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Our opponents often ask: "Why do we need symbolism and rituals at all, isn't it better to pray to God in simplicity of soul?" "Worship should not be symbolic, but real," they say. However, there is a contradiction here. The word itself is already a conventional sign, it is not a reality in the sense of identity with the denoted object or event, but a conventional, sign, abstracted reflection of reality in a system of sounds and graphics, therefore, encoding the content in the form of a word, we already resort to an abstract system of modeling reality, which is one of the characteristic differences between man and other creatures inhabiting the earth. Without words, our thought cannot rise above the level of earthly material objectivity and gain some knowledge of the spiritual world, which is beyond the limits of our sensory perception. We perceive the world not adequately, but through its energies, which are transformed in our consciousness into models of reality. For example, colors and sounds are transformations of waves that are refracted through our senses, so under the cover of materiality we do not see the world as it is, in the very essences of objects, but only properties, actions and energies that depend on the possibility of the mechanism of our perception. In the future life, we will see the world in other dimensions. Our view of the world is also conditional and modeled. Cognition is the revelation of the invisible; eternal life will be eternal knowledge, the revelation of the eternally new; In this revelation, the previous will relate to the subsequent as a likeness to reality, and this reality will turn out to be only a likeness in the transition to another state at a new level of communion with God. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about reality as adequacy outside of symbolism. The Apostle Paul writes that here we see indistinct reflections, as in a dim mirror, and there we see with our own eyes. Plato and other philosophers compared our sensory vision of the world to shadow reflections of objects. To deviate a little, we will say that mathematics, the "soul" of the other sciences, is entirely based on conventionality and abstraction; All digits, numbers and formulas are symbolic signs. Any science resorts to modeling and schematization. Letters, notes, astronomical tables and geographical maps are all conventional signs that expand the possibilities and boundaries of human knowledge. The temple is a model of the universe and a symbol of the heavenly Church, which fills this symbol with real content. The cycle of the annual liturgics recorded in the liturgical books can be conventionally compared to a map of heaven, only it is the spiritual heaven through which the path of the human soul passes. Without the symbol and rites, common prayer and common worship are impossible, where order and rhythm are necessary. Therefore, those who deny church rites in the name of immediate reality (which for us is a goal, not a given) are actually forced to create their own rites, for example, the rite of breaking bread among Baptists, collections of chants, and so on. It can be seen that each community and sect has created its own ritual, which eventually turns into a tradition. The revolution seeks to destroy rituals so that people forget their past, but then it is forced to hastily create its own new artificial rites. In most cases, they turn out to be stillborn and are gradually replaced by the resumption or imitation of previous rites. The hippie movement as a revolution against social ethics, the desire for freedom from morality also begins with the rejection of the norms of behavior as secular rituals, and ends with the creation of its own system of values - anti-ethics, for the maintenance of which it is necessary to have its own sign system. A church rite is a traditional sacred symbol through which a person has the opportunity to enter into communication with the symbolized, to perceive his energies, to be included in the world of spiritual realities. Therefore, modernism is the enemy of Orthodoxy. Not knowing the depth of church symbolism, he strives to bring the rites closer to the state of mind of a person, his aesthetic needs, the intellectual level of perception, and so on, that is, the symbol from a means of spiritual communication (which requires internal preparation and purification of the person himself) turns into a way of satisfying spiritual needs. In fact, the earthing of the Church itself is taking place here. Any composing of sacred symbols is like the creation of a new reformed Church, and from the Orthodox point of view it is a ritual heresy. A rite and a symbol have neither an objective nor a mimetic property with the semantic gnosis contained in them, with the secret writing of spiritual realities or the events of sacred history. Here the connection is in terms of ideas and energies, so the liturgy is as much a revelation as the Holy Scriptures. The conservatism of Orthodoxy is the preservation of secrecy. A ritual invented by man quickly exhausts itself, it can be effective, but remains devoid of depth, its effect is the novelty of spiritual sensations, that is, that which contradicts spiritual contemplation, and such a principle of modernization requires a constant change of rituals and attributes, like boring songs or boring clothes, so reformism is doomed to constant composing. At the same time, the rite is transferred from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the soul, takes on aesthetic and entertaining functions that are not characteristic of it, does not help, but opposes prayer or, which is no less dangerous, distorts the inner character of the prayer, making it sentimental, enthusiastic, and often simply familiar. Therefore, Orthodoxy represents not only the purity of dogmatics, but also the purity of worship, the traditionalism of rituals. The spiritual and material worlds have differences and similarities between each other as the creation of a single Creator, like two paintings painted by an artist: one with color paints, the other with fine strokes of ink, where the contours of objects are barely outlined. If the relationship between the spiritual and material worlds consisted only in similarity and the degree of their perfection, then the depiction of the spiritual world would have a figurative and pictorial character; If the relations between them consisted only in dissimilarities and negations, then the depiction of the spiritual world would have a completely conditional, arbitrary, and abstract character, like a kind of contractual sign. But since the relationship between the two worlds has the character of similarity and difference, the symbol and the rite contain elements of one and the other, just as a hieroglyph contains an abstract allusion to a picture, having the character of associations rather than similarities. Let us consider the temple as a sacred symbol. A temple is a house, in the highest sense of the word, the abode of the soul. The temple is an image of the spiritual aeon, the mystical path of the soul to God, eternity, where the events of the past and future pass into the present; A physical place where the spiritual world is present, a space that encompasses infinity, a place where the earth is connected to heaven. Each temple is not a spatial, but an energy center of the universe, from where waves emanate like radii, but there is no circle as such. At the same time, the temple is a coded model of the universe: its dome is a semblance of the firmament, the wall is a horizon, the altar rises above the common hall of the temple - the land inhabited by people, rising from the depths of the sea. This, so to speak, is the lower aspect of the symbol, and the higher is the heavenly Church, the spiritual world, where the upward aspiration signifies the eternal forward movement of the soul towards God. The circumference of the dome is eternity, the cross at the base of the temple is love as the content of eternal life. At the same time, the church is not a static, but a dynamic symbol: it not only points to the future transfiguration of the world into the universal Church, but lays the foundation for this transformation. The dome of the temple, narrowing to a point, means the growth of the cosmos into the spiritual eon, and the rounded dome in the form of a flame means fire that will transform the world, separate good from evil, darkness from light, and spiritualize materiality itself. Thus, the symbol is the key to the truth, and the rite is the channel of grace, which the Lord called living water. Without the symbol, human thought about the spiritual world would either hang in emptiness or would be locked in the circle of fantasy, that is, in the realm of human ideas based on the metaphysical lie of fallen spirits.

About Baptism

One of the main fundamental differences between the Orthodox and the Baptists is the question of infant baptism.

Are there analogies to baptism in the Old Testament, and if so, what is the Old Testament's attitude toward children's participation in them? Can a child be deprived of the fruits of baptism without harming himself? The basis of Christian soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) is the following three universal facts: the fall of Adam as the source and potential bearer of all mankind was a stigma of rejection and curse on his descendants, who lived, live and will live on earth until the end of its existence; The Son of God, having become the Son of man, took upon Himself the curse and sins of the whole world. His crucifixion was a sacrifice and a sacred act; in the sacrament of baptism, the Sacrifice of Golgotha is assimilated to each person as a sacrifice offered personally for him. How does sin spread to subsequent generations? The creation of the human soul is an act of the creative power of the Godhead, but at the same time it is accomplished with the participation of the souls of the parents. Therefore, a person is a unique and inimitable phenomenon, and not a copy of his parents, and at the same time he is genetically connected with them, as evidenced not only by bodily, but also by spiritual similarity. In this participation of the souls of the parents, the transmission of original sin takes place, just as muddy waters flow from a polluted spring. How is hereditary damage transmitted? Through the material substrate or in other ways unknown to us? We don't know - it's a mystery. But what is important for us is the fact that sin in its boundless universality has swallowed up all of humanity, like the waters of the Flood, and therefore the seal of sin already lies on the unborn child. With age, the will of the child is included in sin, and then it becomes an arbitrary, personal sin. Therefore, the chastity of a child is a very conditional expression. This is rather a non-manifestation of his depravity at the level of consciousness and will. Sin is a break between God and man, and only the grace of God can restore the lost bond and union. Is it possible for grace to work on a child? The Holy Scriptures answer this Question in the affirmative. The prophet Jeremiah was sanctified by grace even before his birth. The Prophet and Forerunner John rejoiced in the womb of the righteous Elizabeth, when she met the Virgin Mary. This means that babies are subject to the action of grace. To deprive a child of baptism means to forcibly remove him from the influence of grace, that is, to hinder the purpose and purpose of his life. An infant who has not yet learned to pronounce a human word can in no way be compared to an animal. The most intensive mental life takes place at an early age, when the child receives and processes the largest amount of information. With age, the volume of this information decreases sharply, and its assimilation becomes more superficial, so psychologists look for the roots of character, habits and diseases in the impressions of early childhood. The child reacts emotionally sensitively to the environment around him, only he relies not on the word, but on a more direct perception of the world, so our childhood memories, which pass in terms of reflections, usually begin with the period when we have mastered coherent speech. Infancy is the most important period for the formation of the human psyche. A child's vision of the world is a mystery to us, but direct perception in experience and information that lies deeper than words give him the opportunity to experience the phenomena of the spiritual world, perhaps with greater intensity than that of an adult. With age, the soul darkens and coarses from the passions and sins of will that have been revealed in it. The Holy Scriptures and the experience of life speak about the child's reaction to the sacred. Many mothers notice the special state of the child on the day of communion, as if illuminated by inner light and peace. Apparently, the world of light and dark forces is open to a child more than to an adult. A child, like an adult, bears within himself the image and likeness of God, therefore, he needs a spiritual life, and parents should try not to stifle this life, but to awaken this life through church sacraments and prayers, as well as home prayers in the presence of the child.

An animal has an emotional world, perhaps no less dynamic than the emotional world of a person. In animals, there exists in primitive forms what can be called reason, that is, the ability to find a connection between causes and remote effects and to make choices in changing situations. Animals have instincts more subtle than man, but no religious feeling has ever been found in animals. Here is the fundamental difference between a person and those who are used to calling him "lesser brothers". But religious feelings, like other faculties of the human soul, can be developed and suppressed. The religious life of man is a synergism of two wills: the Divine and the human, two actions - the grace that performs and the response of the person who receives grace. The will has not only an aspect of choice; A more important property of the will is concentration and attention, so in spiritual writers will and attention are often synonymous. The child, even in the mother's womb, perceives the signals coming to him, that is, listens to them; This is already an important action. However, the choice is largely determined by parents and the environment. Psychologists have noted an interesting fact: learning before birth. It turns out that a child is drawn to his mother because he recognizes her voice. This learning takes place in a plan that is not yet accessible to our analysis. This includes the state of the mother's soul, what can be called spiritual hygiene. The spiritual experience of the people prescribed that the mother read long prayers during pregnancy and take communion often. Naturally, the mother reads prayers and takes communion without asking the child whether he wants to listen to prayers or participate in the church sacraments through the mother's state. Can the mother's reading of prayers be considered as a forced participation of the infant in this? It has also been noticed that the sins and crimes committed by the mother during pregnancy are heavy impressions on the child's soul and subsequently predispose him to the same sins. A child must be surrounded by a certain spiritual atmosphere, which is necessary for him, like light to a plant. There are no neutral states in the spiritual world. When the field of light forces disappears, the vacuum is filled with dark satanic energies; Where there is no good, there evil arises. All Christian denominations, as well as sects that deny the baptism of infants, agree that religious feeling is innate in man, as an instinct of eternity, it can be distorted and suppressed, but it is impossible to completely destroy it. It is a given of a person that needs to be developed. Children stand closer to the spiritual world. Observing young children, psychologists testify that they see things in physical space that we do not see. Often the child's gaze fixes the place that seems empty to us, he emotionally reacts with facial expressions or crying to the presence of some spiritual beings, and the child's crying is a means of self-manifestation, a signal that can reflect a whole range of his emotions that are inaccessible to our decipherment. Is the baptism of an infant a violation of his free will? If free will is seen as a possibility and a right of choice, then there is a choice between spiritual life and spiritual death. In this choice, parents are not outsiders, but people united with the child by love and responsible for him. What does a child gain at baptism? He becomes a member of the Church, receives grace as an indestructible seal in his heart. His life passes under the cover of a bright spirit, which is called a guardian angel; thus baptism is the beginning of life in Christ. The sooner grace begins to act on the child's soul, the less he is subject to the cosmic impulses of evil and sin, the more correctly his character will be formed, the deeper and more effective will be his communion with God. What does a child lose when he is baptized? We will be answered: he was not asked, that is, he was deprived of the opportunity to choose. But the main question is whether the choice was made correctly or not. If Christianity is true, then the organic inclusion of a child in the Church as in the field of truth is the greatest good that parents can do for him. But even if Christianity were not the truth, the child would lose nothing; baptism would be an empty rite. We may be answered: but man as a free being has the right to make a mistake of choice. There is no right to error, as well as to sin; there is a possibility of error. But let's assume this too. In such a case, a person who prefers another religion to Christianity will convert to it without taking into account baptism, since by rejecting Christianity, he rejects both the power of baptism and the responsibility for it; Therefore, here Christianity is not some kind of physical barrier or deprivation of a person's right to spiritual self-determination [1]. Baptists say that a person who has received grace prematurely may not understand this gift, sin against grace and lose it. First, without grace, the same person would have sinned even more; Secondly, after baptism, a person who has experienced the action of grace does not become sinless in the sense that no one retains the fullness of grace within himself. Every day of a Christian is darkened by sin, and the whole life of a zealous Christian is a hard, painful struggle with sin and evil in his soul. Here victories alternate with defeats, which is why the wise Solomon writes: "Seven times the righteous shall fall, and shall rise" (Prov. 24:16). The light of grace reveals in man the abyss of his sin. On the contrary, it is not uncommon for vicious, depraved people to consider themselves righteous and sinless. The question of baptism is connected with the different views of Orthodox and Protestants on the consequence of original sin and the action of grace on man. The Orthodox believe that original sin brought a deep disorder into the psychophysical organism of man at all its levels, but did not destroy the image and likeness of God in man as a potential for good and a volitional self-governing monad. Protestantism is inclined to think that original sin destroyed the good in man, and man himself is capable only of sin and evil. In Orthodox soteriology, a person is an active participant in his salvation, a co-worker with God in the field of his soul. Affirming that salvation is accomplished through the action of grace, Orthodoxy emphasizes the need for the human person himself to cooperate with it. These interactions of the soul with the grace of God and, on the other hand, with the impulses of satanic forces penetrating into the soul from without, and with the passions nestling in the soul itself, create a complex picture of the spiritual states of man. The assimilation of grace, this inner path to God, is an unceasing spiritual struggle that ends only with the death of a person. Protestantism adheres to the idea of the passivity of the human principle before the action of grace, therefore it considers the reception of the Holy Spirit not as a process, but as an act that is supported by a person's faith, confidence in his salvation; A person who has been saved in baptism expresses his gratitude through good works. In Protestantism there is no deep analysis of the inner life of man. The strategy of combating demonic temptations and passions, the teaching of prayer and so on, carefully developed in Orthodox asceticism, are alien to Protestantism. Protestantism developed a vigorous missionary activity, developed methods of conversations and sermons, discussions and polemics with the involvement of a vast arsenal of scientific discoveries and hypotheses, and widely used the method of psychological influence. He practices charity, contributed to the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the languages of various peoples and tribes, but froze on catechesis. If spiritual birth is an act of inspiration and grace, and a person is already saved, if only he has confidence in his salvation, then liturgics and asceticism become of little value. Protestantism has lost its mystical depth and has made the Church an assembly, an expression of human solidarity. The faith of a Baptist is a certainty of one's salvation, that is, a subjective process. For this reason, the Baptists have entered into an alliance with the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, who deny the necessity of baptism, as well as with the Mennonites, who, like the Calvinists, teach of divine predestination, which has divided the world into two parts: the saved and the lost, outside the life and will of the people themselves. Sectarians ignore the long struggle between grace and sin in the human heart, and consider salvation to be an instantaneous act of transfiguration of the soul by grace. They reduce faith from the level of spiritual intuitions and penetrations into the world of eternal essences to the subjective experience of joy at one's chosenness. For them, faith is the conviction of their salvation. Baptists do not understand why it is necessary to baptize an infant, in what inner torments the soul is born for Christ, until, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "Christ is formed in the soul" (Gal. 4:19). Family life and raising a child is a complex process. In the family, multifaceted relationships between spouses and children are realized, but the main idea of the Christian family is the union in Christ, as the Apostle Paul says, "the house church" (Romans 16:4). For a Christian, the religious aspect of the family is of primary importance. The basis of the family is a triangle: husband, wife and child. Other terms may be included here, but the main triangle remains. Children before baptism are members of the family in the biological, psychological and legal senses, and in the religious aspect they fall out of the concept of members of the house church; Consequently, the spiritual unity of the family has not yet been realized, and the main idea of unity in the mystical life of grace is only assumed, but actually absent. A family without children has always been regarded as defective; there was only one exception: when the spouses voluntarily renounced married life and devoted themselves to God, but then a different form and structure of relationships was formed, which did not coincide with the concept of family. When the rights of parents to baptize their child are restricted, the religious aspect of the family is destroyed, the child is reduced to the level of a catechumen, who is only a disciple, but not a member of the Church. We are talking about the right to baptize children because, in the words of an ancient apologist, "the soul is Christian by nature." If there were a choice between religions as a choice between mystical paths and paths to God, then it would be understandable that a person can choose a path that corresponds to his vocation and individuality. But Christianity has no alternative to replace it. There are two paths before man: to life and to death, to God and to the devil. Outside of baptism, a person is under the seal of original sin, in the power of eternal death. Parents don't know if their children will be saved, but they hope. Faith, hope and love of parents, wishing the child good as yourself, and his participation in your good grace - these are the moral foundations of baptism. A child may not justify baptism, but he who was baptized in old age may also not justify it. Pride opposes faith, and depraved will opposes commandments. When a mother gives birth to a child physically, she also does not know what will come out of him and whether he will justify the name of a person in his life, but she hopes that her child will be her consolation and happiness, so even bodily birth is combined with faith, hope and love. The Lord, after being baptized by John, withdrew into the wilderness, where He was tempted by demons. A Christian faces temptations and struggles. After baptism, rest is only a brief consolation, as if rest, and true rest is in grace, in the state of the future life, in the mystery of eternity, peace that is won in a fierce struggle. The Old Testament contains not only the prophecy of the Messiah, but also the prototypes of the New Testament. The sacrament of baptism is the reunion of a person with the fullness of the Church through the sacrifice of Christ in the Holy Spirit. The first fruit of baptism is the forgiveness of original sin, through which the demon's power over man was realized. The prototype of this sacrament in the Old Testament was the rite of circumcision, which became obligatory from the time of Abraham, but existed even before Abraham among many peoples of the world. The first fruit of this rite was the inclusion of the child in the Old Testament Church. He became a member of the religious community. The rite was performed on the eighth day. Eight is a sign of eternity. The rite indicated the destiny of a person to eternal life. During the ceremony, the baby was given a name, a sign of salvation. The metaphor of a name recorded in the book of life is often found in the Bible. A name is an attribute of a person. Angels and people have names. Animals do not have a name, but have a nickname as a sound signal. The name is the dignity of a person, the name carries the idea of the possibility of belonging to the heavenly Church. Circumcision of the foreskin had two meanings: the first was moral, the struggle with the passions. Here sexual passion is taken as a concentrate of all passions, which must be curbed by the power of mind and will. This indicates the future cleansing of the soul from original sin, which a person receives in baptism. The second is the mystical aspect, the dedication of the offspring to God, since the Descendant of Adam must, according to the divine promise, "erase the head of the serpent"; in other words, the rite supported the belief in the birth of the Messiah. Baptism is the fulfillment of a promise and the remembrance of the death and resurrection of the Savior. The rite of circumcision is combined with the shedding of the blood of a child, which indicates an expiatory sacrifice. The Bible contains a categorical command to Abraham to circumcise his family, household members, and slaves. This commandment is given again to Moses, it applies to strangers living among the Israelites and forming one religious community with them. A type cannot contain a false idea; the circumcision of infants in the Old Testament testifies to the need for the infant to join the Church (Old Testament), which in New Testament times is accomplished through the sacrament of baptism. All the objections of the Baptists to infant baptism can be applied to the rite of infant circumcision with the same reason. The divine command confirmed the necessity of this rite; therefore, the revelation and fulfillment of its symbols and prophecies in the New Testament, that is, the sacrament of baptism, is even more necessary. If the Baptists say that the time of the Old Testament has passed, then we agree with this, but precisely because the Old Testament was revealed, fulfilled, fulfilled in the New Testament, as a grain dying in the ground, continues to live and unfold in an ear of wheat. In the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, the connection between the rite of circumcision and baptism as a type and its fulfillment is clearly indicated. Circumcised by circumcision not made with hands, by putting off the sinful body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ; being buried with Him in baptism (Col. 2:11-12). Without baptism there can be no salvation, because only in the sacrament of baptism does the Sacrifice of Golgotha become a sacrifice in relation to the person being baptized, as if offered personally for him. Before the coming of Christ to earth, the souls of the dead descended into hell, including the souls of infants. If infants could be saved by their personal innocence alone, by not committing conscious sins at the level of the reflexive solitude of their actions, then even in Old Testament times the souls of infants would not have descended into hell, waiting for the time of redemption and salvation. Who will be born clean from the unclean? Not one (Job 14:4). In the Epistles, and especially in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, it is told about the baptism of entire families. After the preaching of the Apostles in Samaria, the villages, that is, all their inhabitants, were baptized. In the Acts of the Apostles it is indicated that the house of the jailer and the house of the ruler of the synagogue Crispus (Acts 16:33; 18:8), the house of Stephen (1 Corinthians 1:16) were baptized. The house means all members of the family, relatives, as well as servants and slaves, if they agree to stay with the master until death in the years of jubilee. The objection that there were no children in these families is unconvincing, it does not stand up to criticism. Crispus, who was baptized with his house, was the ruler of the synagogue. According to the laws of the Talmud, a person who does not have children has no right to be either a rabbi or a ruler of the synagogue, since this was perceived as a sign of punishment and rejection. The large number of children and descendants was considered a reward for righteousness, so the childlessness of a Jew or his adult children blocked his way to any office in the synagogue. In the Book of Genesis (17:11) circumcision is called the sign of the covenant, the sign of union (baptism is the entry into the New Testament, the fulfillment of the union). This rite disappeared in the New Testament Church not because it was recognized as erroneous, but because it was carried out with the coming of the Messiah. Uncut... male... on the eighth day he will be destroyed... for he has broken the covenant (Gen. 17:14). This execution of covenant breakers is a type of eternal death for those who have not been baptized. The second prototype of the sacrament of baptism in the Old Testament is Noah's ark (1 Pet. 3:18-21). At the same time, it is an image of the Church, which a person enters through baptism. In the waves of the Flood, all mankind perished, except for those who entered the ark, including children and infants. Sin was destroyed together with sinners, since at that time there was still no Church of Christ and no regenerating action that could heal the soul of man, put a separation between man and sin, give man strength to resist the flood of sin, evil and depravity that covered the earth before the flood. Another Old Testament prototype of baptism is the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea. Everyone went through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea (1 Cor. 10:1-2). The cloud is a symbol of grace, the sea is the baptismal fonts. Moses himself is a type of Christ in the sense of prophetic ministry. Through Moses the Old Testament was given, through Christ the New Testament. The Israelites came out of Egypt with their families, they walked along the bottom of the parted sea, holding their children and babies in their arms, therefore, babies participated in events that have a preformative meaning. If infants are not capable of conscious faith at the level of judgment, then they are not devoid of another aspect - faith at the level of intuitions and mystical experiences. The Lord was surrounded by children; Christ's disciples, apparently believing that their children were incapable of understanding the Gospel, did not allow them to come to Christ, but the Lord said: "Forbid them not to come to Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 19:14). It is unlikely that these words can be understood only in the literal sense. The soul comes to Christ through the action of grace. The children felt grace, so they hurried to Christ, met and surrounded Him, while their fathers, who had been taught the letter of the law, showed great coldness. This was especially evident during the Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, called Palm Sunday. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained praise (Matt. 21:16; cf. Psalm 8:3). The hearts of the children turned out to be more receptive to the Light of the Gospel than the sophisticated minds of the Jewish scribes. In the Gospel of Mark it is written that the Lord blessed the children and laid His hands on them. A blessing is a sacred action, which means that the children were able and ready to receive the grace of God. One of the important reasons for the baptism of infants at a very early age is the uncertainty of the length of human life. The Apostle Paul says that the day of salvation is today, and tomorrow is unknown to us. Death visits not only the very old men who stand on the edge of the grave, but kills the children, just as the farmer's sickle cuts off the flowers that have not yet blossomed along with the yellowed grass. She snatches babies from their mothers' arms. Inscriptions on tombstones tell how many children's souls went to the unknown world even before they began to pronounce their first words. We do not own time, but time owns us. The future is unknown and impenetrable to man, like a dark abyss. Death is the separation of soul and body. After death, the baptism of the soul is impossible. The soul goes into eternity with the stigma of original sin, not as a volitional participant in the crime, but as a potential bearer of evil, it leaves, not regenerated by grace, without receiving the baptism of water and the Spirit, without which, according to the word of the Savior, no one can receive the Kingdom of Heaven (Christ's conversation with Nicodemus). It is necessary to bring the child into the field of grace as early as possible. Before baptism, the grace of God acts from the outside, after baptism it dwells in the heart of a person. The ancient sages already knew that a child should be brought up from birth. One day, the mother brought the child to Socrates with a request to teach him how to raise him. Socrates asked, "How old is he?" and his mother answered, "Two years." Socrates said: "It is too late, now it is necessary to re-educate."In the baptism of a child, we strive for grace from a very early age, acting in him, invisibly educating and teaching him. In modern church practice, there are appeals to the clergy with a request to "baptize" from those who fall into one or another form of Satanism. At the same time, the petitioners claim that baptism interferes with their occult activities. -Ed. ^

On the veneration of saints

All Protestant denominations and sects categorically reject the prayerful invocation of the saints, based on the fact that the only mediator and intercessor for the human race before God is Jesus Christ, and that by worshipping the saints, we thereby steal glory from God and give it to people like us. Protestants see secret idolatry in the worship of saints and believe that the pagan pantheon invaded the Church, hiding its gods under other names. Of all the Protestant denominations, only the Anglican Church allows hymns in honor of saints, where their feats and virtues are glorified, but there is no prayerful invocation. In essence, these hymns are not liturgical, but moral and didactic in nature at the level of moral narratives. Let us first answer the question: why do we venerate the saints? The word "saint" is understood by many people as "a highly moral person". In the world, these concepts were often used as synonyms. A person who was selflessly devoted to his work was called a saint, a kind and merciful person was called a saint. Meanwhile, the moral side of the person is only one of the conditions of holiness, and holiness itself means much more: the closeness of man to God, the union of God's grace with the soul of man, the illumination of his entire being by the eternal incorruptible Divine light. A saint is a temple not made by hands, in which the Divinity invisibly dwells by the presence and manifestation of His powers, therefore, in glorifying a saint, we first of all glorify God, Who chose him, sanctified him and mysteriously lives in him. We do not humiliate the commander by glorifying the warriors, because their victory is his victory. We worship the saint first of all as a temple in which God dwells.

We glorify a man who is similar to us by nature, but who has been transfigured by the grace of God and raised by it to the heights of the angels. The glorification of a saint consists first of all in prayerful and liturgical veneration, and then in the remembrance of his life, which is an edification for us as an example of the fulfillment of the Gospel in order to imitate it as much as possible. We glorify the saint as we glorify the victor, because holiness is the crown of a difficult struggle with demonic forces, with pagan customs and prejudices of the world, which entangle a person like a net thrown by a gladiator over his opponent, and with himself, with the passions that rise up against the spirit. Holiness is the correspondence of a person to his highest purpose. The word church means concentration, gathering. And this gathering or unity is most fully realized in the liturgical life. Prayer to the saints is faith in the unity of the earthly and heavenly Church, the real presence of the Heavenly Church in the sacred space of the temple. The glorification of saints is a belief in the immortality of the soul, which communicates with those living on earth. The Lord said: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (cf. Matt. 22:32; Mk. 12:26-27; Lk. 20:37-38). Prayer is the rays of spiritual love. The Apostle Paul said that in the age to come faith and hope will be abolished, but love will remain. Faith will disappear, because we will see with our own eyes what we believe in, there will be no hope, because what we expected will come to pass, and love will remain; Not only will it remain, but in eternal life it will be like a flame that burns up. Eternal life is an eternal approach to God. The ability to love has its dimensions, and love becomes deeper and more intense. Love is the content of the future life, so we turn to the saints with prayer. Prayer, like love, is a free act of the human soul. Prayer is one of the conditions for communication between the earthly and the heavenly. Love is active, the saints wish us well, perhaps more than we wish ourselves, but they do not interfere forcibly in our lives. Good itself is incompatible with violence, so the saints are waiting for us to turn to them, and this dialogue is carried out in prayer, especially in temple prayer. From the Holy Scriptures we know that the saints possessed special gifts of the Holy Spirit: they healed the sick, delivered from death, drove away demons, predicted the future, saw from a distance, knew thoughts, and so on. God is Spirit, omnipresent, timeless, and spaceless. The saints see and hear us in the Holy Spirit. Some sectarians say that the soul after death before the Last Judgment is in a state of sleep, but sleep is a state of the body, not the soul. The nervous system is the borderline between the soul and the body, but structurally it belongs to the physical world. In sleep, there is a recovery, cleansing of the nervous system, processing of information received by a person, but the soul does not sleep at this time; The state of dreaming is its activity in reducing bodily impulses and activating the subconscious. If the soul of the deceased were to sink into a state of unconsciousness and oblivion, then love could not remain in the soul after death. Love, on the other hand, is dynamic and active. Sectarians object to us that in the Old Testament Church there are no feasts in honor of saints, hymns and prayers of the Church in honor of saints. In Old Testament times, the souls of the righteous descended into hell, awaiting their redemption. Before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ the Savior, an impassable abyss lay between earth and heaven, so the saints themselves were in need of redemption and salvation, they themselves were in the temporary power of the demon and hell. Mankind had to be first redeemed and the earth united with heaven, then human nature in the Person of the Savior Who rose and ascended to heaven and the righteous saved by Him became worthy of glorification and eternal life. To praise those who are in hell and to ask those who are still separated from God would be premature and therefore meaningless. Love expands the boundaries of human life. There is a saying: "He lives who loves, and lives as much as he knows how to love." The sphere of communication of a Christian includes not only a limited circle of people with whom he met and was connected in this life, but also a huge field of the entire sacred history of mankind, the luminous peaks of which are the saints. They abide in spirit or in their will in the Church. We communicate with the saints through prayer. This is a mystical connection. There is also an ontological connection: both they and we are included in the one spiritual body of the Church, the body of Christ. We have one intercessor before God - Christ, in the sense that the Sacrifice of Golgotha is the only way by which a person can come to the Heavenly Father. The blood of Abel, shed by his brother, cried out to heaven for vengeance, the blood of Christ intercedes for us and begs God for forgiveness. As for the intercession of the saints, they are our co-prayers and elder brothers. They prayerfully intercede before God for us, so that God, out of love for them, would give us the blessings with which He endowed them and would make them worthy of these blessings. Their prayer is also a sacrifice, but if the Lord redeemed us on the cross with Himself, then the saints ask that the Lord bestow upon us as they did, hear us as He heard them, that is, they replace themselves (as an object of Divine love) with us. Love wants to take on the suffering of others, and share its joy with everyone. Love is a mystical unity that does not integrate personalities: each of them, while remaining itself, lives in the other and in the other, which makes its life deeper. Paradise is a sea of light, where the rays of love go from one to all and from all to one. Protestants, being alien to the mysticism and liturgical depths of the Church, compare it to a pantheon of gods. But paganism is the replacement of the one absolute and transcendent Deity by cosmic and historical phenomena, personified and clothed in the form of myths. Paganism as a religion of chthonic (earthly and underground) gods degenerates into demon worship and demonology with magic, with magical rituals, ecstatic soothsayers, and hecatombs, bacchanalia and saturnalia. These are attributes of the pagan world, no matter what region it belongs to. This demonic world of paganism, seething with passions, pagan gods, hostile and competing with each other, united in a single military camp against the Church of Christ. There was no alternative: either Satan in the multifaceted form of Pan, Saturn, Shiva, or Christ. Christ conquered hell and the world. By the power of Christ, the saints conquer sin. Their life is like Christ. Of them the Lord said: "Whosoever serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there shall My servant also be" (John 12:26). Christ is invisibly in the Church, and therefore they are also in the Church with Christ. Pagan Rome, which erected a pantheon as its spiritual acropolis, sent Christian saints to be devoured by hungry lions and into the flames of bonfires, and now Protestants compare a pantheon of a host of Christian martyrs who gave their lives for the name of Christ. Having severed the connection between the earthly and heavenly Church, having rejected the prayers of the saints, the Protestants logically had to reject the prayers of Christians for the dead. According to Protestants, the Church is powerless to help those who have passed beyond the boundaries of earthly existence. There is only one thing waiting for them - retribution. There a person is in a kind of vacuum, isolation. The Apostle Paul says that love endures forever (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:8). Sectarians deprive the dead of love, leaving them to themselves. This indifference or helplessness, which turns into cruelty to the dead, is incompatible with the need of the human spirit to help not only those living on earth, but also those who have gone to another invisible world. For Protestants, hell is Hades, where there is no hope, where the rays of love and prayer do not penetrate. In the Old Testament Church there was a veneration of Angels. The image of the Cherubim stood in the altar of the Jerusalem temple. The Lord said that no one should humiliate even a child in his heart, because his guardian angel sees the face of the Heavenly Father (Matt. 18:10). If a little child is worthy of respect for the sake of his Angel, then what veneration does the dignity of the Angel himself require, and the saint, in the words of the Psalmist, "is diminished from the Angel in small things" (Psalm 8:6): the Angel is already established in goodness and grace, and the saint is in the fire of spiritual struggle until the end of his earthly life. The Lord gave people, peoples and countries Guardian Angels. The Bible tells us that angels take part in the sacred history of the world. Angels are spirits who dwell in the grace of Divine love. Helping people is not the duty of the Angels, but their spiritual need and desire. They love people as the image of God; they love people because the Son of God gave Himself to be crucified for the human soul. They love people because love itself wants to extend the good to others; it is like wine pouring over the edges of a cup. The saints imitated Christ to the best of their ability; the work of Christ is the salvation of mankind, therefore the saints must continue the work of Christ, contribute to the salvation of people and each person. They are the bearers of good, but they are, to use modern language, not interventionists of good, their love is delicate. They help us invisibly and wait until we call upon them. Each person feels in his heart light and dark impulses that come like waves from two worlds. If he turns his heart to the world of light, to the souls who have become Christlike and God-like by the grace of God, to the angels and saints, then he will not feel lonely and abandoned before the forces of evil, but in a great spiritual family, where his brothers will come to his aid, protect him, and will not leave him in the hands of a demon, a seducer and a murderer. Saints can be compared to experienced warriors who have spent their entire lives in spiritual warfare, know the power and cunning of the spirits of hell, know our weakness, have compassion for us and are ready to come to the aid of those who call on their names. Protestants, on the other hand, turned the sacred Church into only an earthly community, destroyed the connection between earth, heaven and hell.

On the veneration of the relics of saints

Silence has many faces. There is the brooding silence of the mountains, there is the resounding silence of the gorges, there is the silence of the glaciers - impenetrable as a wall of glass, there is the anxious silence of the forest, there is the oppressive silence of the dungeon, there is the mysterious silence of ancient temples and towers, there is also a special silence that fills the soul with peace and tranquility - this is the silence of the cemetery. The cemetery seems to bear the stamp of eternity; It's a soulful silence that speaks without words. Each grave is a mystery. Some graves are like the cradle of a sleeping child, others emit an invisible light; there are graves, from the depths of which, it seems, moaning and pleading. The cemetery is an island of another world, in the fence of which you can barely hear the dull hum of the city, like the noise of sea waves crashing against the shore. It does not disturb, but as if in contrast emphasizes the peace and silence of the cemetery. The grave is not only a visible sign of the end of the earthly path, a dot placed under the line of human life, it is not only a visual memory of death; The grave is something else. The grave is an imprint of the human spirit that has passed into eternity, and the state in which it met it. Near some graves it is so light and joyful, others seem to be squeezed by the weight of the tombstone, as if a stone is lying on someone's chest. Each grave is a story that the human heart feels, but cannot read its secret writing. It is not without reason that among almost all peoples, even among the pagans, tombs - the dwellings of the dead - were revered more than the dwellings of the living. Ancient Christians loved to celebrate divine services, especially the Liturgy, in underground cemeteries-catacombs, on tombs where the tombs of Christian martyrs served as an altar, not only because the sword of Damocles of persecution hung over them, but because their hearts felt a special grace there. Baptists are more indifferent to the dead than pagans and Jews, since they have funeral rituals and prayers for the repose of the dead. The Baptist doctrine of salvation by personal faith alone turned into cruelty and helplessness towards those who had crossed the edge of earthly existence. The departed are not only left to lie in graves dug in the bowels of the earth, but are also imprisoned in the spiritual graves of their deeds and deeds, which, like everything human, are permeated with corruption and sin. Baptists sacrifice to their doctrine the most important value - love, which is always active and dynamic. Baptist utilitarianism knows only the living members of its community. A well-known Hegelian philosopher ordered a liturgy in the church for the repose of his deceased relatives. When his colleagues expressed surprise that a person who denies the immortality of the soul goes to church to pray for the repose of the souls of the departed, he replied: "I do not know what is happening, my mind cannot give me an answer, but my heart feels that during the Liturgy we are together, the Liturgy unites us again." Baptism denies the worship of holy relics and shrines. Baptists refer to the Old Testament, where touching a dead body was considered desecration and required ritual washing and a purification sacrifice. The Old Testament priest and the Nazarite did not have the right to touch the corpse of even the closest person to them. But in the Old Testament, death was perceived only as a consequence and image of sin; Even for the righteous, death was a passage to hell. In earthly life, man was an unfortunate exile from paradise, and after death the abyss of hell closed its mouth over him. What kind of veneration and worship of relics could there be at a time when mankind had lost grace, when even the souls of the righteous were excommunicated from God and the power of Satan extended over them, when the rays of heavenly light did not penetrate into hell? The human body decayed in the earth, and the soul descended into hell, where it dwelt in agonizing anticipation of the coming of the Savior of the world. The death and resurrection of Christ was a new spiritual faith, a victory over death and hell. The resurrection of the Savior from the dead became an image of the future resurrection, a manifestation of the Divine power that would resurrect and transform the entire physical plane of the universe. The bodies of the resurrected righteous will become like the body of the Risen Christ, that is, they will be transfigured by the Holy Spirit. This mystery was revealed on Tabor, when the Divine light of Christ made His Body shine like the light of the Sun and His garment white as snow. The Transfiguration of Christ on Tabor is a testimony to the future glory of the saints of the heavenly Church. God in His essence is beyond the world, but in the Divine energies He communicates with the world, dwells in it, sanctifies not only the soul, but also the body of man. The Church has captured the mystical vision of grace in the iconographic depiction of the saints surrounded by a halo of light. The righteous abide in the Holy Spirit, they are united by the Divine light and radiate light. The Israelites could not look at the face of Moses when he descended from Sinai, where he had conversed with God, from the radiance of grace, and they asked that the prophet cover his face with a veil. From an accidental touch with the bones of the prophet Elisha, the dead were resurrected. The tombs of the righteous exude life. Eternal life begins in time, the Heavenly Kingdom begins on earth in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Each of us in our lives has seen faces illuminated by light from within, which seemed beautiful. Sometimes we think: "How similar this man is to Christ!", but he resembles him not in appearance and facial features, but in grace, which transforms him, shines in his eyes, lies like a seal of heavenly peace on his face, breathes in his words, makes his silence like a mysterious conversation. This is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the physical plane. Each of us can confirm from our inner experience that we feel at ease and free with some people, as if in their presence some dirty scales or a hard, hardened bark falls from our soul; We are happy with them, as if our childhood, not yet darkened by sins and passions, has returned. In communication with them, we feel new strength, a surge of spiritual energy received from them. We also know something else, when the stamp of sin lies on people's faces, like the mark of a convict burned with a red-hot iron; It seems that the very eyes of such a person say that he is ready to commit any crime. Even outwardly beautiful faces suddenly appear before us, like the blood-stained faces of murderers, ugly and repulsive. It seems to us that such people radiate an oppressive, gloomy darkness, especially their eyes; From communicating with them, we experience heaviness and devastation, as if an invisible vampire has sucked on us. In the case of saints, even clothes and things have miraculous powers, for example, in the Old Testament the rod of Moses and the mantle (mantle) of the Prophet Elijah, and in the New Testament - the ubrus (head coverings) worn by the Apostles, and the fetters of the Apostle Peter. Each of us can testify with our inner experience that not only people, but even places, houses and things have their own spiritual face, their own dark or light background. In some homes, we feel easy and good, peace settles in our hearts, all our worries and contradictions are forgotten, we stop thinking about sinful and vain things. The ancients already noticed that the spirit of a person seems to be "imprinted" on his things. And vice versa, "there are houses where some heaviness presses on the chest, where a person feels sadness and anxiety, he wants to leave this place as soon as possible, to run away from there. There are places where a person breathes deeply, breathes in clean air, like in the mountains or a garden. And there are houses with luxurious furnishings, carefully cleaned, as if every thing is licked with the tongue, and at the same time you feel that the atmosphere of this house is saturated with miasma; A person feels a sticky, fetid dirt, as if spilled around him. There are places where the soul suddenly shudders, it seems to it that a crime has been committed and human blood has been shed here. Especially affected by this "black radiation" of sin are those houses where witchcraft, fortune-telling, spiritism, and so on were practiced. Dark and light forces manifest themselves in the physical plane: a person can become a partaker of Divine grace and a medium of the demonic world. We venerate not only the relics of the saints, but their tombs and the houses in which they lived, the clothes in which they dressed; Their belongings preserve grace, just as a vessel in which myrrh was contained preserves its fragrance. In the New Testament, death ceased to be the threshold of hell, for the saints it was an encounter with Christ, the beginning of true life, a transition to the kingdom of light. Not only the soul, but also the body of man is a partaker of grace, otherwise what is the meaning of the resurrection of the dead? Man is destined for eternal life as a personal spiritual-bodily being. After the resurrection from the dead, the body is like the soul (spiritualized), and the soul is like the body (will have a visible image). The Church has revealed to us another mystery related to the resurrection of the dead. The human body is taken from the earth, it contains all the physical elements and, in addition, the energy structures of the cosmos. Man represents the entire universe in miniature, which is why some of the ancient philosophers and Church Fathers called man a microcosm. In order to emphasize this connection and dependence, the ancient mystics sometimes allegorically depicted the visible world in the image of man. The human soul, like the breath of the Divine lips, belongs to the spiritual world. Man is a link between two worlds, moreover, these worlds are contained in himself, in the interconnection of his soul and body. Man is the crown of Divine creation, he ends the last act of creating the visible world; Just as the king personifies his state, so man is the representative of the cosmos in the spiritual world. By breaking the union with God, man has given himself over to the power of death and hell, but has plunged the entire material world into the abyss of decay and gross materiality. A profound deformation has taken place in the material world: the hierarchical structure of the material structures themselves, which presupposes the principle of freedom and sympathy, has been replaced by mechanical laws. In comparison with the previous harmony, these laws are similar to morbid complexes, they reflect, as a consequence of sin, the loss of love - the main foundation of the entire universe. For example, the law of gravitation is violence and enslavement of the weak by the strong, the smaller by the greater. Without love, violence, subjugation, and restriction have become the only means of preserving structures from complete disintegration. Through the restoration of the union between God and man, the king of the cosmos, the transfiguration and spiritualization of the cosmos itself will take place. The cosmos will be restored to its former greatness, the entire universe will turn into a single symphony to the glory of its Creator. But this future transfiguration will begin with the sanctification of man by the Holy Spirit, so the resurrection of the dead will also be the resurrection of the entire universe. In earthly life, there is a close interaction between the soul and the body, but even after death there is a certain intimate connection, so the burial of the dead was considered one of the works of mercy already in the Old Testament (see the book of Tobit), and in the New Testament Church there were brotherhoods, whose members took care of the burial of the poor, the rootless, strangers and beggars. There are many cases when the souls of the unburied, especially those who were viciously murdered, appeared to people and pointed out the place where their corpse or bones were, and asked to be buried. Christianity teaches about original sin, which, like a disease, struck a person and made the body a nest of passions. But at the same time, Christianity testifies to the dignity of the human body as a wondrous instrument of the soul. Other religions do not provide a basis for respecting the human body. For pantheists, the body is a transitional stage, a bad modality, an ephemeral form accidentally associated with the spirit, its temporary clothing. For materialists, the body is a conglomerate of cells, molecules, and atoms, a structure that disintegrates into elements at death. For extreme spiritualists, the body is the shadow of the soul; the soul goes away - the shadow disappears. For the anthropomorphic religions of antiquity, the soul itself is a shadow of the body. For Hindus, the body is a form of illusory being, evil and mirage. For Buddhists it is almost the same, with the difference that they do not recognize the nature of the soul, but only its elements, which, after death, under the impulse of the thirst for life, create new combinations of soul and body. We revere the relics of the saints as an inexhaustible source of grace, as a way of the future life. The bodies of the saints are a prophecy of the time when death will be abolished, it will no longer exist, when after the resurrection from the dead the dualism of soul and body will disappear and a single monad of personality will be formed, where the body will become the form of the soul, and the soul will be the content of the body. Therefore, for us, the relics and tombs of saints are symbols of eternity, sources of invisible light and spiritual powers. The tombs of the saints are suns from the bowels of the earth, illuminating the world.

On the Priesthood

One of the biggest problems for Orthodox Christians, especially for people who have recently come to the Church, is their spiritual and emotional perception of the clergy as living representatives of the Church. This issue often becomes the subject of speculation on the part of sectarians, and also provides a wide opportunity to accuse and discredit the Church on the basis of the actions of the clergy. It is necessary to understand what place and significance the personality of the priest has in his church activity and what dependence exists between the grace acting in the church sacraments and rites, and the moral level of the priest who performs them. Sin is a universal phenomenon, it is a disease that has afflicted all mankind, there are no exceptions, there is only a difference in the degree of sin and in the relationship between evil and good in the soul of each person. Macarius the Great writes: "Even in the souls of the saints there remain certain dark spots, so salvation for the saints is a gift of Divine mercy."

There are two types of hierarchy: one is the church hierarchy, where grace is given as the right and authority to perform sacraments and rites. This grace does not belong to a person, but to his rank, it is given to him, as it were, on loan for the fulfillment of his mission. With death, this grace does not give the soul any privileges or advantages, it leaves it - as a warrior lays down his weapons when returning home. But it is this priesthood that acts in the ministry, so the priesthood itself and the hierarchical system in the Church are a means to sanctify and save oneself and other people. Hierarchy is the channels through which the grace of God is poured out into the world. There is also a spiritual hierarchy: it is a degree of grace that depends on a person's personal feat. This grace belongs to the personality of man, unless he loses it through sin, after death it is not taken away from the soul, but, on the contrary, is united with it forever, inseparably and inseparably. This is the grace of martyrs, monks and righteous men. The grace of the priesthood is given not for the priest himself, but for the people, but to the extent of the priest's personal podvig, its actions become more evident and complete, like the flow of water from a spring, which its owner constantly cleanses of stones and sand. The grace of the priesthood, combined with the personal holiness of a person, makes his ministry exceptional in its power on the soul. Among these clergymen in their time were: Gabriel, Archbishop of Kutaisi, Archimandrite Alexis Shushania [1], St. John of Kronstadt, and the Optina Elders. They were always surrounded by people who clearly felt the light and warmth of grace emanating from them. Let us take another example: a priest who does not rise above his flock in his moral level, and sometimes stands even lower than it. What happens during the ministry of such a priest or bishop? Grace works through him, but against him. It enlightens the people, but scorches the soul of the unworthy. St. Gregory the Theologian, one of the great universal teachers, gives the following comparison: the water flowing from the rock flows in a stream into the valley, but the stone irrigated by it remains a stone, and in the valley where streams and streams flow, bushes and grass bloom, greedily clinging to this water. Thus, the soul of a priest, who has unrepentant sins, remains barren and dead, like a stone, but the people who are present in the church during the service drink with the lips of their souls the living water – the grace of God. In another place, comparing the sacrament performed by a worthy and unworthy priest, St. Gregory says that the impression of the gold and lead seals is one and the same. Therefore, we are faced with an antinomy: during the service of an unworthy priest, grace does not decrease, but during the service of a worthy priest it increases. The Church in its earthly existence is called militant. This Church is fighting the invisible kingdom of evil, it is resisting the onslaught of the black field of cosmic evil, woven from the sins of people and fallen spirits. Black satanic energies bring chaos to the life of mankind and instill in people's souls an insane thirst for sin, manifesting themselves in visible nature as catastrophes and cataclysms. When this black satanic veil envelops the whole earth in a cloud, it will throb in the throes of death agony. The only force that really opposes the kingdom of hell is the Church, which is why the Church is so hated and persecuted. St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, compares the Church and its hierarchy to an army. In the cruel invisible battle on which the fate of all mankind depends, the priests, even if they are sinful and unworthy, are on the front line, and we will not harshly condemn the soldiers who stand in the front row, in the first line, even if they are weak and poorly trained. Many of them may be sinful and wicked, but we will forgive them for the sake of the battle into which they are thrown, for the sake of the risk to which they are exposed. The rank of priest is responsible and dangerous, which is why St. John Chrysostom writes: "I see few priests who are saved." Death as a rejection of eternal life is more terrible than physical death. If we compare the sins of a priest as a person with the answer that he will hold as a priest before God, then we are more likely to pity than condemn him. We have all experienced especially difficult temptations in our lives, which deprive a person and draw him to sin. This oppressive force of sin, similar to hypnosis, has been felt by each of us at least at some time in our lives as the presence of some terrible invisible being who subordinates our will to his power. Priests experience especially strong temptations, the demon sends the most tested and experienced fallen angels to fight them, so some people, after accepting the priesthood, fell into those temptations that they did not even know about before. We see their sins, since the priest is in front of everyone, but we do not see the demons fighting with him. Some people say, "I believe in Christ and His first community, but I don't believe in the Church, in the priests." But the first community – the Apostles of Christ – was precisely the first Christian Church, from which comes the succession of ordination, like the light of a candle lit from another candle. Sin was also present among Christ's disciples: of the 12 Apostles, Judas was a traitor and a God-seller, but is it possible to deny the rest of the Apostles because of this? Among the 70 Apostles was Nicholas of Antioch, a Gnostic and heretic, of whom the Holy Spirit said: "Thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate" (Rev. 2:6). This means that sin has always been present, but the Church itself is holy. The Church is first of all an invisible force, the grace of God, which sanctifies and saves those who submit to this grace. The Apostles fulfilled the mission of Christ on earth, the Mission of the Apostles continues to be fulfilled by priests. This mission consists, firstly, in church worship, secondly, in the preaching of the Gospel, and thirdly, in the guidance of the faithful: the priest is the father and mentor of his parishioners. The activity of a priest is subject to firm canons, the rules of the Church. Christ told His disciples not to call anyone but God father and teacher, since the Pharisees replaced the teaching of the Covenant with rabbinic traditions, human fabrications, which distorted the very image of the expected Messiah in the eyes of the people. And the priest is a teacher, since he teaches the word of the Gospel, guided by the interpretations of the Holy Fathers, and not by his own ideas and conjectures. A person who has fallen into heresy ceases to be a teacher. A priest is called a father because he participates in the spiritual birth of a Christian: from the sacrament of baptism to the rite of burial. A priest is called a preceptor because he instructs his parishioners to fulfill the Gospel commandments, guided by patristic literature. If he teaches something that contradicts the Church, then he loses the right to the name of a teacher, his words turn into empty flowers. These three types of service ("father", "teacher" and "teacher") are different from each other: in his liturgical service, the priest is the image and symbol of Christ the Savior, so through the priest Christ Himself is present in the divine service. In some cases, the priest symbolizes various persons of Holy History: John the Baptist, the Apostles, and so on. The sermon of a clergyman depends not only on the action of grace, but also on personal abilities, the study of the Holy Scriptures and logic. Grace contributes to the development of his natural powers, and also affects the hearts of people who listen to him. Therefore, the sermon of a priest has a greater power and impact than the sermon of a layman, other things being equal. The basis of Christian morality is the commandments of the Old and New Testaments. Commandments are unchangeable commands of God addressed to the human soul, and links in the union between the human soul and the Divine. A priest is a mentor, since his advice is in line with the Gospel teaching, but as a teacher of morality, he himself must know the path along which he leads others. If this condition is absent, then Christians can have the books of the Holy Fathers as their teacher. The first type of service is unconditional, the second is necessary, but not always successful (preaching), the third is desirable, but often remains unfulfilled. The first type of service is given in its entirety to each priest, the second depends on the ability of the priest, and the third is determined by the personality of the priest himself. There is an unceasing interaction between the soul of the priest and the grace of the priesthood. It is like a blazing fire, which rather warms the house of the soul, but if it is handled carelessly, it burns it like a fire. The grace of the priesthood helps the priest in his personal spiritual struggle, but at the same time, in the case of a negligent and sinful life, it distances him further from God than a layman. According to the revelation of Macarius of Alexandria, in the very heart of hell there are not robbers and murderers, not idolaters and sorcerers, but priests who led a sinful life, did not repent and at the same time liturgized. How should a layman behave towards a sinful priest, that is, when the priest's behavior exceeds the usual level of sin that we encounter in a person? The way a son should behave towards an unworthy father: respect the father for the sake of God's commandment, but at the same time not imitate him. What do the external signs of veneration for the priest mean, for example, kissing the hand when blessing him? The fact that the priest is the image of Christ and through him Christ blesses, that is, these signs do not refer to a person, but to the Divinity, just as the honor bestowed on an ambassador does not refer to him personally, but to the state he represents. Insulting even an unworthy ambassador is considered an insult to the government he represents. Therefore, a believer can limit his communion with an unworthy priest in order to avoid temptation, but must show him due respect in the name of Christ, whose grace he received at his ordination. Archbishop Gabriel of Kutaisi (canonized by the Georgian Church) and Archimandrite Alexy (Shushania) have great spiritual authority in the Georgian Church. -Ed. ^