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Answer 1

– What is Orthodox youth for you?– I don't know, I haven't met. I know Tanya, Vasya, Dima. They are all different. But seriously, it is probably difficult to be Orthodox and young. Because it means to go against – to go against the double current.To be Orthodox means to go against the fashion of one's secular company. And in order to be young people in the parish, one must go against parish superstitions. In one case, the dominant trend is anti-Orthodox, in the other, anti-youth.In our parishes, the psychology of grandmothers mainly dominates. But each age has its own experience of faith. Babies who kiss God have their own experience. Children have their own experience, teenagers, adults and the elderly. But since there are more old people in our churches, their experience of Orthodoxy turns out to be the only one, normative, imposed, and therefore crippling young people. Novelty pleases a young person and frightens an older one. A young person sees opportunities everywhere, and an adult sees dangers. The young one asks the question: "What can I do?" The elderly asks: "And what can be done to me that can threaten me and my usual way of life?" A man is walking through the city, unexpectedly he comes across a gateway. The reaction of the young man is more active: "I wonder what's there? I will go and see, a new space has opened up for me, which I can explore and subjugate." The reaction of an elderly person: "I'd better go to the other side of the street, you never know what can fall on me here." Before each new turn, the young man thinks: "Should I go in?" – the adult beware: "And what can fly out of there on me?" The same is true in the church environment. Instead of youthful missionary daring, there are old women's fears: "Nothing is allowed!!." In this regard, the difference between the evangelical origin of Christianity and, let's say, the historically formed way of Orthodox life is especially noticeable to me. Gospel symbolism places the shrine in the mud, hoping that the dirt will be sanctified, and not fearing that the shrine will be desecrated. The Kingdom of God (!!) is likened to yeast thrown into dough, grain thrown into the ground, treasure buried in a field [1]. In the seine there are valuable and weedy fish, on the same church field it is assumed that both weeds and wheat will grow. A person who is ignorant of agronomy could be indignant at the picture of sowing: it would seem that the peasant scatters good and delicious things, tramples them into the mud, and dooms them to rot! Christ came into a world of which He knew beforehand that the majority would rejoice at His crucifixion, and that only a numerically insignificant minority would hear His words. And Christ sends the Apostles into a hostile world, like sheep in the midst of wolves [2]. All the parables about the Kingdom of Heaven are associated with the fact that something bright enters the darkness in order to overcome it. The light shines in the darkness [3]. The Word of God came to prostitutes and traffic cops (this is how the Church Slavonic formula "fornicators and tax collectors" will sound in the language of today's realities). The further it went, the more the need to hide the shrine from "unclean hands" grew. The iconostases are becoming higher and higher. The path to the Church Sacrament becomes more complicated (so that it is rare, so that it is necessary to observe some technology before touching it). This change is most clearly seen in many icons, where the saint, for example, holds the Gospel not with his hand, but with a handkerchief under it. It turns out that you cannot directly touch the Gospel, you definitely need some kind of intermediary. This means that a person (even an ordained person or even a saint) is perceived as a source of profanation and distortion. You are not the one who needs the holy thing to come to you as you are, dirty and black. No, on the contrary. You are the one who threatens the sacred. A person is perceived as a source of filth. He threatens the sacred, and the sacredness must be saved from him. This, of course, is a radical anti-missionary attitude, because the evangelical pathos is completely different – the shrine comes to save me. But it is the latter psychology that dominates in our parishes.Ask our parishioners today whether it is permissible for a priest to go to a city bathhouse, whether they can imagine that the apostles washed in common baths. The answer you will receive is indignantly negative. A bathhouse is a prodigal and filthy place, and it is unseemly to mix holiness with dirt! But the most ancient church history knows about a different perception of the bathhouse – as a place of meeting with people. In the middle of the second century, the Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons heard from the Hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna, a personal disciple of the Apostle John, that the Apostle, having once come to wash in the bath, learned that the heretic, the Gnostic Cerinthus, was also there. Then John jumped up from his seat and ran out, saying to his companions: "Let us flee, lest the bathhouse fall, for in it is the enemy of the truth, Cerinthus" [4]. For the pure indeed, everything is clean [5], but the pig will find dirt everywhere. It's good that this spirit appeared. Its appearance meant that there was something to protect and protect. A non-existent treasure is not protected. It is bad that this spirit has become almost the only normative-Orthodox one. It is bad that missionary behavior began to be regarded (not in official documents, but at the level of parish and monastery gossip) as "deviant behavior," as something that gives rise to suspicion and indignation. For example, in March 2003, there was a congress of Orthodox youth in Tambov, and one state official from the regional apparatus made a speech where there was a phrase that simply stunned me: "Our Orthodox Church has always cemented our people." God, what a manner to pour cement over all living things! I have always believed that the Sicilian mafia is engaged in cementing the people. Christ likened the Church not to cement, but to yeast, which makes the dough ferment and breathe! It is a revolutionary element, an element of fermentation, a leaven that is thrown into the dough.So it is difficult to be an Orthodox youth. 13, 33, 31–32, 44.– Ed. ^Mf. 10, 16.– Ed. ^In. 1, 5.– Ed. ^Irenaeus of Lyons. Against heresies. 3, 3, 4; Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. 3, 28. ^Cf. Titus. 1, 15.– Ed. ^

Answer 2

– You were present at the Orthodox Youth Conference. What kind of young people have gathered for this congress in Moscow? This age division – "youth" – seems to me somehow inappropriate. After all, there can be no "union of Orthodox old women". In the Church, after all, we are present as a single organism.– And yet, the Apostle Paul distinguished among his parishioners Greeks from Jews, slaves from freemen, and gave them various advices. You see, young people have their own problems that older people do not have, and vice versa. They have different age psychology. For example, it seems to me that the youthful experience of Orthodoxy is brighter and more joyful. There are still few sins accumulated here, and the soul more easily breaks into the doxology: "Glory to Thee, O Lord, for what Thou is!" In the older generation, the memory of our sins, of our infirmities, illnesses, needs makes us ask the Lord more often for something: for the forgiveness of our sins, for help, for healing. And young people are free from this, and in this sense their prayer is more unselfish. Metropolitan Kirill, speaking at this conference, said very correctly: priests must understand that any young man who crosses the threshold of church (girl or boy) is a person marked with the seal of God. We should not tell them about it. But they themselves must understand that if this person chose the path not to a disco, not to a party, but to the church, then there is some part of the young Bartholomew (the future Sergius of Radonezh) in this person. And therefore we must rejoice at his coming, notice him, distinguish him from the general mass of parishioners, and pay special attention to him. After all, perhaps this boy, who today is timidly jostling on the threshold of the church, is already a priest or a monk in the eyes of God... Precisely because young people have many paths and, accordingly, many temptations, I think we still need to work with them separately. After all, we are not embarrassed by the fact that we have Orthodox kindergartens, Orthodox nursing homes, and we do not mix them with each other. Therefore, I believe that there may be separate circles or structures that will work specifically with young people.

Answer 3

– How do you explain to unbelieving classmates why we go to church?– When they start asking me where your God is, who has seen your God, and so on, I say: "Well, guys, they quickly looked at me carefully. What do you see now?" They begin to whisper: "We see you." I said: nothing of the kind, you don't see me. Now you see only parts of my future corpse. Why are you surprised? You can only see my epithelium, the top layer of my skin. Open any anatomy textbook and you'll read that this layer of skin is dead. Over time, I will be all like that. So for the time being, you have the dubious pleasure of contemplating pieces of my future corpse, but at the same time, for some reason, you fanatically believe that there is something else behind this corpse. Now, you don't see me, but you believe that I exist. In the same way, we do not see the most important things in our lives. We don't see each other, we don't see ourselves, we don't see God. And yet, for the sake of these invisible realities, we both live and act. It is for the sake of the invisible God that we go to the visible temple. We will not see Him there either. But maybe He will manifest Himself in the stirring of what is under our skin, in the soul. The soul wants this touch and goes to ask for it [1].For more details, see the chapter "Why go to church if God is in my soul" in my book "Gifts and Anathemas" (Moscow, 2003). ^

Answer 4