This is a general rule for those who seek an understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Live in the Church, think in the way of the Church, ask the Church about everything, seek from it the solution of all your perplexities, humbling your mind in obedience to the Church. And do not seek the highest for yourself, and do not test the strong: if you are told, abide in them. "Whoever is not in the Church," says St. Hilary, "cannot understand the divine word at all." And this is understandable: the Word of God is the word of life, but there is no grace-filled life outside the Church! That is why for those who are perishing it is foolishness at a time when for those who are being saved it is the power of God. And as long as a person does not live in the Church, does not fulfill the life-giving commandments of Christ, until then the Word of God is a book sealed, as if written in a foreign language.

Those who know, for example, the Hebrew alphabet, can read the Hebrew Bible line by line, but in order to understand every word in it, one must know the Hebrew language. Otherwise, you can read the Hebrew text aloud, but not understand what you are reading at all.

There are many scholars who know the Bible from board to board, who have studied its text in all kinds of languages, but who are completely alien to its spirit, who reason about this spirit as a blind man judges colors or a deaf man judges music. And whoever lives according to the commandments of God, in grace-filled communion with the Church, the words of Christ come true: Father, thou hast concealed this from the most wise and prudent, and hast revealed it as a child.

The great founder of the monastic life, the Monk Anthony, who was called the Great by the Church, did not even know how to read and write, but he knew the Word of God in a way that our scholars do not know it.

The Nun Mary of Egypt, who spent her stormy youth in sinful pleasures, and then, purified by 47 years of ascetic labor in the deserts of the Jordan, so amazed the Monk Zosima with her knowledge of the Scriptures, that the elder exclaimed: "Where did you learn the Scriptures?" – and received an answer from the humble ascetic: "God sends knowledge to mortals"... And such miracles of the enlightening grace of Christ are possible only in the Orthodox Church.

The same grace guided those holy men who, living in the Church, being sanctified and, so to speak, nourished by its sacraments, cleansing their hearts of passions, wrote their commentaries on the Word of God. For example, St. Proclus, his disciple and friend, and later successor in the cathedra, told us about St. Chrysostom, that he, Proclus, saw more than once at night, how, during the hours of writing, the Golden-Tongued teacher of his immortal commentaries on the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, this Apostle himself mysteriously guided the writing saint, and this vision was, as it were, the personification of the belief of the ancient Church, that whoever reverently studies the Word of God, guided by the tradition of the Church (and Chrysostom himself testifies that he writes "not his own words, but the words of our fathers, wondrous and famous men"), the grace of God mysteriously assists him in this holy work for the prayers of the Church, triumphant in heaven. What memory is in a living person, tradition is in the body of the Church: it is the living voice of the heavenly Church, which ever abides in grace-filled communion with the earthly Church. To be guided by one's own reflection in the interpretation of the Word of God, rejecting tradition, would mean the same as to lose one's memory in one's personal life, to forget one's personal experience, all the lessons of the past. As a person lives, he accumulates experience, enriches his memory; it is the same in the Church: in the course of centuries, the historical life of the Church became more complicated, new demands appeared, new false teachings appeared, and the collective mind of the Church had to sink deeper and deeper into the "sea of scriptures," as St. Chrysostom expresses it, and from there to extract more and more new pearls of the Church's teaching, and the chosen men, the bearers of the spirit of the Church, the faithful guardians of Church traditions, they recorded this in their writings and, thus, brought them into the treasury of Church Tradition. By the grace of God, the Orthodox Church lives to this day, carefully guarding the treasury of traditions, and the Spirit of God, we believe, enriches this treasury in our sinful times, according to the needs of the Church, raising up in the Church such men of faith and spiritual experience as St. Philaret of Moscow, Theophan of Vyshensky and others. Their contributions to the treasury of the Church's understanding of the Word of God will remain forever a precious property of Church Tradition. Even if something human is mixed with their opinions, then it will later come away of itself, but pure wheat, and the spirit of churchliness, will remain in their writings and will nourish future generations of children of the Church. The Church will appreciate the humble, reverent "labor of love" of these and similar pastors and teachers in interpreting the Word of God, will appreciate their love for its traditions, and will hold them up as an example to future successors... Thus, the Church's tradition is built up even in our poor days of faith, and the Spirit of God, we believe, guides us in this creation, by which the message Himself is in the ways. It is always based on the word of God, on the tradition of the Church of centuries past, always in accordance with these sources of Church teaching, and only reveals this teaching, applying itself to the needs of our time. And in this is manifested the life of the Church, as the body of Christ, ever living and ever one. That is why the Church, in her Catechism, recognizes the sacred Church Tradition as the source of Divine revelation on a par with Holy Scripture. That is why the zealots for the dissemination of the Holy Scriptures, refusing to disseminate interpretations of it approved by the Church, and thus, as it were, allowing the readers to be guided by their thinking against the Church, against those who thirst to understand the Word of God according to the mind of the Church. That is why, I will say in conclusion, it is impossible not to wish that the Society for the Dissemination of Holy Scripture would finally change its statutes, become without any doubt on the Orthodox soil in its holy work, cease, so to speak, to act with one hand, and include in the circle of its duties the distribution not only of the holy books, but also of interpretations of these sacred books approved by the Church. We live in a time when there should be nothing unsaid, nothing doubtful...

ABOUT ANONYMOUS PEOPLE, ABOUT "DISSIDENTS" AND THE ANSWER OF ONE OF THEM

Anonymous letters are in vogue today. Their usual content is barbs, reproaches, direct abuse or slander, and all this is from around the corner, so that the recipient does not know who is writing. True, sometimes writers seem to have a good purpose: to point out certain shortcomings and disorders, but then why should honest people hide themselves, at least from the person to whom they write?.. It is another thing to ask the addressee not to announce the name of the author of the letter, and for the addressee the name must be accurate, with the full address. Otherwise, these supposedly "well-intentioned" correspondents put themselves on a par with slanderers and scoffers, and all of them have the same name: cowards; In the first two cases, vile cowards, in the last case, cowardly hares!

That is why I humbly ask everyone who even praises me to sign their letters to me in full, so that I can sometimes answer in writing, without taking up lines in my printed diaries. After all, it often turns out to be just an insignificant misunderstanding, and it is not worth answering in print, you could answer in a letter, but here it is a pity to leave a person in error, but it is not worth occupying the attention of several thousand readers with a printed answer. So you throw the letter into the trash.

It goes without saying that my request will not bring the "vile cowards" to their senses, they will not cease to swear, thus proving only the old truth that the impotently spiteful person has a "hat on fire" on his head and imagines that he is causing me grief with his swearing, while the value of such abusive letters is known: they only prove to me every time that the word of truth that I utter bothers someone, and therefore it is useful for the work of God, for which glory be to God! As for slander against one's neighbor, of which there are so many in anonymous books, we, pastors, follow the example of King David, who drove out every secret slanderer (Psalm 100:5) — we tear up such a letter and throw it into a basket or into a fireplace.

I appeal to those who think that they serve God with anonymous letters. Our teaching: the end cannot justify the means. God does not need the help of Satan, who is the father of lies and all deception. If it is your wish that I do not name my correspondent in the press, then let this correspondent of mine say about this in a letter to me: I will fulfill his wish. And I personally need to know with whom I am talking by letter. I repeat: often I would like to reply to the author of an anonymous letter by letter, but he hid behind some letter or did not deign to sign at all. In this way he deprives himself of the means of knowing what I believe to be the truth. And from this I have the right to conclude that my anonymous correspondent does not want to know what I could answer him. At least – is it polite?

Recently I received from Vologda a long letter from a certain "non-Orthodox" intelligentsia concerning my farewell letter with the Vologda flock. She is indignant that my message "does not breathe peace, love, forgiveness" to some "offended and offended". The intellectual exclaims: "And after all, people are all brothers, all equal children of the Church, right and left, sinful and righteous, heretics and schismatics, political agitators and allies." If it is still possible to reconcile with the former, although with the proviso that disobedient children of the Church cannot be equal to those who are obedient, then it is impossible to reconcile with the latter: heretics and schismatics are not children of the Church at all, but her enemies, not sheep of Christ's flock, but goats, and political agitators are even wolves, albeit in sheep's clothing. The letter continues: "Do not treat the perishing people of the house of Israel with hatred and malice of disgust (oh, if these people did not drag her faithful children into perdition, if they did not destroy them with their vile, God-defying false teachings!), but with a feeling of forgiveness and love, treat your lost but dear children like a compassionate and loving father, treat them as Christ treated the thief on the cross (I will add: yes, only to the repentant, and not to the blasphemer who perished at the time when Christ said to the repentant: "Today shalt thou be with Me to paradise!"), and to the people who raised their hand against Him, as He forgave all His enemies, destroyers, and blasphemers"... This is how the "dissenter" teaches me. And then he forgets that all this refers to the personal enemies of Christ, that Christ the Savior mercilessly branded the corrupters of the people with the terrible words: "Serpents, the offspring of vipers, (Matt. 23:33), blind leaders, hypocrites, painted coffins, madmen" and so on. His apostles did the same with regard to heretics. And I, a sinner, it seems, did not use a single word in my epistle, but took everything from the Holy Apostles. "Do not divide the flock into false teachers, heretics and faithful children of the Church," the dissident bishop instructs. Well, no, gracious Empress: you will never expect this from any Orthodox archpastor! He must and will always call the wolf a wolf, and the sheep a sheep. Those who are obedient to the Church are children of the Church, and heretics are her enemies. Thus the Lord teaches us, so His holy Apostles commanded us. And so let us always do, so that wolves do not penetrate into the flock of Christ entrusted to us. That is why we have been given a staff, to drive them away. To denounce "dissenters" is our sacred duty, and no matter what the various preachers of Jewish freedom say, we will do the work entrusted to us by Christ, denouncing and driving away from our sheep the wolves who plunder the flock of God!

In my farewell epistle to the flock of Vologda, I have already pointed out how even the Apostle of Love, John the Theologian, commands to treat "dissenters," heretics: he does not allow them to be received into the home, forbids them to be greeted (2 John 10), and the Holy Apostle Paul forbids even to share a meal with them (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Have the Apostles of Christ forgotten Christ's teaching about "all-forgiveness, love," etc.? Do our "dissidents," like my correspondent, understand the spirit of this teaching better than they do? And if they do not dare to say this about themselves, then why do they keep silent about these apostolic commandments? Moreover, if we warn the children of the Church against false teachers, naming them as the Holy Apostles did, we do not do this at all out of some kind of hatred. We do not preach hatred, we do not preach enmity in relation to these people, no, we only warn the faithful children of the Church to beware of these wolves! We do not "push even these erring ones away from the Church": we protect the flock entrusted to us by God from their poison! Let it be true, if it is true, that they are "under the pressure of doubts, moral demands," let them openly tell us these demands, these doubts: we are ready to answer them with love. But we will not allow the children of the Church to be poisoned by these doubts, by the demands of the faithful in the simplicity of their hearts: we will always say to our children: these are wolves, these are moral poisoners: beware of them!