Man is a mysterious creature. It is a combination of opposites. It is both great and insignificant; he possesses inner freedom and in this sense is a shadow of the Divinity on earth, and at the same time he is entangled, as with a thin cobweb, by his passions, habits that have become his nature, by the imperious demands of the proud and godless world, by the demonic power of sin, which deprive him of will, make him a medium of dark forces and inclinations. Man struggles helplessly in this web. The Earth in the ocean of space is a speck of dust. Strange creatures crawl on the surface of this speck of dust. They are in constant anxiety, agitation, and struggle with each other. And at the same time, these one-day beings, lost in a corner of the universe, feel that they have a great mission, that they are the masters of this vast world. On earth, life is presented in various forms, and all animals are satisfied with their existence, only one person is not satisfied with anything. He is always longing for something, for some kind of loss. He feels the falsity of his life, although he does not know another; Only a king who has lost his kingdom can grieve like this. He who is born in prison does not know freedom, and therefore cannot yearn for it. Life on earth has its cruel laws, and man is conditioned by them. In this respect he is the object of this world, he is under the influence of the environment and under the influence of external forces. And at the same time he feels inwardly free; he feels responsible for his actions in the face of the higher Truth.

His body is similar to that of other animals, only perhaps weaker and more fragile than that of animals, but man has something that distinguishes him from all creatures, which makes his life not only cosmic, but also supracosmic. His spiritual essence is not measured in the magnitudes of time and space. In his material structure, man is a phenomenon of the cosmos. It is due to thousands of cause-and-effect relationships: a spark that flew out of the bowels of the earth and was extinguished in the darkness of the cosmic night. But his spirit has other dimensions, it is transcendental and therefore greater than the cosmos itself. Usually a person is called the microcosm, this concept was passed on from ancient philosophers. But in fact, the human soul is a macrocosm that is larger than all the universes taken together. There is a phenomenon called pain. A living organism hurts, a dead body does not feel pain. And at the same time, pain is a saving signal that the body is in danger. A person's disappointment in this world, mental pain indicate that a person is moral and at the same time that his life, directed only at the external, is false. The experience of all history has proven that man can find happiness only in God, only in God does his true life begin. Here, on earth, there is no happiness, here is the life of a worm that feeds on dust. St. Augustine wrote that only "the abyss of the Godhead can fill the abyss of the human heart." This abyss of the human heart is greater than all cosmic spaces, deeper than the black pits of the universe, greater than all cosmic creations taken together, greater than the very principle of being and non-being. The abyss of the human heart is Godlikeness, so the ephemeral worm crawling on the earth, the grain of sand of the cosmos, in its spiritual aspect is the master of the entire universe and a part of the world that lies beyond it. Man feels himself at the same time to be the free master of his being and a slave to be sold in the slave market of this world. He feels that freedom is the highest value, but rarely understands what freedom is. It is impossible to be free in the external world, where time and death reign - this is an illusion. Most of humanity has striven and continues to strive for such freedom, but it receives only disappointment and bitterness from even greater losses. What is considered freedom - external freedom - turns into passions and rivalry, that is, into a new kind of slavery, only turned inside out. True freedom is independence from the outside. The highest manifestation of freedom is prayer as an appeal to the Divine. The absolute life of the Godhead is the highest, true, and only freedom, and it is only through inclusion in it that man's life can become free, the rest is illusion and mirage. The king and prophet David said: "Only in God does my soul rest" (Psalm 61:2). He ruled the kingdom, was loved by the people, won brilliant victories over enemies, but only in God did he find peace of heart and space for inner freedom. Evil does not just force a person, it deceives a person, putting on a mask of "good". One of Satan's deceptions is to distract man from God by false good; to close his inner world, to leave him to live in the outer world. In church, the words are often repeated: servant of God. These words cause annoyance in many modern people, they even shock them. Meanwhile, they contain a huge potential for freedom. A slave belongs to only one master who bought it from a slave trader. To be a servant of God means to cease to be a slave of people, to cease to feel dependence on people, to throw off these invisible chains; to accept good from man as good from God, done through man, and to be grateful to God, and to accept evil from man as a punishment from God, accomplished through man for our salvation, therefore also to thank God. To see in everything the good will of God being done for us, and to look at people as instruments and means for the embodiment of God's will and the realization of Divine Providence for us. Therefore, one should equally not be attached to people to the state of a slave, nor have enmity towards them. The words servant of God mean that we must have no one as slaves and do not demand anything from a person, even the closest to us. The rule of being neither master nor slave opens the way for man to his own soul, tears him out of the whirlwind of the world. Accepting everything from people as from God, we ourselves must do for man as for Christ the Saviour, Who invisibly dwells in him, and therefore do not expect gratitude from anyone. If we expect gratitude from a person, then we make him dependent on us, and our good turns into enslavement. If we always remembered that everything we do for a person is accepted by God, then all our actions would take on a mystical meaning, a metaphysical depth. The first condition on the path to spiritual freedom is to surrender oneself and one's loved ones to God in a moment of danger. The second is to have the right scale of values: not to confuse the secondary with the primary. We often waste time, our own and someone else's, on unnecessary or empty things. But even a good deed becomes a sin if the main thing is forgotten and not done for its sake - as if the sentry left his post and went to cultivate the field. The main thing in a person's life is the acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit. This light will illuminate not only our lives and our souls, but will become a source of life for others. That is why it is written in the Bible: "The will of God is your sanctification" (1 Thess. 4:3). The greatest benefactor for a person is the one who has revealed this light to him, who has awakened his spirit. In comparison with this, worldly virtues are lower grades. We often replace grace with a surrogate, a fake: tenderness, tenderness, excessive attention; We joke and entertain a person, thinking that this shows our love for him. But if we were in prayer, grace, even without our words, would comfort our neighbor. Therefore, asceticism in antiquity was perceived not as the individual salvation of man, but as the highest form of good for all mankind, and monasticism - the acquisition of the Holy Spirit - was understood not as egocentrism or a disgusted attitude towards the world, but as a sacrifice for people. Therefore, the highest form of good, the highest podvig, moreover, the most difficult and intense, is to enter one's inner world with prayer, to awaken the heart and turn the spirit to God through the words of prayer. Prayer is the resuscitation of the human heart, the transition from the realm of death to the realm of life. Prayer is fraught with difficulty and pain, especially in the beginning. But when the patient wakes up from oblivion or fainting, he feels pain. Without pain, there is no return to life. To live means to awaken the heart, to make it feel, think and speak. In the Holy Fathers, the word "heart" often serves as a synonym for the soul. A person lives as much as his heart is included in life.

On the Church and Schism

Question. What is the Church? Answer. The most profound, essential and, we would say, all-encompassing definition was given by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians: the Church is the Body of Christ the Saviour, the Head, who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22). Question. What does this definition mean? What properties of the Church does it speak of? Answer. The Church is a living organism. It is the grace of God, which embraces all rational creatures that abide in grace through obedience, submission, and devotion to it. The Church is eternal and divine, as the action of eternal Divine energies, as the light pouring from the depths of the Triune Divinity. And at the same time, the Church was created, since it embraces God's creations, created in time. The goal of the Church is to realize the unity between the Creator and His creation, to raise the world from its limited and conditional existence into the freedom and fullness of the Divine life, into the communion of the Divine perfections. The Church is the Body of Christ, therefore, she is one in both the earthly and cosmic dimensions. In the Psalter, the cosmos is compared to the robe - the garment of the Godhead, and in the New Testament the Church is called the mystical Body of Christ the Savior. The Holy Fathers say that the Lord created the universe for the sake of the Church. Thus, the first attribute is the uniqueness of the Church. Secondly, the Church is universal and universal. The earthly Church is organically united with the Heavenly Church. Through the Church, the duality (dyad) of spirit and matter is overcome, and the cosmos is spiritualized in its future transformation. The Church is the Body of the Head, the One Who embraces everything. Consequently, the path to the Heavenly Church lies only through the earthly Church, or rather, these are two aspects of one Church. The Church is a living organism, and a living organism cannot be created artificially. It is impossible to create a living cell from the chemical elements of the cell artificially, in the laboratory, and it is also impossible to create a new Church artificially on the basis of dogmas, canons, rites and the totality of what we know about the Church. All these will be dead theoretical constructions, mannequins and dolls devoid of life. The Christian Church is not the creation of human intellect or even religious genius, but eternal life given by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Incorruptible Head has an Incorruptible Body, so the Church is not subject to death or birth. It is one and the same, and in Divine grace it is identical with itself! The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews compares the Church to the Heavenly Jerusalem, where angels and the souls of the righteous dwell together. Question. What other definitions of the Church are found in the New Testament? Answer. The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians says that the Church is "the bride of Christ." The image of the Church-Bride is the main content of the Old Testament book "Song of Songs", which ancient exegetes compared to the holy of holies of the Old Testament temple. Question. What does this symbol mean? Answer. The eternal, complete, unchangeable, unshakable love of the Divinity for His Church. The bride is the only love of her heavenly Bridegroom. She is a co-heir of His majesty and glory. In the words of the Hieromartyr Cyprian, only the Church has been promised the kingdom of eternal light, eternal communion with God. In the "Song of Songs" it is written: "Thou art beautiful, my beloved, and there is no stain on thee" (Song of Songs 4:7). Beautiful is the grace of God that dwells in the Church; Souls in which grace dwells become beautiful and angelic. The bride is the only one. Those "others" who would want to steal her name were only miserable harlots; She is a beloved. A person can change his love, and God's love is stronger than hell and death - it is unchangeable. There is no stain or blemish in the Church, since the Church is first of all an invisible force that transforms the world. Sunlight, illuminating the earth, remains pure, even if its rays fall into swamps and cesspools. In the "Song of Songs" there are mysterious words: "Put me as a seal on your heart, like a ring on your hand" (Song of Songs 8:6). The seal is a sign of indelible love. The Church is always in the memory of God, in the light of His truth. When we say: he is close to the heart, we mean the closest spiritual unity, one soul is reflected in another, as it were. The royal seal cannot be erased, destroyed, distorted or replaced. The Church is one. The other church is already a counterfeit seal, it is a crime against the "Bride of Christ," it is a lie against the promise of Divine love. A ring is a sign of eternity. A ring is a sign that is exchanged between the bride and groom at the betrothal, a pledge of love that has no end, in which there can be no change. A betrothal ring is an oath that there will be no second bride, that love is inseparable, that betrayal is like the torment of hell. The right hand of God is the action of grace in the world. The ring on the right hand of God is a sign that all the deeds of God, from the very creation to the infinite transfiguration of the world, are performed for the Church, since the purpose of the entire universe is hidden in the Church. In the words of the Apostle Paul, the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). The pillar signifies the steadfastness of the Church, its eternal abiding in the truth. Truth is not only the teaching of the Church, truth is her very life; truth is the grace that has been at work in her since the day of Pentecost. Truth is the unceasing Pentecost in the divine services and sacraments of the Church. Therefore, the Church cannot be built artificially. Therefore, all heresies and schisms (even if not for the schismatics themselves) are called not the Church of God, but human names. The Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons wrote about this in the II century. The Church is the affirmation of the truth. Truth is affirmed through the action of the Holy Spirit on the human heart. The Holy Spirit gives man direct witness, inner certainty, that the teaching of the Gospel is the truth. But at the same time, the Church is the guardian of the doctrine, so to believe in the Church is to accept what it accepts and to reject what it rejects. On the main pillar rests the entire weight of the building, and on the Church of God rests the weight of the entire universe. In ancient times, after military campaigns, kings erected pillars from stone slabs or solid granite, on which they wrote about the victories won over enemies in memory of their descendants. And on the Church there are eternal writings about how Christ defeated Satan and hell and how a Christian can become a winner in the spiritual battle. The Apostle Paul and the Apostle John the Theologian call the Church and the Kingdom of God the Heavenly Jerusalem, where the angels and the souls of the saints dwell together. Jerusalem means "the peace of God," peace as spiritual unity in love and grace. The world is God who dwells in His creations. Question. What is a schism? Answer. The very word "schism" means division, dismemberment, fragmentation, rejection of a part from the whole. Schism is a sin against love, on which unity is based. Where there is no love, there can be no grace. The schism has three planes: ecclesiological, psychological, and occult. The ecclesiological plan is a disbelief in the promise that the Savior gave to the Church, a bold destruction of all church canons, an attempt to create a new "church" without Holy Pentecost. The psychological plane is pride, lust for power and disobedience. The occult plan is the opposition to the grace of God acting in the Church. Question. We would like to consider the schism from an ecclesiological point of view. The schismatics assert that they are the only true Church, and all the above-mentioned properties of the Church belong to their community. What is the main mistake of the schismatics? [1] Answer. The schismatics ignore the conciliar principle and the hierarchical structure of the Church. They believe that in the presence of a bishop of the same mind as them, it is possible to artificially create a new Church. But from the greater proceeds the lesser, and the higher blesses the lower; the bishop receives the grace of his rank from the Church, consequently he is not equal to the Church, but less than it, so he and his supporters cannot create, as it were, a new Church. Otherwise, the bishop would be greater than the Church. Question. How to understand the dependence of a bishop on the Church? Answer. A bishop is elected by a council of bishops of the local Church, which authorizes the consecration of several bishops as its representatives. A bishop is judged by a council of bishops, which can deprive him of his cathedra, forbid him to serve, or depose him from his rank. In addition, the bishop is subordinate to the senior bishop in the region (metropolitan or patriarch). Questions concerning church life are decided by the Synod, and in some cases by the Council. A person who is on the hierarchical ladder can pass on to others less than he has. Therefore, a bishop, being less than the Church, cannot create a Church. By breaking communion with the Church, he is deprived of what the Church has given him. Therefore, a schismatic bishop cannot do anything sacred. Question. Are the schismatics true in saying that the Church is the purity of doctrine, which, in their opinion, is preserved by their community? Answer. Purity of doctrine is a necessary property of the Church, but not yet the Church. Otherwise, the New Testament Church would have been built gradually over the course of three and a half years of the Gospel preaching of Christ the Savior and would have ended with His last farewell discourse. But the Church was created on the day of Pentecost, at the time of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Before His sufferings, the Lord promised His disciples to send down to them the Holy Spirit, Who would guide them into all truth. Christian doctrine is not an abstract doctrine, but the action of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth of the Church, where doctrine is inseparable from liturgics and hierarchical continuity. The Church preserves the purity of the faith in the unity of love, in the unity between the Local Churches, in the unity of the Heavenly and Earthly Churches, in the unity of the people and the hierarchy. This unity is an indispensable condition for the action in the Church of the Holy Spirit, Who is the Guardian of Truth, the Teacher of Truth, and Himself the absolute, perfect, and living Truth. The falling away of schismatics from the Church in the name of dogmatic plausibility based on personal opinions entails the loss of the Spirit of Truth. Therefore, any schism is an area of spiritual darkness, emptiness and falsehood, where neither the unity of love nor religious purity can exist and be preserved. Question. In what is the unity of the Church expressed in her earthly plane? Where is the concrete, visible principle of this unity? Answer. In conciliarity as an expression of the consciousness of the entire universal Church, which, in the words of the Apostle Paul, has "the mind of Christ." Each schism is a struggle against the Church and, above all, an opposition of one's group, in essence, closed-sectarian thinking to the conciliar mind. A tragic example of opposition to the universal Church is the history of the Roman cathedra. Many believe that the cause of its fall was the Latin heresy "filioque" and other deviations incompatible with Orthodoxy, but they were more of a consequence than a cause. The reason is the desire to place oneself above the universal Church, ignoring conciliar thinking as a principle of preserving the truth. That is why particular errors and deviations, which would have been corrected in conciliar unity, entered the practice and consciousness of Rome, and were then dogmatized. Any schism is the claim of the part to represent the whole. The Church is a living body, so a part torn away and torn out of the body becomes a dead, rotting piece. Question. The schismatics say that they have their own episcopate, their own synod, and therefore have their own conciliarity? Answer. At the beginning of every schism, we see disobedience and rebellion against the Church. Conciliarity cannot arise from self-will, and hierarchy cannot arise from a suspended bishop. One of the Fathers wrote that the devil is the monkey of God. We can say that schism is the monkey of the Church. Question. The schismatics refer to the example of St. Maximus the Confessor: when he was persuaded to enter into Eucharistic communion with heretics and told that all the patriarchs had accepted Monophylitism, he replied that if the whole world accepted the heresy, then it would still remain with the truth. Are the schismatics correct in drawing the conclusion from this that one person in the whole world can preserve the truth? Answer. The Monk Maximus said, "if the whole world," but the very word "if" indicates that he did not admit this at all, it means that the phrase is conditional. Here is a rhetorical device, when hyperbole emphasizes and reinforces the idea that truth is above everything, including Eucharistic communion with the tsar and the patriarchs who have accepted heresy. Here the heretics tried to deceive the Monk Maximus, saying that the entire universal Church had accepted Monophylitism, and he clearly saw this lie. Only the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch accepted the heresy, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Pope of Rome immediately rejected it. The Patriarch of Alexandria accepted the heresy temporarily, by mistake, and then, convinced by Maximus the Confessor, returned to Orthodoxy. In the Churches of Constantinople and Antioch, the majority of bishops, priests, and laity remained Orthodox. Therefore, at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the heresy of Monophylitism was rejected and condemned. The Monk Maximus the Confessor refused communion with persons who had openly and publicly accepted heresy, and in his person tried to find support for themselves. St. Maximus the Confessor, who devoted his life to the struggle against heresy, never identified the universal Church with heretics and did not try to create his own Church. Question. The schismatics refer to the canons of the Council of Constantinople (called the Council of St. Sophia after the name of the cathedral) that prayerful ties with a bishop who teaches heresy to the people should be broken off and his name should not be commemorated at the Liturgy. Answer. In the canons of the Council there is no basis for schism as secession from the Church and the formation of a new hierarchy, on the contrary, the accusers of the bishop must appeal to the local council and await its decision. If the court of a small council does not satisfy any of the parties, then it can bring a complaint or an appeal to the larger one - the district council, but before that it obeys the decision of the first court of bishops. Disobedience to a conciliar court forever deprives you of the right to appeal to a higher authority, since disobedience itself becomes a guilty verdict. As for the rupture of prayerful communion with a heretical hierarch, it presupposes the teaching of heresy in sermons, which are an organic part of the divine service, the teaching of heresy as a church dogma, and stubbornness in heretical opinion, despite the exhortations of the brother bishops. The rupture of prayerful communion with the bishop is a temporary measure until the decision of the council, which must either acquit the bishop, or excommunicate him from the Church, or accept repentance from him. At the same time, the canon of the Council of St. Sophia forbids disobedience to a bishop on the grounds of personal suspicion. All church canons are based on the belief that the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Truth – will always dwell in the Church, and therefore the universal Church cannot fall into heresy and be deprived of saving grace. Not a single canon of the Holy Apostles, Ecumenical and Local Councils contains even a hint that the purity of dogmas could be preserved through the breakdown of the church structure. Question. The schismatics say that they have their own episcopate and their own Church. That Auxentius, whose name they bear, was a bishop of the Orthodox Church, and that when the Church fell into heresy, he and his followers became the Church themselves. Answer. We have already said that the bishop receives his grace from the Church through consecration - as the lesser of the greater, so by his grace he cannot create the Church, that which is greater than him. A bishop who is suspended by the Church and at the same time performs his ministry is already sacrileging, stealing and stealing the sacred from God Himself. Question. The schismatics call themselves the "Orthodox Greek Church of North America." What does that mean? Answer. The Church is not an abstraction, but a reality. Each church has its own status. What Church are the schismatics talking about? If it is autonomous, then who gave it autonomy? If autocephalous, then which local Churches have recognized it? If it is universal, then how can it be called by the name of a people and a region? This means that it is a Church with a status unknown to Orthodoxy, non-existent and false. But since the schismatics consider it to be the only Orthodox Church in the whole world, in their eyes it must be a "universal" Church, and the name North American Greek is a temporary cover, necessary in order to conceal and disguise its pretentiousness and obvious absurdity. If they are the universal Church, then their bishop must have the authority of the head of the universal Church, that is, to be the "Pope of Orthodoxy," since conciliarity is impossible here. Conciliarity is that quality of the Church which is always inherent in it, and is not created as the number of bishops increases. If they assert that within their schism there exists the principle of conciliarity, then each of their meetings will represent the fullness of the universal Church and be equal to the Ecumenical Council, which can accept and confirm dogmas, form local Churches, and so on. If they are a universal Church, then they can give their representative in Georgia the title of Catholicos-Patriarch or Exarch.

And since each schism tends to disintegrate and fragment, and each part also considers itself to be the only Orthodox, the number of archbishops, exarchs, and patriarchs can increase exponentially. They want to drive believers into this bedlam who have lost their sense of responsibility to the Church. Question. The schismatics present accusations that seem serious to us. Answer. Mistakes, sins, and imperfections are inherent in all people, no matter what position they occupy. It is for this reason that the Orthodox Church considers the claims of the Roman Pontiff to sinlessness in matters of faith and piety absurd. But the Church and the hierarchy are such great gifts of God that they cannot be made dependent on the human weaknesses and imperfections of persons who have received apostolic authority, so the ministry of these persons is salvific for the people. In the Gospel of John, the shepherd is the one who enters the sheepfold through the doors, and the thief and robber is the one who wants to enter there by another way. According to the interpretation of exegetes, the sheepfold is the Church, the gate is a lawful ordination, thieves and robbers are heretics and schismatics who, destroying the fence, that is, the church structure, steal and steal the souls of people. To take a person away from the Church means to spiritually kill him. With the worst of Orthodox bishops, one can be saved through patience and obedience, only not blind, but reasonable, that is, obedience in line with the Gospel commandments and church rules. And to go over to the best of the schismatic bishops means to find oneself in a well-equipped morgue, locked up with the corpses, even though this morgue outwardly has the form of a church. Question. Why did the head of the schismatics not call himself a patriarch, but only a bishop, and then an archbishop? Answer. First, as we have said, for tactical reasons, the schismatics called themselves the Greek Church, and the head of the Greek Church bore the title of archbishop, so one thing led to another. The self-proclaimed archbishop and the self-proclaimed patriarch are not much different from each other. Then the question arises: what kind of patriarch would Auxentius call himself? If he considers his community to be the only universal Church, then the title of this patriarch should be "Patriarch of Patriarchs." Even the title "Ecumenical Patriarch" would mean a local Church, in this case the Church of Constantinople, which would not correspond to the claims of the schismatics to the only true Church. For their "self-sanctification" there would simply be no title in the entire history of Orthodoxy. But the essence of the matter does not change from the name. Schismatics invade local Churches, rule in other dioceses, ordain clergymen, perform a second chrismation, and so on, that is, they do not take into account any church canons. Even the Catholic Church forbade the naming of its bishops by the names of previously existing Orthodox dioceses, so the actions of the schismatics in their autocracy surpassed even the Caesarist tendencies of the Popes of Rome. They are more like the powers of a dictator in wartime, who can abolish any laws, including the constitution, at his discretion. The title of archbishop for the head of the schismatics is just as conditional and camouflage; In fact, he behaves like a monopatriarch. But the mono-patriarchs do not give birth to a conciliar Church, but new arch-patriarchs, for whom the church canons are their own unlimited will. Question. If a bishop has left the Church for schism, but excommunication has not yet been pronounced over him, then to what extent does he preserve the grace received in the Church, and can he be called a bishop at all? Answer. The Church pronounces an official excommunication in order to inform the people that the former bishop has become a false teacher and cannot be given the honor that belongs to the bishop. According to the definition of the Second Ecumenical Council, "everything it does is null and void." St. Cyprian of Carthage writes: "The Church is in the bishop, and the bishop is in the Church" - the Church cannot exist without the bishop, and the bishop without the Church. By leaving the Church, a bishop, a priest and a layman lose everything that they have received in the Church - in the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage, even the name of a Christian. A bishop who violates the episcopal oath of obedience to the Church loses apostolic grace, he can no longer be called a bishop, just as an extinguished ray cannot be called light. The same applies to a priest who simultaneously violates two oaths of priestly oath: obedience to the lawful bishop and obedience to the Church. Church rules forbid taking a blessing from heretics and schismatics; it is called "superstition." Apostolic canons categorically forbid praying together with those excommunicated from the Church, not only in their gatherings, but even at home. ("He who prays with the excommunicated, let him himself be excommunicated" - the 10th apostolic canon.) Question. Can a bishop's sin committed against the Church be an excuse for schism? Answer. Schism is worse than any sin against the Church, since it is a rejection of the Church itself. The Lord said: Search the Scriptures (John 5:39). In the Bible, we can find the answer to our doubts and misunderstandings. The high priest Aaron, even before his calling to the priesthood, sinned grievously: yielding to threats, he made an idol in the form of a golden calf and instituted a feast in its honor. This sin was so grave that the Lord wanted to destroy the entire people of Israel, and only the prayer of the prophet Moses turned away the wrath of God. Moses asked the Lord either to have mercy on the sinful people, or to strike him out of the number of the living. Here we see that the participation in the sin of the prophet's brother was not an excuse for the people. Church obedience is obedience to the will of God, and false obedience is the satisfaction of one's passions by referring to the crimes of others. But Aaron, after his fall, became a high priest, "called of God" (Heb. 5:4). When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against the lawful ecclesiastical authority and demanded that they be given the honor and right to perform sacrifices, the wrath of God came upon them: the earth opened up like hell and swallowed them up with its jaws, and the fire that descended from heaven burned up their followers. This execution was similar to the destruction of Sodom, so the schismatics must ponder whose end, the Church or the schism, is the image of the death of the criminal Pentapolis. Although the sin of the priests could be a reason for the rebels to accuse the high priest, the rebellion in the Church, an attempt to seize by force the temple power and not belonging to the rank, was condemned by God and given over to public execution. The blessing given to Aaron and his descendants to be priests of the Old Testament Church was not abolished until the time of the New Testament Church, although the God-killers Annas and Caiaphas belonged to this family. The biblical books tell us about many crimes that were committed by priests and high priests (the 1st book of Maccabees calls one priest an atheist, an impious [3]), but we do not find a single case when church piety would be restored and preserved through schism. The people looked upon the sins of the priests as punishment for their sins and saw salvation in general repentance, not in schisms. Question. Is it possible to find similar examples in the history of the New Testament Church? Answer. During the Arian, Monophysite, and Iconoclastic troubles, there were periods when the whole East seemed to be sinking into heresy. By the beginning of the patriarchate of St. Gregory the Theologian in Constantinople, out of one and a half thousand churches, only one belonged to the Orthodox. Why did none of the Orthodox bishops create their own Church with a new hierarchy coming from them? St. Athanasius of Alexandria spent most of his life in exile and imprisonment, but he did not declare himself and his supporters to be the new Church, but fought for Orthodoxy until his death, so to speak, in a Church engulfed in flames. At the Council of Florence, almost all the Greek bishops accepted the shameful union. Why did not the zealous fighter for Orthodoxy, St. Mark of Ephesus, declare the local Churches, which were represented at the Council of Florence as heretics, abolished, and did not rule over other dioceses? The Holy Fathers knew that the Church is invincible and invincible by the forces of hell, so the breath of grace will dispel the dark clouds of heresies, and the sun of Orthodoxy will once again shine brightly over the world. Here, in fact, Archimandrite Raphael speaks about the principles of schism as such, but in particular he touches upon the problem of schism in the Georgian Orthodox Church. Its history is briefly as follows. In May 1998, the abbots of a number of Georgian monasteries appealed to the Synod with an ultimatum: they demanded the withdrawal of the Georgian Orthodox Church from the World Council of Churches and the refusal to participate in other ecumenical organizations, promising otherwise to stop Eucharistic communion with the Georgian Patriarch Ilia. The Synod satisfied their demands, deciding to withdraw from the WCC. However, some of the monastics decided to go further, demanding also to stop communion with all (!) local Churches because of the participation of these Churches in ecumenical movements. Since this condition was not fulfilled by the Synod, representatives of the "extreme" minority did stop commemorating Patriarch Ilia during divine services and turned into schism. At present, they form a small group that maintains communion with the Greek schismatics. -Ed. ^ Auxentius is the leader of one of the Old Calendarist Greek schisms. -Ed. ^Cm. 1 Poppy. 7:9: the king sent the wicked Alcimus, giving him the priesthoodThis Alcimus was a priest from the tribe of Aaron (1 Mac. 7:14); But Alcimus coveted the high priesthood (1 Mac. 7:21). -Ed. ^

The Image of Christ

All Holy Scripture is Christocentric: the Old and New Testaments can be compared to two circles nested inside each other. Christ is the center of the Old Testament, to which prophetic revelations and temple types lead, like lines of force from the periphery; Christ is the center of the New Testament, from whom come, like the rays of the sun, the eternal light of the Gospel and the power of grace. In the last centuries before the coming of Christ to earth, in the era of nascent rabbinism, the image of the Messiah was distorted, mainly under the influence of national utopias, which led to a tragic result: the majority of the Jewish people did not understand and did not accept Jesus of Nazareth. Where the image of Christ is distorted, Christianity is distorted or completely destroyed. The salvation of man is his transfiguration in the image of Christ the Savior through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes Christians ask the question: "Will not a heretic be saved if he was martyred for Christ?" But in every heresy and sect the very image of Christ is replaced.

This teaching made the two most important events of the Gospel - the Crucifixion and the Resurrection - a mere stage performance, so John, the Apostle of Love, forbade to welcome the Gnostic Docetists as his brothers and to receive them into his home. Can the image of Christ, who came to earth as a theatrical mask, save the Gnostic heretic, even if he gives his life for an idea, for such an illusory Christ? In apostolic times, there was a sect of the Ebionites, that is, the "poor", who taught that Christ was one of the prophets, born of Mary and Joseph, and demanded the fulfillment of all Old Testament attributes and rituals. Could such a messiah save not only others from death and hell, but also himself? For the later Gnostics Basilides and Valentinus, Christ was the power of God, an aeon that came into the material world to bring out another aeon, Sophia. This was taught in apostolic times by the first Gnostic, Simon the Sorcerer, and in the 20th century, the old Gnostic errors were collected and preached by another Gnostic, Rudolf Steiner. For the Talmud, Jesus is the son of adultery and a deceiver, for the Mohammedans he is the son of the Virgin and a prophet, who, however, was not crucified or resurrected: Simon of Cyrene was crucified for him, and Christ was taken to heaven by Allah as the prophet Elijah; he must come in the last times to die and lie in the grave in Medina, next to Mohammed. In the Qur'an it is written how Allah asks Jesus: "Did Jesus say that he was God?" Mohammed compares himself to the Spirit of Comfort, of whom Jesus announced. In theosophy, Indian and European, the image of Christ is amorphous and ambiguous, for Vivekananda, the famous preacher of yoga, Christ is a myth and a fiction, a kind of abstract artistic image; Helena Blavatsky is of the same opinion. Ramakrishna, Schürre, and others regard Christ as a great initiate on the level of Buddha and Mohammed, and with a clear preference for Buddha. Krishnas want to appropriate Christ, to pass off their teaching as a renewed Gospel. They teach that Christ is one of the many incarnations of Krishna. The massive offensive of the Eastern occult systems against Europe and America set before the Indian and Tibetan gurus the task of replacing the image of Christ with another, dark face; then, without Christ, Christianity will fall, like a fortress blown up from within, and Buddhist and Shaivite temples will be built by the hands of the Europeans themselves on the ruins of the former Christian temples. In the 20th century, dozens of provocative statements began to appear about the alleged discovery of ancient manuscripts, which say that Christ studied in Tibet, that after the Crucifixion He was in a fainting state, He was healed by lamas and helped to flee to the East, where He ended His life: some point to Tibet as the second homeland of Christ, others to Burma, and still others to Japan. There is a Japanese family that believes that her clan is descended from Christ who married a Japanese woman, and even shows someone's grave, passing it off as the tomb of Jesus. The Indian Brahmins fiercely resisted Christianity. The apostolic preaching found a basis only in South India, inhabited by the Dravidian tribes. The priests of ancient India used tactics to fight Christianity, which the elite of the Hellenistic world failed. They declared the Gospel to be an unsuccessful version of Buddhism and Brahmanism. Some of the Gospel episodes and parables have been incorporated into the biography of the Buddha and Vedic mythology as a result of complex interpretation. It is enough to look at the early and late versions of the life of the Buddha to see these insertions and interpretations, which are like patches from someone else's clothes. This method is used by their successors, the modern gurus, who are trying to prove that their teachings are elitist and esoteric Christianity. A significant role in the distortion of Christianity was played by the Gnostic and Manichaean Rudolf Steiner. For him, Jesus is the son of the marriage of Joseph and Mary, and the newborn baby is inhabited by the soul of another, previously deceased baby Jesus; Thus, two souls live in the child (recall that the word "schizophrenia" means duality, which is subjectively felt by the patient as the presence of two beings in him). Steiner's Jesus is a weak-willed, morally imperfect man. In times of threat from the pagans, he is ready to offer sacrifice to idols, that is, to renounce God, and only a deep faint saves him from apostasy. At the age of 30, Christ descends on Jesus - the solar eon, which contains 7 elohim, that is, 7 cosmic spirits. Jehovah is identified with the archangel Michael. During the burial, Jesus' body fell into a crevice in the ground, where it found a grave. There is no resurrection of Christ in the flesh. Easter is an illusion; the ethereal body of Christ is resurrected, in which He again invisibly came into the world after nineteen centuries (1914). At the opening of an anthroposophical temple in Switzerland, in which there are images of pagan gods, Steiner openly said that the mission of his life was the rehabilitation of paganism, and this ancient Gnostic heresy, or rather, a bouquet of heresies, is presented to us as true Christianity and attempts are made to convince us that it does not contradict the Gospel and the Church, but only deepens them. By the way, Steiner called his main work, for some reason little known among modern anthroposophists, "The Fifth Gospel"; Perhaps this book is deliberately hidden from a wide audience so as not to scare off proselytes ahead of time. Steiner declared Jesus himself to be the incarnations of Zarathustra and Buddha. Writers also contributed to the distortion of the image of Christ. At the head of literary profanation is Renan, who in the last century wrote a book "The Life of Jesus", similar to a romantic detective story. For this book, Renan received a pen with a golden nib as a gift from the Belgian Freemasons. On the occasion of the publication of the book written by this former student of the Jesuits, the Pope of Rome announced a three-day fast in the Catholic world, pointing to the moral decline of humanity, against which such moral dirt could appear. Renan's literary traditions were continued by Bulgakov in his novel "The Master and Margarita". There Christ is a naïve utopian, a weak-willed dreamer, who does not understand what he teaches and to whom he addresses his teaching; Bulgakov's Christ is powerless against the evil and sin of mankind. Except for pale and verbose sermons about abstract good, he can give nothing. The image of Jesus, called Yeshua by Bulgakov, was created as if in order to contrastingly emphasize another image, the image of his antipode - Woland, who is the bearer of active good. Woland is Satan not in the Christian, but in the Manichaean understanding, he is the prince of darkness, who creates good through evil. In his novel, Bulgakov tries to imperceptibly instill the idea that the Gospel is an invention of the Apostles, that is, he repeats the position of the Neoplatonist Porphyry and the eclectic Julian the Apostate, who believed that Jesus was not a bad person, but the Apostles made Him the Son of God. The apotheosis of the novel is the picture of Walpurgis Night, which in its literary skill can compete with Goethe's Walpurgis Night. There is one strange coincidence that suggests that Bulgakov's novel was written directly under the influence of demonic forces, namely, Bulgakov indicated the place of the lithostroton, which had not yet been discovered by archaeologists under the subsequent buildings of Jerusalem. Excavations in the 60s, during which a courtyard paved with stone slabs and part of the staircase of the Roman court were discovered, confirmed Bulgakov's description. Bulgakov's successor in the mainstream of literary romanticism on religious themes, but no longer mystical, but atheistic, was the writer Aitmatov. A Muslim has taken it upon himself to write about Christianity, is it because he respects it more than Islam? Not at all. If he had behaved so unceremoniously with Islam, then perhaps he would have faced the fate of Rushdie, at least a severe censure from his coreligionists; And the Christians ate the soup he had prepared, and even thanked him, without understanding what was going on. Unlike Bulgakov, Aitmatov is not a medium, but a functionary of anti-Christian forces. In the novel "The Chopping Block" he tries to show that the Orthodox Church is a long-obsolete soulless corporation that expels from itself everything honest and moral. The professor-priest and the expelled student Obadiah, representatives of what seem to be two poles in Christianity, in fact both are atheists and atheists. The professor wears the non-existent title of "coordinator" in the seminary, as if to emphasize that he is the guardian of the system, a faceless and impersonal force, and in fact he does not care about anything except the feeling of his own satiety. Obadiah is a skeptic for whom God is only a state of the soul, and objectively God does not exist (almost plagiarism of Luke's reasoning from the play "At the Bottom" by Gorky, only in an even more atheistic version). The author leads to the idea that Christ would have remained a historical nonentity, a Jewish hippie, if He had not been crucified. The glory of Christ is the glory of senseless sacrifice, of suicide on the cross, that is, the glory of Herostratus. The hero of the story, Obadiah, chooses death as a means for self-assertion: without it, he would be nobody and nothing. At present, another interpretation of Christ is being revealed - this is Christ the cosmonaut. In the English Church there is a sect ruled by Bishop Robertson, it is called "Christ the Cosmonaut". The Star of the Magi is interpreted as a spaceship, and the ascension of Christ as a return to the higher civilizations that sent Him to earth. We speak of gross distortions of the image of Christ, but any dogmatic deviation leads to a change in His image, so only in the Orthodox Church, in her liturgical existence, does the true image of Christ exist. Christ is the heart of Christianity. If we compare Christianity with other religions, we can find some similarities and analogies, but they do not have the main thing - Christ, and if a blow to the heart is made with a razor-thin stiletto blade, then even if only a few drops of blood come to the surface, a person will become a corpse. Salvation is assimilation to Christ through the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Christ invisibly dwells in the Church, lives in her divine services, acts in her sacraments, is present in her rites, in iconography and hymns. To live in Christ means to be included in the life of the Church.

On the Denial of the Church

One of the important sections of Orthodox dogmatics and theology is the teaching on the Church.

The doctrine of the Church is the main boundary dividing the Orthodox and non-Orthodox worlds. The Church's teaching on the Church remains unclear to many Christians and therefore often raises doubts and perplexities. Some identify the Church with clergy and clergy and draw their own conclusions about the Church itself on the basis of their ethical and intellectual level (this is primitive concrete thinking); others, on the contrary, look at the idea of the Church as an abstraction, and therefore arbitrarily manipulate theses and texts, without taking into account the Church as a historical reality. (Such views are characterized by adogmatism, and more recently by existentialism.) The concept of the Church is now expanded to the limits of the cosmos (Origenism and sophiology: "The Church is a liturgical cosmos", S. Bulgakov), then it is narrowed to the limits of the community: sects and groups of believers in Christ (Protestantism), then it is applied to any religion regardless of its content, up to satanic religions (super-ecumenism and theosophy), then one future heavenly Church is recognized, the members of which can be people of various confessions and even non-believers. depending on their moral level (liberal Christianity). Here religion is reduced to the concept of morality, ethics and, losing its dogmatic content and mystical depth, is reduced to utilitarian norms of behavior. The center of such a religion is not God, but human society; The goal is not communion with God, but the benefit that the individual can bring to the collective. Such a non-religious religion can operate under the guise of non-traditional Christianity. The modern intelligentsia, being primarily a technocratic intelligentsia, devoid of the traditions and aristocratism of previous generations, is inclined to ignore or reject the Church in its significant part. For it, the Church is presented as the antipode of freedom, a system of prohibitions, within the framework of which the individual creativity of those who wish to experiment with religion, like physicists in their laboratories, cannot manifest themselves. The principle of hierarchy and subordination, which is necessary for the struggle against egoism and one's own passions, is alien to them. On the contrary, they are accustomed to looking upon the human mind as a universal instrument which can by its own power unravel all the mysteries of the existence of the physical and spiritual worlds, and they are inclined to repeat Whitman's words as soon as they come into contact with religion: "Tell me who has gone farthest so that I may go farther." If they fail to turn the Church into a testing ground for their inventions and ideas, they soon break with it and call themselves "free-thinking Christians" or "Christians for themselves." Then they began a period of god-building, and if there were accomplices, then church building. Close to them are the modernists, who do not deny the Church, but consider it an evolving organism and therefore try to adapt it to the tastes and concepts of contemporary society. In this case, it is not the world that follows the Church, but the Church follows the world.

They lack the aristocracy of spirit to appreciate the importance of continuity and tradition. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to hear the question: "I believe in God and accept the gospel. Why do we need the Church?" Any organism can exist only in its living environment, outside of it it dies. The Church is the living environment of a Christian, it is the spiritual atmosphere that he breathes. The Church is the mystical body of Christ the Savior. The earthly and heavenly churches are inseparably united with each other in the Holy Spirit. In the earthly Church, the Heavenly Church is revealed; it is really present in every service. The Church is the kingdom of God, which begins on earth and continues into eternity. The Church is always turned to eternity, she prepares man for eternity. In apocalyptic prophecies, the Church is represented in the image of a Mother giving birth to a child in agony. The Church in torment and pain gives birth to every Christian for eternal life. The ontological aspect of the Church is the Church as the realization of Divine promises, as the dynamics of spiritual life, as the field of Divine forces and energies in which the human soul is included. The Church is the unity of man's love for God and of people for each other. Here is the psychological aspect of the Church. A person has a need for communication: relatives gather together, friends come together; The former - as a sign of solidarity, the latter - due to the commonality of views and interests. A person feels spiritual help and support in this communication. With friends, grief becomes lighter and joy increases. If a person shares with friends what he has, he becomes richer, as it were, if he hides it from others for himself, he becomes poorer. With friends, his life expands, becomes more complete and capacious. And the Church is the embodiment of the highest spiritual love in its main manifestations: in prayer and the sacraments. In sincere communication with friends, a certain field of unity is formed, which continues to connect them even at a distance. In the Church, it is the field of God's grace and the unity of faith, the highest form of the realization of love in common prayer and in mystical participation in the sacraments. The Church is a circle of light, beyond which lies the world with its unrepentant sins and passions, with its egoism running away from God into the realm of chaos, into nowhere. Many are perplexed: "Why do we need joint prayer? At home, alone with yourself, it is calmer, easier and better to pray." The Church is unity in prayer. Small drops of rain are collected in one stream, under the powerful pressure of which even stone blocks cannot resist. The light of many candles merges into one radiance, illuminating the vast space of the temple. The prayer of the Church is a pillar of light directed towards heaven, the prayer of one person is only a spark that has flared up. But the prayer of the Church is greater than the prayer of all the people in the church, which is imputed to everyone as his own prayer. In the church, saints and angels pray together with people, so the fullness of the Heavenly and earthly Church participates in the divine services. This is the mystery of the Church. Spiritual life is an unceasing battle with the forces of hell, with the spirit of the world and with one's passions. In the Church, a Christian feels himself to be in an invincible army, outside the Church he alone goes out to fight the demonic forces of sin and evil. A temple is a spiritual rock whose top touches the sky. In the temple, not merging, but mutually penetrating into each other, the three spheres of the spiritual world are united, called heaven, cosmos and hell. In the temple, the space of the three worlds is as if extremely compressed to a density greater than that of a diamond. As an example, let us take the cosmogonic hypothesis, popular in our time, about the primary superdense matter, from which, according to this theory, the cosmos was formed; its volume was such that the entire metagalaxy could fit in the palm of your hand. For us, of course, this is only an image of that concentration of space and time when the entire sacred history and the entire universe (the visible and invisible worlds) resides in the temple not as in its model, but in reality. In the church, time in the cycles and rhythms of worship takes on the property of eternity, and eternity is revealed in the human heart through contact with grace. The meeting of the soul with Christ in the prayer and sacraments of the Church - this amazing experience of eternity - is revealed to man as a new life, where everything is different, unknown and unique. Many do not understand the meaning of church rites. It is a system of signs, a special symbolic language in which Divine revelation is contained and encoded, it is the mystical vision of the spiritual world by Christian ascetics and the path to this vision; what is written in words in the Bible is embodied in symbols and rituals in the temple. Not only from the mystical, but even from the utilitarian and psychological point of view, the church stands out as a place specially devoted to prayer and worship, different from worldly dwellings with their earthly life, where the things themselves bear the stamp of the anxieties and worries of their owners, where the usual environment, according to the law of associative connections, immerses the thought in the whirlwind of earthly affairs and concerns. A temple is a place where every object is a sacred symbol, reminiscent of eternity. The church is a theological school. Those who doubt the need for the Church forget that they received their education or profession not in their own room, but in schools and colleges, they received knowledge from their teachers. The basis of any teaching is continuity. Not only knowledge is needed, but also the presence of methods and traditions according to which this knowledge would be passed on to students. From the Gnostic side, the Church is a continuous stream of light of spiritual knowledge coming from Christ through the Apostles and their successors. Outside the Church, this light, passing through the prism of human perception, would be shattered and then extinguished. Who among the people could fully assimilate the Divine revelation and transmit spiritual light to descendants in all its purity? It may be objected that there is a Bible as the Word of God. But the Bible itself is not adequately understood. The Church preserves the interpretation of the Bible, which goes back to the apostolic tradition, and worship as an analogue of the Bible. Outside the Church, not only is the meaning of Holy Scripture obscured and lost, but outside the Church of the Old Testament and the New Testament there was no collection of biblical books; outside the Church, there could not be a division of books into canonical, non-canonical, apocryphal. Outside the Church, a patristic commentary on these books would not have been compiled, since there would have been no exegetical and hermeneutical traditions. Everyone would be left to understand the Bible to the best of his ability and knowledge, which is always inadequate, and also under the influence of his passions and pride, which often dominate the intellect. Such a person would remain in the circle of his own ideas without objective reference points. Outside the Church, Christianity would have turned into an amorphous, vague teaching, there would have been no dogmatics as a distinction between metaphysical truth and metaphysical falsehood. Those who do not give importance to dogmas forget that each dogma is a truth, imbued with eternal light, which brings life and light into the soul and consciousness of man, making it capable of communion with God. False dogmas are a distorted view of the Godhead, a lie against God that introduces death and decay into the soul and mind, and heresy is an injection of poison injected into the main nerve of human consciousness. Outside the Church, there would be no difference between worldview truth and falsehood, Orthodoxy and heresy. Outside the Church, there would be no symbolic language of icons, rites, sacred objects of the church, the divine service itself, uniting people in its one heart. Outside the Church, people with spiritual and mystical needs would be forced to create their own individual sign systems, which would possibly fix the images of their subconscious, giving these images a sacred meaning. Religious art outside the Church would degenerate into abstraction or into poetic illustrations, allegories of individual states; At the same time, demonic images emerging from the depths of the subconscious, from the depths of the soul, could be perceived as visions of the spiritual world. Without tradition, sacred symbols, torn from their roots, would be distorted and replaced by new ones, and since man in his sinfulness and passion is closer to the demonic world than to heaven, these signs and images would become a manifestation of demonophilia, as in modern avant-garde art. In the light field of the Logos, the people are transformed into the Church, into a spiritual body, united by love and faith, by a single goal and a community of means (sacred symbolism). The people outside the Logos turn into a crowd that lives by the concentrated passions and impulses of their dark subconscious. In the Church, man is created as a personality (spiritual and moral monad), outside the Church either an impersonal collective or individuality is declared to be the highest value. Personality is the identification and implementation of a person's target idea, something that brings people closer to each other. Individuality is those qualities of a person by which he differs from another; It is characteristic that among modern secular philosophers the concept of personality has merged with hyperbolized individuality, and non-ecclesiastical religious art is engaged in the search for opportunities to reveal and reflect individuality or replace it with abstractions. One of the means of this is hyperbolized laughter and hyperbolized horror - attributes of the demon.

On the rites of the Church

A rite is an established sign system that plays an informational and communicative role. Church rites are the Gnostic layer following the Holy Scriptures, which has similarities and differences with sacred symbolism. A rite differs from a symbol in that it is more concrete, narrower in its scope than a symbol, more subject to historical factors and diverse in its forms, that is, more conditioned. The symbol has an analogical meaning: it raises the human mind from the lower to the highest, from the known to the unknown, from the invisible to the visible. The rite includes a person in an already known given. But usually the rite is not separated from the symbol; It is based on the foundation of symbolic signs, only it takes a certain aspect of a multifaceted symbol, as if it concretizes the symbol and adapts it to the target task. A religious rite includes a person in the sphere of spiritual realities, in the field of eternal Divine energies, in the world of timeless, extraspatial dimensions. In our everyday life, we express ourselves through a system of symbols and rituals, without which man would remain a self-contained being, a thing in itself, and since man is a social being, then, by discarding and breaking images, he turns out to be a destroyer of social ethical structures. A rite, like a symbol, cannot be true or false, good or evil, reality or illusion, it is a means of expression. (Moral categories refer to the content that a symbol or rite is supposed to express, but not to the rite itself as a means of expression based on tradition, on the experience of mankind crystallized over the centuries - the experience of communication.) A vivid attempt to think outside of symbolism and rituals was made by the Cynics, who called on man to directly reveal his essence. The Cynics entered the stage of world culture as the destroyers of all intellectual and moral values in the name of the freedom of the human spirit, but instead of becoming liberators from slavery, they turned into clowns and clowns of history. Destroying social rites, they at the same time created their own rites and symbolic actions, for example, the barrel of Diogenes. By destroying images, they created their own image of a cynic. Madness strikes first of all two faculties of the human soul: creativity and self-awareness. A mentally ill person usually either loses the ability to create, or it acquires a sporadic character; The same happens with self-knowledge as an assessment of one's internal state. A mentally ill person is mainly an egoist who has lost sympathy for the world around him. Creativity and self-knowledge are based on symbolism. We are aware of ourselves as a personality only from the time when our psyche began to be organized and included in the sign system of the word (human speech). The Cynics identified ritual with evil, but as a philosophical system, Cynicism turned out to be an empty flower - except for witticisms with a wide range, from funny aphorisms to vulgarities, it could not give anything. He was a parasite that fed on the blood of the victim he ridiculed, but he himself was sterile. Diogenes committed suicide, having become convinced during a fever that no amount of sarcastic ridicule of the disease could destroy the heat in his own body and the pain in his bones; another of his disciples followed his example when he realized that he could not conquer time and old age. Diogenes was called the mad Socrates. Cynicism was like hydrochloric acid, which, falling into the cracks of society, corroded them. But denial and caustic irony could not give an answer: who is man and why did he come into this world; On the contrary, the Cynics denied spiritual substance and spiritual values, they dealt with empirical man. The idea of the rebirth of man seemed to them senseless and illusory; They did not want rebirth but liberation, which in its logical end led to the identification of man with his physiological functions. The first was liberation from one's own soul, the second liberation was liberation from society. By destroying rites and symbols, the Cynics severed the connection with the past, the future, and the environment in which they existed; Ethical and philosophical anti-symbolism inevitably led them to extreme individualism and isolationism. One of the varieties of modern cynicism is existentialism, which considers man as an empirical given, while including in empiricism the entire mental content of the human individual. The philosophy of existentialism, this decadent cynicism, looks at traditions, rituals and symbolism as slavery of the spirit. Sartre is the Diogenes of the XX century, only less talented and courageous than the "dog of Sinope". Art is the intimate side of philosophy. The art of the Cynics was a caricature; The art of the existentialists resulted in madness and delirium, what is commonly called absurdity. By destroying the rite and the symbol, they destroy the logos of the human soul; Then, from the black abysses of individuality, combined with the cosmic and spiritual abysses, there burst forth the phantoms of death and destruction, like the formless dreams of an opiophage. The destruction of ritualism as a sign system of religion leads to two opposite poles; or to the rationalization of religion, to the replacement of liturgical depths by a shallow verbal interpretation, or to ecstatic mysticism, ancient Dionysism. Modern so-called avant-garde art, which denies the principles of harmony (as the Cynics denied symbolism), is painted in the black colors of demonic mysticism, so the state of the crowd after rock music concerts often resembles a bacchanalia. Church rites are not something external and mechanical in relation to the human soul, they are channels through which the grace of God is communicated to the human soul, they are the core of the divine service, based on which people present in the church can spiritually draw closer to the understanding of the one living mystical body. The church rite has two directions: vertical and horizontal; vertical - as communion with God, the direction of the soul from the material world to the spiritual, and horizontal - as the unification of people standing in the temple in one faith, in one mystical experience, in one prayer stream. The destruction of ritual is the destruction of spiritual communication, it is the relegation of religion to the plane of philosophical abstractions or to the dark realm of Dionysian mysticism, chaos, to the realm of the subconscious and instincts, to the realm of ghosts and dreams. In this demonic state, the ancient legend of how the Bacchantes kill Orpheus is repeated; Frenzied feelings kill the spirit. The church rite is a reality of another dimension than the word, therefore it cannot be revealed and replaced by the word, just as a ray of living light, which carries warmth and life, cannot be replaced by a verbal theory about the nature of light. A church rite can be understood only in church, in direct experience, so in liturgics the explanation of rites and the commentaries of the liturgy occupy a comparatively small place: religious realities are understood to the extent that they are perceived. The rite is understood as it is accepted, that is, through the change and rebirth of the human soul itself. The liturgy cannot be explained. It is a mystery, it can only be explained, it can be pointed out to certain target ideas and analogies, but it will forever remain a mystery that the human heart must reverently experience. Therefore, the rite simultaneously hides and reveals; it hides the inner life of the Church from outside, curious and insolent eyes - it hides it as with a thick veil - and at the same time it opens the veil to the believing soul in the "Holy of Holies" - but gradually, to the extent of its inner preparation, so that too bright a light does not blind it. For the rationalist sects, which destroyed the symbolism of worship, religion froze at the level of catechetism; For ecstatic sects, it has turned into a return to ancient chaos, into a game with their subconscious and the world of fallen spirits. The Cynics hated the Christian teaching especially maliciously. If the Stoics treated Christianity with cold contempt, considering it the property of one ignorant crowd, and the Pythagoreans and Platonists, who possessed greater insight, as their main intellectual opponent, then the Cynics hated Christianity as their fierce enemy and during the period of persecution of the Church often acted as provocateurs and informers (the life of Justin the Philosopher), and the Roman emperors themselves often resorted to the services of the Cynics in the struggle against Christianity. But the syncretic philosophy of paganism proved powerless against the heavenly light of the Gospel. The huge state machine of the empire could not break the spirit of Christian communities. Then the Cynics and actors entered the arena with their weapons: ridicule, lies, slander - the demon took the guise of a monkey imitating God. The basis of Christianity is love and reverence for the sacred, the basis of cynicism is pride and contempt for everything in the name of oneself. Sectarians often call temple worship and the performance of sacraments witchcraft, and church rituals magical rites, so let us dwell on the fundamental difference between mysticism and magic. The basis of Christian mysticism is love for God; Christian rites and sacraments are a means of communion with God. The basis of magic is pride, the desire to subjugate the world around you through the influence of occult forces. For mysticism, God is the highest value, the ultimate goal and the main content of existence. For magic, the highest value is fallen man with his unbridled passions, which he strives to realize by any means. Christianity demands that man become like God. The mystic's desire is to be obedient to God; the manifestation of this feeling is the prayer: "Thy will be done!" Practicing magic is aggression towards the world, the desire to subjugate the world by means of certain magical formulas and actions. The goal of magic is always utilitarian and does not go beyond the limits of earthly life. The goal of mysticism lies beyond the boundaries of earthly existence, it is inclusion in eternity. The magician uses the powers of the demonic world, but at the same time he is afraid of it. The appearance of demons causes a feeling of horror in the magician. The mystic strives to meet Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit in his heart, and the state of communion with God is for him the most joyful and radiant event, which is forever imprinted in his memory. The appearance of spirits in magical rites occurs in visual or auditory forms. The mystic sees in man the image and likeness of God; Forgiveness of offenses becomes a need of the spirit for him. Magic looks at a person as a tool; The concept of personality does not exist for it. Forgiveness of offenses and pity in magical rituals are considered cowardice. The mystic says, "I want to die to myself, that I may live for You." The magician says: "I want to live only for myself." Mysticism and magic are opposite to each other not only in their content, but even in their sign systems, but it is better to keep silent about magical rites. Tertullian said that this is a parody of the liturgy, a black mass that is celebrated in hell to Satan, that is, a gloomy caricature of the sacred. In many witchcraft rites, ritual desecration of the shrine is used. Whoever claims the similarity of church rituals and magic is either a completely ignorant person or a demon-possessed person. Mysticism is inseparable from the moral rebirth of the human personality. The higher a person's morality and the closer it is to the Gospel commandments, the more the circle of man's spiritual knowledge expands. Spiritual wisdom has its source not in external knowledge, but in the inner state, of which it is said: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Magic does not require morality from a person, but only concentration of attention. Magic, in its creeping unitarism, unscrupulousness in means and orientation towards occult, cosmic and psychic forces, aims for man to assert himself in this world, develops pride and egocentrism in him, which in turn are the substrate of all passions and psychic complexes. The main means of mysticism are prayer, gratitude to God, reverent conversation with Him, confession of sins, request, glorification of God. In magical rites there is no gratitude, no confession, no request as a plea for help, no reverent conversation of the soul with God; In magic, there is another form of communication: a command, a contract, an agreement, an order. The magician addresses the spiritual world in the tone of imperative. The mystic experiences grace as a renewal of the soul, as peace and eternity. A magician, receiving its black energy in communication with the demonic world, experiences it as a surge from the outside of someone else's force, somewhat reminiscent of the sensation of electricity. His condition is the heaviness of the soul, confusion of the heart, ruthlessness even to the closest people, rivalry and at the same time a secret desire for death. The mystic's heart is open to God, the magician's heart is closed to everyone. God is alien to him, from indifference to hatred; He commands the demons as a trainer commands bound beasts, but always with the secret fear that these fetters may be broken and the beast will kill him. Christian mysticism is man's appeal to God as a Person. A person, not an impersonal force, can be the object of love. In magic, demonology, personal communication is absent; Magic spells are addressed to the demonic world, to the world that is destructive, and therefore impersonal. Demons possess individuality according to the former angelic hierarchy as a level of strength and capabilities, moreover, this hierarchy is overturned like a pyramid, and whoever stood at the head fell below all. But demons are devoid of personal qualities, morality and self-knowledge; their self-knowledge degenerated into knowledge of the material world and evil. They are conditioned by their hatred of God and people to the point of complete loss of free will as a choice between good and evil, therefore, they are impersonal individuals. Sometimes spells are addressed to the personified (personified) forces of nature, here - the replacement of God with the cosmos. It is characteristic that in the esotericism of paganism the main role was played by chthonic (earthly) and underground deities (Pan, Dionysius, Demeter, etc.), magic is addressed not to heaven, but to earth and hell. The magician, like a hypnotist, through a conspiracy forces force the dark forces to come out of their gloomy dungeon and serve him. The center of mystical experiences is the human heart. Under the influence of grace, it becomes soft, like wax. Magic has human reason as its tool; In magical rites, the heart seems to die, it shrinks and becomes hard as a stone. Mysticism has its rituals, but for it the main thing is not the form, but the content, the feeling of love and unity with God. Magic puts form over content; It strives for an outwardly accurate form of magical rituals, their content is reduced to mysterious signs and names that become the password for the hellish world. In magical rituals, two types of sorcery can be distinguished: 1) shamanism, when the magician artificially brings himself to ecstasy and his soul, separating from the body, descends for a while into the world of hell; 2) summoning spirits from the underworld to oneself by means of spells and magical rites. For a Christian mystic, asceticism is necessary, including asceticism in the world, life according to the commandments, participation in the sacraments of the Church. This is not required for magic, there is only one condition-consequence: that a person should make his soul a hostage of the hellish world. Communication is assimilation. To become like the light world requires great effort and struggle with oneself, and the dark world, seething with anger and passions, is close to the state of fallen man, so nothing is needed to communicate with the demon except turning to him. Often a person looks at conspiracies and fortune-telling as an innocent game; In this case, he is like a child who makes a fire in his own house, not knowing and not understanding what will happen next. Any contact with the demonic world causes deep psychic traumas. Any recourse to any kind of magic, even in the form of a joke, must be confessed as a grave sin. Some say that with the help of magic it is possible to do good: to cure a disease, to warn of danger, and so on, but we must not forget that lies use good and truth as bait in order to more easily and completely possess their victim. Metaphysical evil cannot do true good.