I don't mean starchestvo now, it does, because starchestvo is a completely different matter, it is the grace-filled state of individual prisoners; And none of us has any right to imagine himself an old man on the grounds that he can give wise advice on occasion. What I have said refers to the phenomenon that in ancient times and in the middle of the centuries was called the Young Revolution. This is the approach of a young, inexperienced priest who, from what he has read, or because he has been taught so, thinks that he can solve all questions without personal experience of God and without personal return to holiness. This does not mean at all that I belong to the contemporary Church, of which I myself am a living part (perhaps dying out, but still alive) or to other priests with a disposition. I am aware that I am not able to solve the questions of each person. Even the Apostle Paul has passages where he indicates: this is what I speak to you in the name of God, and this I tell you on my own behalf... This moment seems to me to be very important in the life of the priests, because you see the archpriest at the service, sometimes you can deal with him, but you communicate rarely, but the priest of the parish priest can really shape your spiritual life. I know of cases when a priest said this or that with conviction, but with confidence that came from his self-confidence, and not at all from the fact that the Lord the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to this or that human need. Sometimes a priest must be able to listen to a person and say, "I have nothing to say to you. I will pray for you..." And this is not humiliating. In the life of St. Ambrose of Optina there are two occasions when people came to him with questions, he did not give an answer for two or three days, and those who asked him cried: "We need to go home, we have a job, a job, a family, why are you silent?" And he answered with sorrow: "For three days I have been praying to the Mother of God for an answer, – She is silent; how can I answer you?"

If only each of us were so careful about what he says! You can say: "You know, I have no answer that would come to you from my depths, but I will pray for you, think about you; if anything comes to my mind or on my heart, I will tell you..." Or you can say: "You know, I can't tell you anything in the name of God, but this is what I read in the lives of the saints, in the Holy Scriptures. I'll take it back, and you see if it's useful..."

And sometimes it happens that even an inexperienced priest, because a person needs an answer, will accidentally say what needs to be said. I remember someone once said to me: "Well, yes, even a heretic can make a mistake."

If we look at the history of the Church – who were the saints? Not only bishops and not only members of the clergy. Some saints were in the rank, and some were not, the mass of saints were simply worldly – and they reached such a spiritual height and holiness that the light of Tabor poured from them, they were convincing in what they represented. There is a story from the lives of the saints of the Egyptian desert about how they went to an elder in the desert, and two put questions to him, to which he answered, and the third man sat and was silent. And when the conversation was over, the ascetic elder said to him: "Are you asking for anything?" And he answered: "It is enough for me to look at you, Abba..." If only our priests, including me and anyone else, could be such that I met him, looked at him and thought: Oh! There's something about this man that I don't have.. The Western writer C. S. Lewis, in one of his remarks during the war, said: "The difference between a believer and an unbeliever is the same as between a statue and a living person. A statue may be a thousand times more beautiful than a given person, but it is made of stone, it does not move, it is silent. A person may be calm and unremarkable, but he is full of life... And that's what we have to become.

I think that all this should be taken into account. On the other hand, it is impossible to judge a priest only by his life or by what you see in his life, because you see his appearance. Suppose you see that he is a sinful man, but do you see how he weeps before God, how he worries about his fall or his weakness? And I have a very interesting example for that.

We had a priest in Paris, who drank desperately – not all the time, but when he drank, he drank a little bit. I was an old man then, he went to services in such a way that he swayed on his feet, I put him in a corner and stood in front of him so that he would not fall. I was then in my early twenties, I had very little understanding; I felt sorry for him as a person, because I loved him, that's all. Then it so happened that the Germans took our priest from the parish into prison, and this priest who was drinking was asked to replace him. He was drinking then; He served, I went to him for confession immediately after he was appointed, because there was no one to go to. I went to him with the thought that I was confessing to God. The priest, as he says in the exhortation before confession, is only a witness, which means that he will testify before God on the day of judgment that I have done everything I could to tell the truth about my unworthiness, about my sins. I began to confess, and I never went back to confession as I did that day. He stood next to me and cried – not with drunken tears, but with tears of contemplation, in the strongest sense of contemplation. He fought with me about my sinfulness more than I knew how to ask, he wore all the fear of his own life for my sinfulness, and he cried throughout the confession. And when I finished, he said to me: "You know who I am. I have no right to teach you, but I will tell you this: you are still young, you still have all the power of life, you can accomplish everything, if only you will be faithful to God and true to yourself. That's what I have to tell you..." And he told me many true things. That was the end of the confession, but I never forgot this man and how he was able to weep over me as if he were a dead man, as if he were a man who deserved eternal damnation if he did not use it.

And later I began to think about him in a completely different way. He was a young official during the Civil War. During the retreat of the troops from Kyrom, he left for Constantinople on a military ship. On the other ship were his wife and children, and he saw how this ship sank. In front of his eyes, his children and wife drowned... Of course, people who have not experienced anything like this, but holy ones, can say: "And Job? He suffered even worse. Why didn't this priest become like Job?" I replied to one person: "First you test him bitterly, and then you will judge him." Ever since I found out about his tragedy, I have never dared to condemn him for drinking. Yes, there was such a grief, the horror was such that he could not stand it out. But he remained faithful to God. He remained a priest, or rather, he became a priest in order to share with other people their tragedies, their sinfulness and repentance. May God grant us more such priests.

And here, I think, the world should play their role. It is not necessary to put a priest, especially a young one, on such a pedestal that he thinks that he is a spiritual genius. And it is necessary to support him, so that he will not be afraid to be an ordinary, "semi-talentless" priest, if he is like that. You have the right to expect a priest to reverently conduct services, to pray for you and with you, but the priest does not give the priest either theological knowledge or

"discernment of spirits", nor understanding of what another person is having, nor the ability to know. It's all different, anyone can have it. But the priest is given the grace to administer the sacraments; You can take them from him. As for the rest, it seems to me that it is necessary to develop more cooperation between the laity and priests, so that the priest does not have a tendency and desire to rule over the inheritance of God. Because the laity can make some kind of pseudo-priest out of him: he will imagine that he is a spiritual father, that he "leads" and knows everything. I think that there should be cooperation, cooperation. This is what I have learned in my life; I don't want to say that I'm better than anyone else, but I know that, and all this is more for me to judge and condemn than to someone who doesn't know.

Answers to questions

You once mentioned the Russian student movement. Do you think that such a form of reviving relations is real? After all, we entrust a lot of things to priests, to our bishops, we constantly demand something from them, forgetting that we can do something too. Are such forms of work possible?

I think that there is no need to ask for the decisions of some authorities in order to do the simplest things. For example, in London, in addition to the lectures, we read reports: in English two times a month, in Russian one time. And we have five thematic groups led by the world. There is a group of the Slavic language, a group of studying the Gospel, a group of spiritual life, etc. And now we are trying to multiply them. Each group should be small enough to allow for a real exchange between people, a collective discussion of a topic in which everyone would participate; It is important that everyone participates. Of course, there are silent people who will not actively express themselves, but they will all participate equally with their silence, their thoughtfulness, their prayer. And it seems to me that it is very important to create such cells everywhere; Not along the lines of priestlessness, not that "we do not want a priest, we want to think for ourselves," but simply because a priest cannot do everything. And you don't need to be a genius to lead such a group. Let the leader not think that he should instruct everyone; let him prepare a text, know what this text means, find parallels with other passages of Holy Scripture, think about what this text tells him, what he is telling others. If there are perplexing questions, you can ask someone else. But it seems to me that it is very important that Christian communities, instead of being anonymous masses, should consist as much as possible of small, merging groups. It all starts small. Gather a few people around you and live it. If other people see any fruit, they will do the same; Maybe even a priest or bishop will be inspired.

I did a lot of youth work, and therefore it is natural and easy for me, but many do not have experience of such work. If they see that this is meaningful, fruitful, that it gives some kind of result, does not lead to any wild fabrications, it will be revived. But it should be taken into account that the Russian Church is a thousand years younger than the Western one. In a thousand years, the Russian Church has traveled all the way that the West has traveled in two thousand years; In addition to the culture of the West, the Greek culture was already much richer and more developed than the Slavic culture at the time of the transformation, so that a great deal was already ready and began to bear fruit.