a union of a man and a woman, the value human life from conception to natural death, without succumbing to the temptations of visible material well-being and without being seduced by false ideas about human freedom and happiness.
— You are the spiritual head of the largest Orthodox Church in the world. From this high throne, how do you look at the suffering of ordinary Russian people, especially those in the Donbass and other places?
“The shepherd is called to always be with his flock, for whose love there are and cannot be any barriers. The pain and suffering of any of my children, wherever they are, is also my personal pain and suffering, because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26) , and the one who suffers most is the one to whom God has entrusted the care of the entire Church.
The events taking place in Ukraine, the ongoing fratricidal conflict in the southeast of the country, the suffering of many people suffering poverty, hunger and deprivation are an unhealed wound on my heart, a subject of constant sorrow and prayer to the Lord.
What can the Church do? The Church calls on all of us to pray fervently. As His Holiness Patriarch Paul of Serbia once wonderfully said, prayer is the deepest expression of resistance to evil and the most sublime response to the people who create it. And for several years now, in all churches of the Russian Orthodox Church, special prayers have been offered daily for peace on Ukrainian soil, for the eradication of anger and overcoming divisions, for the enemy of the human race to stop sowing confusion and enmity between brothers in faith. I ask the Serbian people to share this prayer with us.
—What, in your opinion, are the challenges facing Orthodoxy now?
- On the one hand, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9). The traps and temptations of the enemy of the human race today are the same as at all times, only, perhaps, more sophisticated and cunning. But in general human nature, despite the change of historical eras, does not change: people still love and hate, betray each other and sacrifice themselves for the sake of their neighbors, fall into sin and repent, returning to God. And therefore, just like a hundred, thousand years ago, the best textbook on spiritual life at the present time still remains the patristic works. It is only important that this textbook does not gather dust on a shelf, and for this, our pastors and theologians need to formulate the patristic experience in a language understandable to modern people.
On the other hand, today we see how rapidly civilizational changes are taking place, we are faced with such complex realities and difficult questions, the answers to which we cannot always find even in the rich heritage of the holy fathers.
One of these important and serious issues is related to the rapid growth of information technology. Along with the useful opportunities that open up before us, this growth is fraught with a number of dangers for a person’s spiritual life. Of course, as with any tool, the point is in its use: this or that thing in itself is not good or evil, from a moral point of view it is neutral, but a person is free to use it for good or not so good purposes. A knife can cut bread and kill a person. There is a principle at work here that can be formulated in the form of the opposition “use - abuse”. The problem is that the more sophisticated and advanced the tool, the more difficult it is to determine where this a fine line when the tool begins to do more harm than good.
Here, let's say social media. You can, for example, help other people by communicating with them on the Internet, comforting and encouraging them, and participating in entire charitable programs to raise funds for those in need. All this is, of course, good and highly commendable. But let's think: is this only what real Christian good deeds come down to? Doesn’t such virtual communication, even with good intentions, obscure the living image of Christ in our neighbor? It is very important to prevent this substitution and not to forget how to do good in real life.
There is one more characteristic of our time, which, as a Patriarch, worries me very, very much. Today we are seeing how society is being imposed, including through legislative mechanisms, the perception of sin as a special type of norm. In fact, under the slogans of human rights and freedoms, a dangerous ideology is being introduced in which there is no place for the concepts of “sin”, “truth”, “good” or “evil”.
The destructive power of these ideas is underestimated by many, unfortunately, and is even presented as some kind of achievement of human civilization, which has declared unlimited freedom as its main idol. But I will say openly: this concept denies the value of moral principles in the life of society, it is immoral in nature and inevitably leads to degradation and decay of the social institution itself.
Orthodox Christians different countries Today it is important to prove our community, our unity. Don't let outside forces push you away from making decisions about your own future. We must find an opportunity to show everyone the strength of our faith, our ability to build a family, community, and state on the basis of goodness and justice.
Today, as always, we are called to firmly witness to the world about the Crucified and Risen Christ, to defend the gospel values and the truth of our faith in the face of a turbulent world. Do not be afraid to honestly expose sin in response to calls to be “tolerant.” And if we do not do this, if we agree with the trampling of the Divine commandments, we will betray Christ, who took our sins upon Himself.
— Do you sometimes think about Kosovo, the holy Serbian land and your brothers, whose monasteries were burned, and who pray to God and cross themselves, fearing that someone will see?
- Kosovo is Holy place, a place of martyrdom and confession. It will preserve the memory of all those who suffered there until the end of time, just as the stones of Hagia Sophia will forever remember the Divine Liturgies performed within these walls. We must always remember that God has His own court and His own measure of justice, which so often differs from human ideas about this.
I think about Kosovo with constant prayerful feeling and try to prayerfully remember everyone who today courageously carries out their difficult service there. Kosovo teaches us all the same lesson as the feat of the new martyrs of the Russian Church in the 20th century. This is a lesson in fidelity to Christ and confession of faith in spite of any terrible trials and temptations that the world puts upon us. And how important it is not to forget at such moments that God is not in power, but in truth!
- Your Holiness, modern man has overtaken himself in the pursuit of material wealth, he has everything and nothing. And he wants even more! What should we do?
— Ask yourself the question more often: “Which of my earthly blessings will I take with me to the grave? What of this will help me at God’s Judgment?” Honest answers to these questions can sober a person spiritually.
One of the Russian ascetics of the 19th century, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, has a wonderful statement on this matter: “Always remember eternity - and you will not wish for anything in the world.” Does this mean that we don't need any things at all? No, in earthly life we have to use different objects. Concern for earthly well-being in itself is not something sinful. A person works and tries to improve his life and the lives of his loved ones. Saint Tikhon says that we just should not become attached to things, we should not obscure our thoughts about God with earthly concerns and main goal our existence - salvation. And when we go beyond the sense of proportion in this concern, when things become objects of continuous consumption for us, like water or food, then this is already an alarming symptom of spiritual illness.
Let's think about it: what motivates a person who chases every new product, wanting to buy a new fashionable device or accessory? As a rule, there are two reasons: it can either be a desire to boast and demonstrate that you are “on the crest of a wave,” as they say now, and then this is a manifestation of pride; or a person in this way tries to drown out internal problems and “relieve stress” - and then this is one of the manifestations of despondency and spiritual emptiness.
But you can’t run away from yourself or from God. Smartphone latest model will never replace a full spiritual life, the joy of communion with God in the Sacraments, true friendship and family happiness. This is what you need to look for to find true well-being.
“God has always been on the side of righteousness, truth and honesty. Do these three qualities seem to lose their meaning in our age?
- Virtue is preserved by many people, we do not need to despair. Remember, when the prophet Elijah told the Lord that he was the only person left who did not worship Baal, God answered him that there were still seven thousand righteous men in Israel (1 Kings 19:13-18).
Dejection is a bad advisor. In any circumstances, you need to be able to see the kindness and nobility of other people, the love and beauty around you. Let us keep strong faith in help from the Lord, who will never leave us.
— How do you look at the schisms in many Orthodox Churches and where are they leading us?
— The Lord gives an immutable promise: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). And the apostle instructs: “I beg you, brethren, beware of those who cause divisions and temptations... and turn away from them” (Rom. 16:17). Schism is a manifestation of severe spiritual illness, disbelief in God and His word. The schismatic, alas, prefers something else to the Lord and His commandments: worldly ideologies, political passions, personal ambitions, proud fantasies that he alone with a few comrades-in-arms remained right, while all of universal Orthodoxy has gone astray. It can be deeply regrettable to see this, but the schism always develops downwards, the spiritual state of those who oppose themselves to the Church becomes worse and worse.
A schism is always a wound for the Church, but most of all it is a wound for the schismatics themselves, whom the Church, caring for the salvation of their souls, calls to repent and reconcile.
— Your Holiness, monasticism in Serbia today is not going through better times, many monasteries are empty, there are few inhabitants. Is any help possible from Russian monasticism?
“Monasticism has always had a huge responsibility. On the one hand, monks are the vanguard of the church “army”. On the other hand, these are those who are never ready to retreat in the fight against evil. And therefore, the preservation of monasticism, the preservation and transmission to the younger generation of the ancient traditions of monasticism is of exceptional importance for the life of the entire Church. And here, of course, interaction between Local Churches is simply necessary.
We annually hold monastic conferences, to which we always invite representatives of fraternal Orthodox Churches. The results of such meetings are very encouraging.
—Brotherhood in Christ also means understanding those who do not love us. How long will we have the strength to forgive, Your Holiness?
“Christians have no options here.” As our Lord and Savior said, we must forgive up to “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22), that is, without counting. Forgiveness is necessary condition love.
We Christians are not simply called to love as the fulfillment of a commandment. We are called to show others the kind of love with which the Lord Jesus Himself loved us: “Love one another, just as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34). The basis of His love for us is sacrifice and unconditionality. Remember the words of the Savior on the Cross addressed to Heavenly Father: “Forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). This is not some kind of “noble”, “lenient” forgiveness. These are words of love that cares about only one thing: the good of your neighbor. Even when this neighbor crucifies you.
Those most acute crises through which our peoples have passed and are still going through, again and again encourage us to turn our gaze to Golgotha and to our Divine teacher, from whom we must learn the most difficult art - the art of love and forgiveness. The inner spiritual experience of people who know what real forgiveness is testifies: forgiveness is not weakness, but real strength.
— I would ask you to remember the holy Serbian Patriarch Paul. How do you remember him?
His Holiness Paul showed us all an image of meekness, humility, readiness to endure difficulties, slander, and unjust attacks for the sake of God. In the lives of so many people, I think his example played a decisive role.
In the memory of the people of Serbia and Russia, he will forever remain a true loving shepherd, a lamp of faith and piety.
— What would you convey to the fraternal Serbian people?
“I would like to wish the fraternal Serbian people to remain unswervingly faithful to Christ, whom they once loved with all their hearts and the love for whom they carried through the centuries, through many tragedies and crises.
If we look at the life of the modern world with spiritual eyes, we will see that it is not financial crises or political unrest that drain people’s strength. Modern man suffers primarily from acute shortage true love. To show this love to people, to testify in words and deeds to the true Source of this love is the calling of every Christian. To preserve the Orthodox faith, to comprehend the teachings of Christ with mind, heart and soul - this is what I would like to wish to our Serbian brothers and sisters!
May God's blessing be with the people of Serbia.
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In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
The Holy Venerable Ephraim the Syrian concludes the second part of the Lenten prayer with a petition to the Lord for the sending of the spirit of love, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God(1 John 4:7).
Here love, as the greatest of the Christian virtues, contains a list of these essential virtues: chastity, humility, patience...
In the prayers of St. Ephraim the Syrian, they appear as spiritual means that we need to use in order to fill our inner life with saving content. These virtues really help to shape the spiritual space of human life in such a way that we have the opportunity to enjoy the fullness of being, be happy, or, as the Word of God says, find bliss. The main content of a person’s spiritual life should be love, which makes the fullness of existence the property of the individual. For If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but do not have love, then I am a ringing brass or a sounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries, and have all knowledge and all faith, so that I could move mountains, but do not have love, then I am nothing. And if I give away all my property and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it does me no good.(1 Cor. 13, 1-3).
Any serious reflection on the topic of love inevitably gives rise to many questions. And in fact, what does love for other people mean, how to love the neighbor and the distant, perhaps very distant, and how all this should be arranged in human soul when her strength is not enough even to love her closest and dearest?
And sometimes this mysterious love, to which God Himself calls us, begins to be perceived by man as a distant and beautiful ideal, as a pipe dream, as a phenomenon not of this world. For no one is able to tell what love for those near and far means until he himself experiences it to the fullest. But even in this case, the most conscientious attempt to describe this virtue will turn out to be imperfect, for only a perfect person is able to perfectly convey to another person his experience of love for those near and far. But none of us is perfect, and therefore any description of love as the content of the Christian life will have to suffer from incompleteness and incompleteness, leaving behind questions and bewilderments.
However, the topic of love will always occupy people's thoughts. For example, the Monk Abba Dorotheos left us for our edification a remarkable, almost mathematical in accuracy, attempt to give a visual image of man’s love for God and for his neighbor: “Imagine a circle, in the middle of it - the center - and radii-rays emanating from the center. The further these radii go from the center, the more they diverge and move away from each other; on the contrary, the closer they come to the center, the more they come closer to each other. Now assume that this circle is the world; the very middle of the circle is God, and straight lines (radii) running from the center to the circle or from the circle to the center are the paths of people’s lives. And here it is the same: as much as the saints enter inside the circle to the middle of it, wanting to get closer to God, so much as they enter, they become closer to God and to each other... So understand about distance. When they move away from God... they move away from each other to the same extent, and as much as they move away from each other, they move away from God. This is also the property of love: to the extent that we are outside and do not love God, to the extent that each person is removed from his neighbor. If we love God, then as much as we draw closer to God through love for Him, we are united by love with our neighbors, and as much as we are united with our neighbors, we are united with God. That is: 1) the more a person practices mercy and loves people, the more he approaches God, and 2) the more a person feels the personal Divinity in his heart, the more he loves people.”
Based on the centuries-old experience of the Church, on the experience of holy saints and devotees of piety, we can say that love is a special state of the human spirit, when even the most distant becomes close to us, when even to a stranger our heart turns with trepidation and joy, when for the good of even a stranger and a stranger, we are ready to sacrifice something dear, and sometimes even our lives. The best, in my opinion, description of this amazing state of the human spirit in world history was given by the Apostle Paul: Love is patient, merciful, love does not envy, love is not arrogant, is not proud, is not rude, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails, although prophecies will cease, and tongues will be silent, and knowledge will be abolished.(1 Cor. 13:4-8).
Where does the life of this mysterious and beautiful feeling begin in us? It begins with a simple thing, for it is impossible overnight to cultivate in oneself the kind of love that represents the pinnacle of the difficult climb up the ladder of Christian virtues. And its first steps are so seemingly simple and so obvious Christian heart virtues such as non-judgment of one's neighbor, keeping oneself from irritation, pride and anger, opposing oneself to other people. The path of our spiritual ascent to the pinnacle of Christian love is thorny and very difficult. However, it is impossible to find love in our hearts when our tongue is slanderous, when we have no time for other people and no interest in them. It is impossible to find love in a heart that does not respond to the pain of another person.
The Monk Abba Dorotheos teaches: “Do not do evil to your neighbor, do not upset him, do not slander him, do not slander him, do not humiliate him, do not reproach him. And later, little by little, you will begin to do good to your brother, comforting him with words, being compassionate to him, or giving him what he needs. And so, rising from one step to another, you will reach, with God’s help, the top of the ladder. For little by little, by helping your neighbor, you will reach the point where you will begin to desire his benefit as your own, and his success as your own. It means to love your neighbor as yourself(Matthew 19:19).”
The life-giving ability to respond wholeheartedly to the sorrows and needs of another is a very important indicator of a person’s spiritual state. It clearly indicates whether he is climbing the ladder of ascent to the heights of Christian virtues or, on the contrary, sliding into the abyss of sin. If the heart is silent, if no movements occur in it at the sight of another person’s grief, if we find neither the strength nor the desire to compassionately respond to someone else’s misfortune and help someone who needs our support, then this is sure sign our spiritual callousness and inertia, our inability to position our hearts so that love reigns in it. But, Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk strengthens us in brotherly love, “if your neighbor is unworthy of your love, in your opinion, then God, Whom he is a servant and Whose image he bears, is worthy - Christ is worthy, Who shed His blood for him.”
So, the love that Rev. John Climacus calls “the source of Divine fire in the heart” (Homily 30, 35), is the greatest Christian virtue, the work and content of our life. Love is something that constantly fills a person with joy and happiness, while at the same time being a goal that we must achieve in life. life path. But the ascent to this goal presupposes hard and long work, which consists of a consistent and correct solution of seemingly simple, but extremely important tasks in the matter of our spiritual self-education and self-improvement. “First eradicate these evil trees of passions, and in their place one many-branched tree will grow, giving the flower and fruit of love,” says St. Theophan the Recluse.
With love, God leads us along the path to perfection: “Why did the Lord command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44)? In order to free you from hatred, grief, anger, memory of malice and to grant you the greatest acquisition of perfect love, which is impossible for someone who does not love all people equally, following the example of God, who loves and wants all people equally, so that all people will be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth(1 Tim. 2:4),” states St. Maximus the Confessor.
Saint Ephraim the Syrian indicates in his prayer book only three virtues that precede love, which is the totality of perfection (Col. 3:14): chastity, humility and patience. However, there are many such virtues. And only by collecting them bit by bit into the treasury of your heart can you dispose it to accept the Divine gift of love. Because no human power can elevate our nature so much that we become capable of unselfishly and sacrificially loving another person. Love is God's gift, because God Himself is love. And, having conveyed His image to man, endowed him with His grace, revived him with His energy in response to our spiritual struggle with ourselves and our feat of spiritual ascent, the Lord at some point blesses us with the knowledge of what love is, and instills this grace-filled gift into our hearts because love covers a multitude of sins(1 Pet. 4:8).
Saint Theophan the Recluse exclaims: “Love God and your neighbor, that’s all! What a short catechism! What a simple law! Just two words: love God, love your neighbor; even less, one word: love, because whoever truly loves God, in God already loves his neighbor, and whoever truly loves his neighbor already loves God.”
That is why it is possible to have love in your heart only by the grace of God. And it is precisely for this reason that St. Ephraim the Syrian includes in his wondrous Lenten prayer a petition to the Lord to send down the spirit of love, which we also seek.
May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ(2 Thess. 3:5).
The service of the word, that church obedience, which His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus', like no one else, carries throughout his entire conscious life. His talent as a preacher bore abundant fruit. On the day of the 70th anniversary of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, we again turn to his word, filled with Truth, faith and love.
Church
This Church - the Church of the Holy Spirit - cannot be defeated by the devil or any other force, because the Church of the Holy Spirit is nourished by the power of God, which is stronger than any human and devilish power.
In the Church we not only learn the will of God. In the Church we enter into special communion with God through prayer. In the Church we are given the opportunity, by correlating our actions and thoughts with the Word of God, to see how much we deviate from the course, how right or wrong we are doing. And if we act or think incorrectly, we have the opportunity to repent to God and correct our course in life.
Something else very important is happening in the Church: we not only learn the Word of God, we not only can correct our lives, but by the power of Divine we can actually destroy our sin.
The church is not only a place where a person meets God, but also a place where people meet in a special way. Through the communion of the One Bread and the One Cup, we become one, and in this mysterious unity of people, all existing differences - social, property, national, political - are overcome. If the world shows us an example of divisions that only multiply over the course of history, then the Church is a place of unification of people, a place of joint presence before God, and therefore a place where human divisions are or can be overcome in a mysterious but real way.
The Lord saves us by giving us a clear understanding of good and evil, and as long as the faith of the Church preserves this norm of human life, while the faith of the Church testifies to what is truth and what is false, what is sin and what is holiness, together with the Church the entire human race preserves the ability and opportunity, in conditions of differences of opinion, in conditions of plurality of views and beliefs, to maintain a certain common ground human existence.
If, someday in the eschatological perspective, the completion of human history occurs and evil triumphs over good, then this will happen only when humanity completely abandons the moral basis of its existence and when the voice of the Church turns out to be inaudible, when people are unable to perceive Divine truth.
The earthly Church is called the militant Church - the Church in conflict. Our struggle is not a struggle with human views and beliefs, not with flesh and blood; our struggle is against the forces of darkness, for the true faith, through which alone the moral nature of the human race can be preserved, regardless of how much people know or do not know the true faith, accept or do not accept it. But like a fermenting element, like yeast, like leaven, the faith of Christ is capable of transforming the whole world, all of creation.
To remain in the Church means to remain in faith, in communion with God by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the creation of God's truth, in life according to God's law - in the life to which the Lord has called us all.
By the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church, in the community of faith, the Sacrament of salvation is performed. In this community, by the power of the Holy Spirit, everything that Christ accomplished is actualized; it becomes real and effective for every person, regardless of the time and place of his life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we mysteriously come into contact in the Sacrament of the Church, in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, with heavenly, Divine life. While still here on earth, we touch the Divine Kingdom. That is why the Liturgy begins with a wondrous exclamation: Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - because by the power of the Holy Spirit we come into contact with this Divine Kingdom, which is reflected in our hearts with grace, joy, peace and love.
Often baptized people treat the Church with contempt, allow insults, and ridicule the Church. Why does this happen - after all, they received the gift of the Holy Spirit at baptism? But this is what happens - because of passion and unbelief, the grace of God is cut off, and a person does not feel God, does not feel an answer to his prayers, for him coming to church is like coming to a museum, his heart does not beat joyfully during worship, it is dead because it is enslaved by passions and unbelief.
In order for the Church of God to be renewed following the example of the original apostolic community, we must use all our strength to fight passions, to arouse faith in ourselves through constant prayer, through repentance, through the acceptance of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, through a critical, strict attitude towards ourselves. to yourself, through constant self-reproach, through control over your thoughts, deeds, movements of the heart.
The main ministry to which the Church devotes itself is the ministry of God's grace. Having received it from the Lord Himself on the day of Pentecost, she is called to distribute it to people and perform such actions, pronounce such words, build such relationships with the outside world, so that everything is aimed at ensuring that passions are driven out of human hearts and ardent faith comes into the heart and along with it - the power of God's grace, which from illiterate fishermen made powerful preachers who conquered the universe, which from numerous ascetics formed a host of holy wonderworkers, from ordinary people - martyrs, from ordinary bishops and priests - saints and saints.
The Church exists to call on the Holy Spirit. The most important mission of the Church is the invocation of the Holy Spirit, epiclesis, as we say using the Greek word.
The Church exists to call on the Holy Spirit. The most important mission of the Church is the invocation of the Holy Spirit, epiclesis, as we say using the Greek word. Epiclesis is not only a prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit - it is life in Christ, it is a heart open to Him, it is a courageous and honest confession of faith in Christ the Savior and the Holy Trinity. AND in response to the life of the Church, God sends the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit lives and works in us.
If it were not for the descent of the Holy Spirit and not the birth of the Church, then Christianity would be another intellectual teaching, another version of human philosophy.
Faith
Faith, refracted in a person’s real religious experience, gives him a special spiritual vision, the ability to see and understand the meaning of current events, to see as far as no politician can see unless he believes in the Lord and Savior. Faith gives special visual acuity, which means it helps people find the right position in life. This position may conflict with the tastes of the era, with fashions in lifestyle and way of thinking, with human philosophies. And we know from history that this clash of the faith of Christ with human inventions very often requires heroism from those who keep the faith.
The response that a Christian makes to those who blaspheme should always be full of wisdom, spiritual strength and peace, because God is with us (Isa. 8:10; Matt. 1:23), the Lord Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith .
Keeping the Orthodox faith, maintaining the ability to distinguish good from evil, we must in our lives - personal, family, social - always take the side of those forces that are either directly, or perhaps in a not entirely visible way, but essentially - together with Christ, together with Him who is the author and finisher of our faith.
Unity of the Church
Sometimes in our parishes divisions arise between the clergy and the laity. Often these divisions are associated with a struggle for some kind of primacy, for some kind of power in the parish. We know how parishioners are sometimes divided, grouping around one or another priest. Veneration of this or that shepherd and love for him is legal, but division in the name of love is sinful, because where there is love, there cannot be division.
We must preserve the unity not only of Ecumenical Orthodoxy from any heresies and schisms, we must not only preserve as the apple of our eye the unity of our Local Church, the martyr Church, which has suffered through its right to be one and indivisible. We must maintain the unity of our parishes and monasteries, remembering that the most important criterion for assessing the activities of any Christian - from the Patriarch to the simple layman - is love. There is love - there is Christ! No love - no Christ!
Walk before the face of God
What does it mean to walk before the face of God? This means feeling God's presence, realizing that God is near. And if God is nearby, then how can you insult God, how can you do something that is disgusting to God? If God is nearby, then a person not only constantly turns to Him, but tries to build his life so that the Divine eyes, looking at Him, are always filled with mercy and love.
We need to learn to hear the voice of God, to see the presence of God both in human history and in our lives, and for this we need to be sensitive to the impact of God's grace on us. A person who relies on his own strength most often lacks such sensitivity. For him, God is at best a philosophical concept. At best, he agrees with God's presence as a kind of theory, but in practice there is no God in the life of such a person. The power of intellect, the power of will, the power of conviction, the power of authority, the power of money, the power of organization - this is what is put above God, because by relying on strength, many solve the problems facing them.
Body of Christ
The Body of Christ is not a metaphor, it is a reality. And when the Church, a community of believers, gathers together with its bishop or priest and together celebrates the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, when by the grace of the Holy Spirit, through the prayers of the Church, bread and wine become the container of the incontainable God, then the Sacrament of the Church is visible - the Sacrament Body and Blood of the Lord and Savior.
In this Sacrament we are freed from sin, through this Sacrament what Adam destroyed is restored, and we, feeble and weak, enter into real communication with God, we touch the Divine Kingdom.
It is in the Eucharist that the Church reveals its essence, it is in the Eucharist that it becomes what it has become by the will of God - the Body of Christ, continuing the work of the Savior in this world.
The Church of God is that community where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, people constantly participate in everything that Christ did - through eating the bread and wine consecrated in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, through the communion of the authentic Body and Blood of the Lord. And through this communion we gain great strength - God enters us, corrects our weaknesses, forgives our sins, and gives us spiritual and physical strength. The Holy Eucharist is the greatest action that takes place in the human race. Nothing can compare to this action because it is - open road to God, by which man ascends to Heaven and by which Divine grace is descended from Heaven to man.
By partaking of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, we become one body, we become a community living and existing in the image of God.
In order for us to be able to truly realize the unity we have acquired in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist with each other and with God in the life of this world, we must also remember that love is a sacrifice. And if we find ourselves capable of giving a piece of ourselves, sacrificing our time, our attention, our love, our means - sacrificing to those who need it, then we will live outside the temple according to the law of love.
Prayer
If a person prays, then he is a truly religious person. If he calls himself a believer and is even convinced of the existence of God as a Higher Power, but if he does not turn to God in prayer, then such a believer is a non-religious person. Sometimes it even happens that fairly church-going people stop praying. They get so used to their churchliness that living prayer how the connection with God disappears from life. It happens that even some clergy, while performing divine services, knowing the prayers by heart, do not pray with their hearts. If a person stops praying, he stops living a religious life.
The skill of prayer is one of the most important ascetic deeds. You need to pray with the words of prayers, if you know them, as well as with your own in simple words, you need to pray not only in the morning and evening, you need to pray many times throughout the day, turning to the Lord at least for a moment.
Today many people come to churches and turn to God, but not everyone knows how to pray. There are circumstances in which even people of little faith pray - when we find ourselves in difficult life circumstances. As war participants say, even the atheists rose up to attack with prayer. When despair arises and the realization of the impossibility of overcoming difficulties on one’s own, then a person turns the words of prayer to God with ease. This also happens when, suddenly turning to a doctor, a person hears the terrible words of an incurable diagnosis. Then people pray and find words and no one needs to be taught to pray. But once you overcome the difficulties, receive healing, your connection with God and prayer are cut off again.
You need to educate yourself to strive to understand what is said in the temple. But even if in thought we move away from prayer due to our weakness, then still being in church, in the grace-filled atmosphere of other people’s prayers, we are under the constant influence of Divine grace. That is why prayer in the temple has a special meaning, meaning and power, “For where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them.”(Matt. 18:20).
Repentance
In repentance, we again return God to his place in our life; we displace ourselves, giving way to God. And if we don’t push ourselves, we will never leave this central place, and God will forever leave our lives, no matter how much we convince ourselves that we are believers.
Repentance is a turning to God. There can be no conversion without repentance, and without conversion there can be no return of God into our lives. By renouncing our own “I,” we restore the order of life that God was pleased to establish during the creation of the world and man. In repentance, we seem to recreate God’s plan for the world and man.
No repentance - no religious life. And none of the wisest religious philosophies, none of the most beautiful words can change anything in a person’s life if he does not have the experience of repentance.
True repentance requires a change of thoughts, a change of life. It is not for nothing that the Greek word “metanoia”, which is translated into Russian as “repentance”, means change, a change of mind, heart, life. We know how difficult it is to make this change, how sin attracts us, how many times we repeat it.
Word
The Word is God's great gift. Through words we establish connections with other people. The word is a means and method of communication, something that belongs to a person and distinguishes him from another world, the world of the wordless. But a word exists only when it is heard. If there is no listener, then there is no word.
When we fulfill a word with sinful emptiness, we destroy the inner world of other people with this word.
Empty, idle words that we address to our neighbors devastate their soul, and, even without wanting to harm, we harm them with our idle talk. So the Lord tells us that we will give an answer for every idle word, because with this word the soul of other people is damaged.
The word we turn outward is the result of our thought. When a person thinks, he spends internal energy, but when he speaks, much more energy is spent. It just seems that the word is something completely simple and easy.
The word is part of our inner life. If we talk idle talk, utter idle words, then we waste our inner strength, we damage our spiritual life.
Heresy
In the search for a wise and relevant interpretation of faith, one must never cross the line beyond which there is no longer interpretation, but destruction.
What is heresy? How can heresy be distinguished from dissent that is acceptable in the Church? How to distinguish a heretic from a zealous Orthodox Christian who wants to defend and preserve the purity of his faith? There is only one way. Every heresy gives rise to schism, and where there is schism, there is no love. We know this well from our lives. The family falls apart: spouses separate, children turn away from their parents when love disappears from the family. And no matter how kind Nice words one of the spouses said, where there is no love, there is no purity of relationships and no unity. The same thing happens in the Church. If we meet a person who claims that he is fighting for the purity of Orthodoxy, but in his eyes there is a dangerous fire of anger, he sees heretics everywhere, he is ready to go to battle and to divide the Church, he is ready to shake the foundations of church life, supposedly defending Orthodoxy; when in a person leading a heretical teaching we do not find love, but only anger, then this is the first sign that he is a wolf in sheep's clothing - like Arius, Nestorius and many others who preached ardently without love in their hearts, and They were ready to divide church life for the sake of their righteousness.
Heresies were an intellectual challenge to Orthodoxy: referring to pastoral expediency, logic, common sense, even referring to the need to maintain piety, heretics tried to introduce false truths into the consciousness of the Church that destroy the true truth. This kind of intellectual attempts most often ended in a terrible struggle, when the Church had to defend the Orthodox faith with all its might, and by the grace of God it defended it.
If you look at the history of the emergence of heresies, they all arose under plausible pretexts, and the heresiarchs, the founders of heresies, were motivated by good motives. It seemed to them that faith needed to be made more understandable, logical, convincing, more consistent with the Word of God, and, delving into their own understanding of faith, ignoring the general church conciliar perception of faith, they came to conclusions that were extremely dangerous for the very existence of the Church.
Defense of the Faith
The entire history of the Church of Christ is the history of the struggle for the purity of the Divine Word.
If we look at the whole history after Christ, we can testify that no other human belief, no other worldview has experienced so many attempts to distort or destroy it. These attempts were made at different levels: at the level of thought, philosophy, practice and, finally, as just said, at the level public policy. And we know that standing for the truth has never been easy - it required courage, fortitude, the strength of faith, the strength of one’s convictions.
main reason According to which the Orthodox faith is indestructible, and lies in the fact that through this faith people gain such an experience of life with God that exceeds all the joys of the earthly world. It is this experience of living in communion with God that fills our hearts with conviction of the correctness of faith and gives us the strength to build our lives on this conviction.
Humility
Humility and humility are identical concepts. But the word “humility” helps to better understand the meaning of humility, because it combines two words - “humility” and “wisdom”.
A humble person is a person for whom God is at the center of his life, and he puts his actions under the judgment of God, which means he places his actions under the judgment of his conscience.
A humble person is one who places himself under the judgment of God.
If we give up to God the main place in our lives, if God becomes the most important thing in life for us, then everything secondary that we are called to do by virtue of our vocation, position or professional duty is accomplished with the help of God. God imparts part of his Divine power to a humble person, and no human power can compare with this power.
Forgetting such a virtue as humility is very dangerous for human society. In his Everyday life we suffer from the fact that this greatest virtue is becoming increasingly rare.
Patience
Patience is the ability to react to the evil that concerns us without losing our presence of mind, without wasting our internal energy, without falling into grumbling, anger, malice, or the desire for revenge.
Undoubtedly, the will is present in our attempts to acquire patience, but a patient person does not necessarily have to be strong-willed, because patience is a state of mind. Every strong-willed person at some point cannot withstand lies, insults, insults. And there is not enough will, and patience is running out, because there was no patience, but there was will or good upbringing.
Hope in God, a living sense of faith, the understanding that God will protect and God will restore justice, and create a person’s inner peace. Patience, like armor, protects the inner state of our soul from all external evil and sinful circumstances, and patience becomes a step on the path to the Kingdom of God.
A patient person is one who has already acquired the Holy Spirit within himself. Then nothing can shake his peace, because even the most terrible and dangerous devilish obsessions are not capable of crushing the power of the Holy Spirit.
Patience as a virtue elevates us above the vanity of the world. A patient person acquires a different angle of view on everything he sees, a different point of reference, a different ability to evaluate what is happening. In a sense, patience is always wisdom, distinguishing a person from those who do not possess wisdom.
Mercy
We must remember - and perhaps first of all those who take upon themselves the great responsibility of serving mercy - that through this sacrifice that we make to people, God gives us His love.
Mercy is a school of love. Modern world, modern society sometimes in bewilderment he asks himself why, in our enlightened age, when almost everyone has an education, when science has reached such heights, we see so much suffering, crime, family tragedies, human grief. And you don’t need to be a philosopher to say: neither education, nor strength, nor power, nor money - all that is so desirable for modern man - are unable to give people love, are unable to bring them happiness.
Love
Love is sacrifice, it is communication and it is unity.
The ability to give oneself to another is one of the most important and significant manifestations of love. A person gives himself to another sincerely - there is no hypocrisy here, here is a real feat, a real sacrifice. The clearest manifestation of such a sacrifice is maternal love, but not only: whenever we give ourselves to another, we love.
If we give up our place to God, this means that we love God. No need philosophical definitions, everything is very clear: if we devote ourselves to God, at least partially give ourselves to God, then we love Him.
Making room for God in your life means making room for other people. Love for one's neighbor, sacrifice, the ability to give oneself to others - this is the most important dimension of a person's religious life.
The word “love” is used in everyday life so often and in such different contexts that modern people are no longer able to clearly understand its meaning. Like many holy things, by the power of the devil this word is often desecrated and devalued in human life. But this does not make the concept of love any less significant. As the Apostle John the Theologian tells us, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16), and this is an exhaustive definition of love.
Your Holiness, on the anniversary of your enthronement, I want to remind our viewers how it was, and, looking at these footage, I want to ask you a question. What do you consider to be your main accomplishment over the past year, and was there anything that you perhaps regret?
I'm certainly sorry. There is a figurative expression that there are only 24 hours in a day. And I regret that I really don’t have enough time - first of all, to read and think. The patriarch must definitely think. Ideas must come from the Patriarch. He must carefully perceive everything that happens in the world. And this daily whirlwind of affairs, unfortunately, switches consciousness from those issues that, in fact, should be primarily on the Patriarch’s agenda, to issues that seem to be secondary (but in fact not secondary). So I am sorry, but I will try, because I need to accompany my thoughts and prayers with serious reading.
As for what we managed to do, I am least inclined to attribute much of what happened this year to my personal merit. Of course, I took part in all these processes. Over the past year, many important events have occurred, but I would especially highlight the President’s decision to teach the basics of religious culture and secular ethics in schools, as well as the decision to allow our clergy to finally begin working in the Armed Forces. If we talk about what else seems important, then, of course, these are my trips to Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, which helped me see a lot, understand a lot and, first of all, acutely feel the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is this is not a Church of one state, that this Church includes people of different nationalities who live in different states who are involved in the decision completely different problems. All of this is a huge pastoral challenge, all of this needs to be answered, all of this needs to be taken into account.
Your Holiness, you just said that there is not enough time to think about the most important issues. Everyone, however, knows that the main commandment of Christ is love. But how has love changed over the past two thousand years, and has it changed?
I think that now there is a huge civilizational problem - I would call it this way - on the scale of the entire human race. This is a complete deformation and distortion of the concept that is associated with the word “love”. For me, as a believer, love is a miracle and a gift from God, but it is not a selective gift. It's not like talents: God gifted one and he became a musician, another a mathematician, the third a doctor. Love is like air for everyone. And then whoever can perceive this gift of God. One person under the sun can become so irradiated that he ends up in the hospital, while another improves his health. One clean air breathes, and the other does everything to pollute the air with industrial waste, so that people no longer inhale air, but infection. It's the same with love.
This is an absolutely amazing gift from God, because love itself is capable of uniting people. Everything else: our talents, our identity, our national, cultural and political differences- almost everything works for disconnection. In this sense, someone might say: “God’s strange plan for the world - where do so many differences come from that work to divide?” Yes, indeed, it would be a strange idea if it were not for love, which is capable of connecting people. And what is meant by love now - human passion, the realization of this passion has nothing to do with love. This is how this concept is destroyed.
And now, perhaps, about the most important thing. Love is God's gift, but we respond to this gift, and we respond, first of all, with certain volitional attitudes. Therefore, love is at the same time the direction of the human will, the will to good. Let me give you a simple example. You think badly about a person, you don’t like him - externally or internally; There are a lot of factors that often push one person away from another. You can succumb to this feeling and live with it, or you can try to overcome this feeling. And there is a way to overcome it - this is to start thinking well about the person. And there is another absolutely amazing means - to do good to this person.
Those to whom we do good remain in our hearts forever. Your attitude towards a person changes if you do good to him. So, love is, among other things, such an orientation of the human will that directs a person’s actions to do good. We know what falling in love is: young people met, liked each other - this is a good, bright feeling. Sometimes they say: “We fell in love with each other.” The big question is whether you have fallen in love or not yet; the test of life will show whether there is love here or not. But in order for infatuation to develop into love, you need to direct the will to goodness, you need to share your life with each other, give a part of yourself to another person.
Therefore, love, on the one hand, is a gift, and on the other hand, it is a task that God sets before each of us. And as long as this exists in the human race, there is such a concept as a community of people, there is even such a concept as good, because the basis of good is always love.
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God (1 John 4:16). Amazing words. On the one hand, they are so simple, but on the other, incredibly difficult to understand. God grant that our people today do not succumb to the temptation to destroy this gift. If it is destroyed, I think that will be the end of human history.
And yet, unfortunately, there is not only love in the world. Thanks to television, millions of people daily witness human tragedies, terrorist attacks, and death. What can the Church say to people who face tragedy and death? Is there anything she can do to help?
In general, the theme of evil on television is a very serious ideological problem. When we constantly see death in news blocks, addiction occurs. Modern humanity has become accustomed to images of human suffering. If a person who lived twenty, thirty, forty years ago had been bombarded with such information, his psyche probably would not have been able to withstand it. People would probably want to get up from their seats and run to help. Suffice it to remember how people helped each other after the war, sharing the last; how a sense of solidarity and mutual support was developed. Today this feeling is dulled, not least due to the fact that there are too many stories about human horrors.
And now about the most important thing: what can you say to a person who is going through terrible trials or the death of his loved ones? I can’t imagine how you can help a person without religious motivation, I refuse to understand this. In fact, if you really are dying forever, if you have forever lost your closest and dearest people, if life was cut short in the prime of life, if a child dies - what words can explain what is happening or help a person cope with this tragedy? But the Church speaks with the most correct word. This is death for us. This is a tragedy for us. However, one cannot measure life only by a segment of visible life - then life loses its meaning. In 70-80 years (or in 50-60 years, as people live now), nothing can happen that would really justify these 50 years of existence, because it is only a moment. But we are talking about the fact that life does not end. Yes, death does bring trauma; Yes, this suffering really hurts a lot; but you must have enough strength to survive it, because life does not end there - just as our connection with dead people does not end. Listening to the words of prayers during the funeral service, you are amazed at the philosophical depth of everything that the Church offers to the person standing at the tomb. The Church offers great faith that physical death does not mean the death of the individual. I cannot accept any other explanation. Everything else may be aimed at lulling human suffering, dulling it, but not healing it.
Your Holiness, allow us to move from the suffering and death of an individual to our country. Don't you think that as a result of wars, social experiments, and after many decades of just lies, the country has been torn apart? I even came across the opinion that our people, like patients, need special treatment and special care. So is Russia torn or can it be safely raised to new exploits?
Recently, a meeting chaired by the President on national projects was held, at which the national project “Health” was considered. I listened carefully to the speech of our minister, and then to the participants in this meeting. The figures that were given speak most eloquently about the state of our health. Terrible numbers, and all this is the result of terrible social experiments, wars, upheavals. We turned out to be truly an incredibly strong people, having survived all the cataclysms - this is already a kind of mercy of God towards Russia. This is not the time to encourage people to perform heroic deeds - in the sense that people would undergo new suffering in order to achieve economic or political goals. And here's why: you need to take care of your people. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn once said wonderful words about saving our people. Now is the time to save people. I am incredibly traumatized by reports of the number of victims on the roads. People die every day, and people are healthy, active, those whom the country and society especially need.
Therefore, it seems to me that now is not the time to demand sacrifices from people in order to achieve short-term goals. Today it is necessary not so much to demand as to educate a person in the ability to accomplish a feat, and this is the deepest inner work. A person must be capable of self-sacrifice, of feat, so that, indeed, at hour X, when the fate of the country, the people or the fate of his loved ones, his own fate, will be decided, he will be capable of sacrifice and feat. The people must cultivate this inner passionarity, the ability to give their lives, but not for the sake of the next political programs or economic projects - they need to save their people.
Well, you certainly participate in such upbringing, and for Last year A new format for your meetings with young people has appeared. This format is simply called in one word - stadium. Why do you need this?
Someone from smart people told such a parable. The man leaned the ladder against the wall and climbed. The staircase is long, slipping in places, and the person strains all his strength to reach the goal, because there, at the top, he sees his goal. He climbs to the very top - and suddenly realizes that he has placed the ladder against the wrong wall. And the state is such that I am ready to throw myself down from this ladder - after all, so much effort, so much energy, so much time has been spent... This is what youth is. This is the age when a person sets up a ladder and climbs up it. It will not be an easy climb, and how important it is that, when he reaches the top, he says: “I chose the right path at the time.”
It seems to me that many young people today are putting the ladder in the wrong place. They won't even make it a third of the way - they'll break down. That’s why I want to meet with young people, that’s why I want to tell them something from my own experience, or rather, not so much from my own experience, but from the thousand-year experience of the Church; but to convey this in words understandable to young people, in order to arouse some jealousy to take care of themselves, and not make fatal mistakes.
- Was there an episode during these meetings that you especially remember?
You know, over time we forget the content of the lectures that professors gave to us; We can’t even remember how and what they told us. But the impression of these lectures remains. I can say for sure which of the professors had the greatest impact on me, whom I cannot erase from my memory, although I will not say what exactly in his lectures made a great impression on me. This is the same with my meetings with young people.
I don’t even want to single out just one or two issues, but my overall impression is good. Firstly, these are thoughtful, interested people. Imagine: going to a meeting with a clergyman and sitting for 45 minutes or an hour in absolute silence so that a fly could fly by and you could hear it. This means that young people were interested in this conversation. But we are not talking about nightingales and gingerbread, not about everyday things, which are often very attractive to young people - we are trying to talk with them about serious ideological problems. Another thing is that I’m trying to translate all this into the category of words and thoughts that would be close young man. But at the same time, the audience itself is the main part of this process, and I testify with gratitude to God that we have thoughtful, strong-willed, very capable youth.
At a meeting with young people in Vitebsk, you quoted the French physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal. Let me offer you another quote from this great Frenchman: “There are only two types of people: righteous people who consider themselves sinners, and sinners who consider themselves righteous.” Do you agree?
I completely agree. I can quote one more quote from Pascal, of course, not verbatim: a person cannot be made holy without grace, and anyone who doubts this does not know what holiness is or what a person is. The last statement is very important, it echoes what you quoted. Man has within himself a tendency to sin, the Apostle Paul speaks about this very clearly (see Rom. 7:14-25). The attraction of sin is due to the fact that a person does not live according to God's commandments. Our refusal to live according to God's law creates some kind of internal crack in the integral nature of man. It’s like a building with a crack: here it stands and can stand for a long time; and if it shakes, the building falls with cracks.
What is holiness? Holiness is the integrity of a person. This is, first of all, internal strength. He is self-sufficient, and, very importantly, this person has inner vision. The righteous considers himself a sinner because he has the courage and inner vision to see his untruth. But a sinful person sees nothing - only his own “I” and always in a rosy light. One is a realist, the other is a dreamer. One person is whole and strong, the other is internally very weak...
Most people in Russia look at the Church as something familiar. And yet - how would you explain to an unchurched person why the Church is needed?
We have already talked about talents. Indeed, one is born with the talent of a mathematician, another with the talent of a doctor, and a third with some other talents. One can be a scientist, diplomat or businessman, the other cannot, but everyone can be a believer. Faith gives a person internal support and the ability to build his own happiness. In the minds of modern youth, the concepts of happiness and faith are combined, perhaps with great difficulty. Yes, people come to church, they like our liturgical art; In addition, many have believing parents, relatives or acquaintances. And you're right: most people respectful attitude to the Church. But the picture they see in the temple is incredibly difficult for them to actualize and apply to their lives, because they do not have their own religious experience. And for a person there are, as it were, two realities: the reality in the temple is one picture, and on the street - another. The other picture is his life.
In fact, when a person is immersed in the life of the Church, when he is immersed in real spiritual experience, he begins to understand what enormous power nourishes him. We just talked about the integrity of the human personality, about inner strength - this is what God’s grace gives us, which we draw in the Church, in combination, of course, with human efforts. It seems to me that no words, even the Patriarch’s speech on television, can help a person understand what is revealed only in the depths of religious experience. I can only invite people to experience this experience, to go through it, and then perhaps they will say better than I can about what happened in their souls and why faith and the Church are needed. But this is revealed in the depths of religious experience.
- You invite people to the temple. A person will come and see people praying there. What is prayer for you?
Everything is related to our previous question. Religious experience is accomplished primarily through prayer. Without prayer there can be no religious way of life. What is a religious way of life? This is not only the consciousness that God exists, it is a clear understanding that God is present in your life. He is not somewhere in the sky, He is not far off, He is not in some unknown space - He is next to you. And you have two options. You can pretend that there is no God, but this does not change the fact itself. And there is another possibility - to try to enter into a relationship with God, to close the chain. Prayer is the closing of the chain between man and God. When we press the switch we close electrical circuit between the power source and the consumer. The same thing happens through prayer: a person completes the circuit and enters into a real relationship with God. A person turns to God with a request and receives what he asks for. What proof of the existence of God could be stronger?
I have said many times that the most convincing evidence of the existence of God is that people have been praying for thousands of years. Imagine: you came to your boss, asked him for something, he promised you and didn’t do it. The second time you will think whether to go or not, but pluck up courage and determination and go again. And the boss listened to you again and didn’t do anything. The third time, maybe someone will go, but someone won’t go. If the heavens were silent, if God never answered prayers, who would turn to Him for thousands of years? But when this chain is closed, a person gains personal religious experience.
A real modern person can only go to church on Sundays. Naturally, one should pray every day, but I remember the saying that was born in the USA that on Sundays a person believes in God, and on weekdays in the stock exchange. Don't you think that this problem is also relevant for Russia?
First, we need to achieve the implementation of the first part of what has been said - so that people go to church every Sunday. I think this will change a lot. But, indeed, there is a problem that I call internal secularization, internal secularization. A person believes in God, recognizes the need for prayer, especially in moments of stress, anxiety, illness, failure, death of loved ones; but life sucks in and there is a certain separation of consciousness from this religious experience, a shift of attention to current problems, and it begins to seem that everything can be solved without God. The deepest misconception. We must call on God for help in solving our professional problems. This does not mean that the Lord will certainly increase our bank accounts - I doubt that prayer can increase these accounts. But God can keep us from making mistakes, keep us from acting dishonestly and sinfully. We talked about road accidents. Well, how can you, when you leave the house and get behind the wheel, not cross yourself and say: “Lord, help me”? This means that between Sunday and Sunday something appears that is important for a person’s spiritual life. I arrived at work: “Thank God, I got there.” The day is over, you come home and, if the day was happy, thank God that everything turned out this way. And if something was done wrong, then you should analyze what happened, and maybe repent before God. This is the religious way of life: when we constantly put ourselves before the face of God and evaluate our own actions and our lives from the point of view of His commandments, His law.
In fact, you are calling for a way of life where morality is important criterion and motive for behavior. To be moral is the duty of any Christian, but first of all, of course, a priest. What is the ideal of a modern pastor for you, what he should be, and what he should not be?
I think that a priest in any country, in any people and at any time should imitate Christ. We are sometimes told that the priest behaves incorrectly, that he is too modern or behaves too simply with the people. Wasn’t the Savior modern when He communicated with tax collectors, sinners, and ordinary people? On the other hand, we are sometimes told that a priest must constantly be aware of his responsibility for what he says and does. This is a correct statement. You can and should be simple; you cannot create an artificial mediastinum between yourself and the people. But at the same time, the priest must constantly control his words and even his thoughts. We talked about a religious lifestyle - such a lifestyle, first of all, should be led by priests. First of all, the priest must pray a lot - then he will not make mistakes, then the Lord will tell him how to behave, how to build relationships with people, what to say and what not to say.
Your Holiness, the 65th anniversary of the victory of our people in the Great Patriotic War is approaching Patriotic War. You once mentioned that it was a miracle, but did not reveal your thought. Miracle in what sense?
Without a doubt it was a miracle. By all accounts, we should have lost this war. You need to look at history with open eyes - then it will become clear what really happened. It is impossible to compare the military power of Germany and Soviet Union at the beginning of the war - organization, discipline, German order. And such an armada entered the territory of a country that had passed through civil war, tormented by internal conflicts. Yes, the party tried to unite, but it united its like-minded people. But most people were not party members! And how many of them were offended, repressed people, repressed children... And the great God's miracle was that the people united in the name of victory and were able to make colossal sacrifices. This cannot be explained either by organizational party measures or even by the authority of Stalin, because significant internal opposition remained among the people. It was hidden (all open opposition was crushed), but society was not consolidated enough for everyone to stand up for defense together. And yet the people united and managed, making incredible sacrifices, to defend the country, our Russian civilization, if you like, our world. All this would disappear from the map globe. This is a great miracle of God - the Lord has inclined mercy...
- Probably the last question for today, Your Holiness. Is it difficult to be a Patriarch?
I would say this - again, not in my own words: the power of God is made perfect in weakness (see 2 Cor. 12:9). I don't think it is possible to carry out this service by relying on one's own strength. I don’t want to talk much about this topic now, but the past year has clearly convinced me that without God’s help, which is sent down, first of all, by the prayers of millions of people, it is almost impossible to carry out this ministry. Therefore, for me, the first year was, first of all, a year, if you like, of some spiritual upheavals - something that I had not experienced before, and something that I had not felt before.
I really feel the hand of God. I see the support of the believing people, who pray with tears for the Patriarch, the support of their clergy. And as long as this remains so, the Patriarch, I think, will be able to cope with his responsibilities.
- Thank you very much for this conversation, Your Holiness. We wish you more strength.
Thank you.
Patriarchy.ru
Marriage disappears when love disappears, and therefore the reason for family separations is precisely what can be called a crisis of love. This also happened in the past, but people were brought up differently - the fear of God was present in their hearts.
Even when something happened in the depths of the soul and feelings for each other were transformed, they were preserved through prayer, turning to God, and good deeds. family relationships and the marriage survived. And then, when people went through these difficulties, they suddenly discovered in adulthood that a preserved marriage was the greatest value in their lives, because it was the only thing that protected them from the cold winds from the outside. Marriage really remains a home, a fortress, a place where people support each other - sincerely, selflessly, in the most difficult circumstances.
Have you ever seen older people walking arm in arm along the sidewalk? If it’s winter, then they are terribly afraid for each other, so that someone doesn’t slip or fall. They walk literally clinging to each other, they both need support, they have ceased to be strong, they have ceased to be independent of many circumstances, and the only thing that remains in their life is the support that is next to you.
What happens to people who destroy marriages and families? And the following happens. Love disappears and then living together becomes torture. Why does love disappear? After all, there was love when we met, when we looked after each other, when we entered into a family relationship... And not just love - a kind of apogee of life! In German, “marriage”, “wedding” is “ high time life”, this is a kind of apogee. In a sense, this is truly so - an emotional, spiritual apogee.
What happens next? Why is this apogee gradually fading away? Yes, because this great feeling that people experienced, they did not save it, they destroyed it - unconsciously, in small ways. When a person begins to live more for himself than for another, then he begins this destruction. He undermines, saws down the tree, and the more he or she lives for himself and not for another, the more it becomes loose. And when there is nothing left for anyone else, but only for oneself, when some parallel connections, hobbies, a parallel life with new interests, with new sensations appear - then you just have to lightly touch the tree, which is sawn on all sides, or If a strong wind blows, not to mention an earthquake, it will collapse and crumble into pieces.
This is exactly how family relationships are destroyed. You need to take care of love and take care of marriage from the first day, and remember that this is difficult work, that this is a kind of feat that a person voluntarily takes upon himself.
The problem is that the words “happiness” and “pleasure” have different meanings. It's not the same thing. If a person strives only to receive pleasure, then he will not be happy - neither in the first marriage, nor in the second, nor in the third, nor in any other.
No common property, no common house, and even common children stop people from making fatal decisions if the feeling of love is exhausted and hatred appears instead of love. To avoid such a fatal development of events, take care of your love.
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