It was impossible to confess for a long time, and the conversation lasted about fifteen minutes intermittently. What I heard plunged me into spiritual trembling, a great righteous man stood before me, and by confessing Fr. John, I myself was immeasurably enriched spiritually. Everything he said about his life and behavior was a real revelation and a lesson for me for the rest of my life.

It is impossible to enumerate all the righteous men I met in the camps.

I will also dwell on questions related to confession. If the person who came to confession was full of desire to open his soul to the Lord and by the action of grace given to the priest, to cleanse it and ask forgiveness for what he had done, then this was always a joy for me and a step towards perfection. A person who came with great grief, the death of a child, wife, husband or other misfortunes, who asked for prayers and spiritual help, I received, prayed with him and perceived his grief as my own, and together with him I experienced and suffered, I was as if united with him in his sufferings, and if a person left after confession calmed down, who understood that everything was the will of the Lord, I was spiritually happy, and after confession I fervently prayed for the confessors.

Once I told one of Vladyka K. and a well-known archpriest from Nizhny Novgorod how I perceive confession, and received the answer: It is impossible to perceive the confession of a visitor so fervently, you will burn, your soul will not contain the sorrows of others. I did not agree. Once, perhaps more than once, I said, but I will repeat myself. I had to confess hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people, and from each of them I took a particle of spiritually bright and good, which enriched me, and then I passed it on to other suffering and unfortunate people.

When I was still serving in church, there were parishioners who came during the days of Great Lent and asked to be absolved of their sins, according to custom. They came once a year, it was a formal custom, and my words to the confessors fell into emptiness, were not perceived, and I was sincerely upset.

Father Arseny was tired and fell silent, we got up and wanted to go out. Lyuda approached him and began to measure his blood pressure, having measured, she said: 90 to 60, low. Seeing that we got up, the priest said: "Don't go, I'll rest a little and continue about the confessions of the imprisoned criminals in the camp.

Over the long years of being in the death camp, that's how we, the prisoners, called the high-security camps, where we were sent not to serve their sentences, but to die, to die, I realized that the person who was there had no hope for anything, only death awaited him, so the definition of good and evil for most prisoners was completely different from what it used to be on the outside. Hence the attitude to each other, to someone else's and one's own life was measured in a different way: cruelly, rudely, uncompromisingly. The concepts of good and evil were reinterpreted in a demonic understanding: it is good when the other feels bad, and it is bad when the other feels good. In accordance with this, your actions were measured and those of others were perceived.

In this atmosphere of camp hell, if a person came for repentance and confession, then burdened with such a burden of sins that the priest was lost, he did not know whether he had the spiritual right to forgive what he had done. The newcomer did not have time to correct his life, to change it. Tomorrow his own criminals can kill him, the guards can shoot him, he can fill the rock in the face, crush the tree that is being cut down, and he will leave earthly life without repentance, without being reconciled with God, if I refuse him confession. No matter what kind of sinner he was, he came to bring repentance and receive forgiveness to the best of his conscience. Standing before the confessor, listening to a sincere confession, sometimes I was horrified by what I heard, my soul froze, but I listened, listened, and if I realized his sincerity, then I forgave the sin. But it happened that, having listened to confession, he asked the prisoner to wait until the next evening and prayed all night, begging the Lord to give strength to forgive the sins of the confessor. It happened many times that the next day or in the next few days the confessing prisoner died, and in this God's Providence was manifested. If I saw insincerity in the repentance of the visitor, I told him about it and did not perform absolution. There were several prisoners who came to me, whom I could not absolve, I did not see sincerity, and so great were the crimes of these people that my spiritual conscience did not allow me to do so. Two or three times they even tried to kill me for this, which only confirmed the correctness of the decision made.

Earlier, I had read many good spiritual books on confession written by the Holy Fathers of the Church and modern authors, and this entered my soul and consciousness with an immutable truth, I was guided by this in my communication with my spiritual children, and I also borrowed from the experience of priests who stood spiritually much higher than me and were enriched by long service in the Church. It was they who prepared me for unexpected meetings in the camp with people doomed to extermination, aggravated by the most terrible sins: repeated murders, violence, robberies, robberies.

Doubts overwhelmed me about the correctness of what I had done, and in 1961, when I met with Vladyka Athanasius in Petushki, I told him in detail about my experiences and asked him whether I had behaved correctly as a priest during the confessions of criminal prisoners, who carried the heaviest burden of crimes on their souls. And Vladyka replied that he had had to confess such people if he saw their sincere repentance, but the Lord Himself would decide their fate, assessing the measure of the sincerity of their repentance.

You remember, our church was small, those who entered it were instantly enveloped by bliss and tranquility, in Moscow it did not thunder like other communities. The parishioners were mainly from the intelligentsia, many young people from 18 to 30 years old, but there were also enough elderly people, the rest were local parishioners. The total number of members of the community was 9095, many people came from different parts of Moscow. The temple was always full.

With all those sitting here now, we created our community, so I want to share my thoughts with you, my spiritual children. For sixteen years I have been here with you, but during the eighteen years of my imprisonment in the camp, the world has changed, the thinking of people, and you, my beloved spiritual children, have changed. Even the faith of many has changed, the perception of God has taken on a secular tinge. Of course, there is God, the Trinity, the Mother of God, saints, sacraments, canons, traditions, and even, pay attention, there is even a Church and has been preserved, but a haze of modern progress has fallen on all concepts. Of course, God exists, and there is no doubt about His existence, but we often hear the words: emanating from the cosmos, cosmic, emanating from the cosmic spheres, and believers say this. Of course, there is the Most Holy Theotokos, the saints, this sweet tradition of the Church enlivens the faith and gives it apostolic succession, colors it in the tones of spiritual antiquity and gives it goodness. The Church is necessary, but just think, say these believers, two thousand years separate us from its creation. Over these two millennia, man became different, intellectual, grew up, and everything around him lived and also changed, but the Church remained in its circles. So let's adjust its structure to modern man, leaving everything as it was before, but changing and adjusting it to the concepts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And these words, having been left as they were before, and adjusted to the twentieth, twenty-first century, remain unrevealed and are ominous for the Church. Unfortunately, not only laypeople think so, but also some priests, and some of my spiritual children have not been spared these trends. The word ecumenism is basically good, but for Orthodoxy it is disastrous, so I think, but I do not impose my opinion on anyone. The pure, primordial faith in God, called childish, which existed among many Russian people, is now found in few believers, the consciousness of one's own intellectuality has penetrated too deeply into the human soul. All this is bitter and sad, but I believe that the Lord God will eventually reveal His wisdom to people.

I meet many people, each of them opens his soul to me in one way or another, but can I call all those who come to me spiritual children? Unfortunately, not everyone; For some, rationalism has appeared in their spiritual thinking, for them I am not a spiritual father guiding their lives, as it was in the community, but a priest called to confess, absolve sins and give communion. They listen to my advice and instructions, but they act and live according to their own understanding, while considering me their spiritual father, deceiving themselves that they live under my spiritual guidance. Talking with visiting bishops and priests, I hear the same statements from them. The number of spiritual daughters, spiritual sons, and spiritual fathers who guide their spiritual life in the full sense of the word is decreasing. This is a deep spiritual tragedy for a modern believer, but I believe it will pass, and monasteries and communities will be revived again. The Church will play a leading role in society.

This is Fr. Arseny's last conversation. Every day he got worse and worse.