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. ^

On monasticism

Sectarians of a rationalistic persuasion deny the institution of Orthodox monasticism. Not understanding the essence of monasticism, they present it as an agnostic contempt for the human body, as a perversion of the God-established relationship between man and woman, as a misanthropic rejection of the family and society.

For some reason, it is precisely monasticism that causes special irritation among atheists and sectarians and becomes a favorite target for attacks, ridicule and irony. The sensual and depraved Renaissance was especially sophisticated in mocking monasticism. The Reformation in Germany, the so-called Great Revolution in France and the October Revolution in Russia began with the pogrom of monasteries. This means that monasticism hindered the development and embodiment in historical forms of the planes of demonic energies and forces. If the saying, "Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are," is partly true, "Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are." Unfortunately, a certain part of the intelligentsia also developed a negative attitude towards monasticism, partly under the influence of secular literature, which did not create a single truthful image of the monk; according to the words of the Apostle Paul, the natural cannot understand the spiritual (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14), partly under the influence of the fashionable modernist philosophy of Rozanov, Merezhkovsky and various sophiologists and "god-builders" who are trying to create a cult of "holy flesh" for which all the desires of the body are sacred. The literary and philosophical decadence of the early 20th century completed the isolation of the Church from society. For the modern intelligentsia (or a significant part of it), the life of a monk has become alien, unfamiliar and incomprehensible, like the life of Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. With regard to the above accusations against monasticism, we note the following. Monasticism is religious maximalism, love for God, which a person does not want to share between God and the world. The Church condemns asceticism based on Gnostic dualism, on the opposition of spirit and body to each other as two principles - Divine and demonic, good and evil. There is a special decree of the Council of Gangra on this [1]. If a monk from the sect of the Gnostics converted to Orthodoxy, then the ancient Church freed him from the vows of monasticism, adopted as a result of incorrect anthropological ideas, and gave him a choice for his future life: to repeat the monastic tonsure in the Orthodox Church or to remain a lay person with the free right to found a family. Christian asceticism does not aim at the destruction of the body, but at its subordination to the spirit. Saints John Cassian, Basil the Great and others warned a monk against excessive asceticism, which can not only harm health, but also develop a sense of pride in an inexperienced ascetic. St. Basil the Great says: "We struggle with the passions, not with the body." Self-torture in the form of scourging, self-wounding, and the like is forbidden in the Orthodox Church. Asceticism aims at abstaining from excesses. The astounding feats of the Holy Fathers were accomplished with the haste of God's grace and therefore surpassed ordinary human strength. The Church considered them a miracle, not a model for copying. It should be remembered, however, that excesses and licentious life do much more harm to the body than abstinence. Mental disorders usually manifest themselves in the form of affects, depressions, hallucinations and exaltations - what is most alien to Orthodox monasticism, which teaches about prudence, sobriety, purification of consciousness from vivid pictures and dreams, about the state of inner peace and tranquility. The works of the ascetic fathers possess clarity of thought, clear composition, prudence - something that is absent in the work of the mentally ill. In their lives, ascetics did not show selfishness, but love, reaching self-sacrifice, respect for people, patience and forgiveness of offenses, while the mentally ill are characterized by egocentrism. The main form of monasticism is not hermitage, but communal life in the form of a monastery or skete. The hermit's life is the next stage; it is needed only by some special ascetics for deep prayerful concentration. To speak of the cave atavism of monks is as strange as to speak of any human community or union as a pack of wolves. We know outstanding public and political figures, commanders and scientists who performed their duties and service for many years without showing any mental deviations, and then became monks as a result of a greater understanding of life. However, it is not only people who stand outside the fence of the Church who deny monasticism. Among the Christians themselves, who call themselves Orthodox, there are critics of monasticism, who consider it something accidental and superficial in the Church. They usually make the following accusations against monasticism: a) a person who accepts monasticism consciously impoverishes his life; b) he deprives himself of the lawful and blessed joys of earthly existence; c) he ceases to be a useful member of society. Does a monk impoverish himself intellectually? The Holy Scriptures and the works of the Holy Fathers are the deepest philosophical truths, which were discovered not by the human mind, but by the Divine Logos. Christian liturgics was called "singing theology" by the rationalists themselves. In this circle of higher truths the thought of the monk is constantly located. The main thing is not the external volume of knowledge, but its height, not the horizontal, but the vertical dimension. Is a mountain of raw ore more expensive than grains of gold? That which the world's philosophical thought could not reach is given in Revelation. Much of what the world considers intellectual value turns out to be an intellectual lie that does not lead to the truth, but leads away from it. The main thing for a person is not mechanical memory, which fixes incoming information, but creative memory, which can solve complex problems in all areas of life and activity on the basis of deep ontological knowledge. Christian teaching, theological knowledge, evangelical morality, anthropological observations of ascetics have passed through thousands of years of testing, through the filter of trials, through the experience of many generations, therefore they are objectively more reliable and stable than the latest philosophical and psychological systems. Does a monk impoverish himself emotionally? Emotional richness is the purity and depth of feeling. Asceticism is the purification of the human heart. Contemporary art and media channels can be compared to a mudflow that, like an avalanche, floods the islands of the former culture, plunging the human imagination into the swamp of sex and blood. Do the enemies of monasticism complain about the impoverishment of such emotions? Emotional richness is the ability to empathize, it is the awakening of the spirit. It is precisely characteristic of monasticism. The Monk Agathon said: "I would like to take from the leper his body and give him my body in return." Passion and sensuality, on the contrary, make a person selfish and cruel. We are told that monasticism deprives a person of the joy of art and literature. Is this true? - And what about church architecture? Liturgical hymns and poetry of the Psalter? Aren't they masterpieces of art even from the formal side? It is not art for art's sake, but art as the embodiment of an idea; art that contains the deepest meaning. It is higher than worldly art in that it communicates with the transcendental world, with eternal spiritual essences, with eternal beauty. As for Christian literature, let's take the Bible, for example. It contains history, poetry, philosophy, ethics, and that which is incomparably greater, Divine revelation. Connoisseurs of world literature usually say that literature helps them to understand a person better and get to know life. Meanwhile, in the works of the Holy Fathers, the soul of man is revealed to such depths where the scalpel of the talent of a worldly writer or poet has not penetrated. What secular writer can be compared with John Chrysostom even in the external beauty and expression of the word? One of the Byzantine scholars writes that Demosthenes for seven centuries before John Chrysostom did not have a successor equal in talent. Chrysostom's works are a whole encyclopedia of moral and theological knowledge, psychological observations, historical and typical characteristics. Let us take another father, Gregory the Theologian, whose syllable is distinguished by virtuoso art and filigree decoration of each phrase. He can be called a poet-philosopher. Another spiritual writer - Ephraim the Syrian stands on the same level with the best poets of the world. In medieval monasteries, many historical and scientific works were copied and preserved. Spiritual literature has everything that secular literature has, except for its passion and filth. Can fashionable detective stories and erotic literature, which, like muddy waves, spilled out onto the modern book market, really enrich a person emotionally? If art is a kind of cognition through empathy, then modern literature gives cognition of sin through contact with it and leaves dirty stains in the human soul. If, according to the proverb, a fly in the ointment spoils a barrel of honey, then we are seriously offered to look for the missing spoonful of honey in the barrel of ointment. Critics of monasticism argue that it deprives a person of the joy of life. Is there a joy in the world that is deeper and purer than spiritual joy? Worldly joy, permeated with sensuality and passion, is replaced by fatigue, emptiness, and often sorrow and disappointment. We are told that there is not only passionate and intoxicating joy, there is also another, bright joy, for example, in communication with nature. But monasteries were most often built in the most beautiful places, where nature itself taught us to think about eternity. Mentally transport yourself to the places where ancient Georgian monasteries were built. Their builders possessed not only aesthetic talent, but also a sense of supreme beauty and harmony. On the contrary, opponents of monasticism, children of modern urbanization, most often see nature in a few days of their lives, and talk about its beauty while being in asphalt concrete captivity. Our opponents talk about the joy of family life, but they themselves, without realizing it, touched the sore point of modern society. Officially, more than half of families fall apart in the first two years after their formation, and there is no guarantee that things are going well in other families. The breakup and disagreement in the family leave traumas and disappointments, sometimes for life. And what about other hard-to-resolve issues of family life? For example, infanticide (abortion), which makes the family a union of murderers marching towards their illusory well-being on the corpses of children. What joy can people have when they are stained with human blood? We are told that there are prosperous families. Unfortunately, there are not more such families, but fewer and fewer. Psychologically unprepared for marriage, spouses turn their home not into an oasis, but into a field of struggle for power and a place to settle scores for mutual grievances. Often such spouses allow themselves in relation to their children what they would not allow in relation to strangers and even to their enemies (as well as children in relation to their parents). Christianity respects marriage, but looks at the family as a difficult, responsible matter that requires a lot of dedication, patience and tact from the spouses, and not as a source of constant pleasure. We are told that there is another kind of joy that monks deprive themselves of, and that is the joy of creativity. But, first, prayer itself is the highest creativity and dynamics of the soul, which includes a person in the field of the transcendental world and in a personal dialogue with the Creator of all that exists. Secondly, church art is a creative activity of a special kind, enclosed within the framework of traditions and firm canons, based not on imagination, as secular art, but on mystical vision and spiritual empathy. This creativity is included not in the sensuous-material world, but in the supramundane sphere of spiritual realities. Religious creativity rejects only fantasy as the realm of falsehood, and considers daydreams (which can become a mental drug) not creativity, but a weak-willed attraction to pleasure. Religious creativity is a volitional synergetic process, where the spiritual world reveals itself through material forms; this process involves the eternal energies operating in the Church. The third accusation of critics of monasticism is that a person, leaving worldly life, ceases to be a useful member of society. In the history of the Church, that institution with centuries-old traditions, which is called spiritual fatherhood and eldership, had great spiritual and moral significance. Its representatives were mainly ascetic monks. Their life in solitude or monastic obedience, struggle with passions, and unceasing prayer made the spiritual world really tangible to the point of obviousness. They saw their souls in various states, now illumined by the light of prayer, now immersed in the black abysses of sin. A terrible picture of the fall of mankind, the struggle of demonic forces for the soul of mankind, a subtle strategy of hell, worked out and polished over thousands of years, opened up before them. They saw the origin and development of sins in their own hearts, as if on an illuminated map of sin, mastered the ability to suppress and destroy it at the very beginning, embodied in their spiritual life the ascetic knowledge of the ancient ascetics, were able to distinguish between the impulses of light and dark spirits, and therefore they themselves became mentors on the path to salvation for hundreds and thousands of people. Without their guidance and guidance, how many people would have perished in the pit of wolves and snares set by the demon on this path; How many would not endure the struggle with sin, how much would pervert their spiritual life, how many would remain in a state of false spirituality, pride, and that self-deception which is called delusion! People's lives are full of tragedy, betrayal, loss of loved ones. The vicissitudes of life put a person on the edge of the abyss, which is called despair. Throughout the history of Christianity, monasteries have been the place where people have found the strength to survive their inner Golgotha, find help and consolation. And this would be enough to testify to the lofty service of monasticism to humanity. But there is another, invisible, mystical service - this is the power of prayer for the whole world. Good and evil do not pass without a trace. Every human sin expands the dark kingdom of hell. The sins of humanity, uniting together, like invisible drops of moisture in clouds, hang over the earth - this is the potential and cause of the catastrophes that humanity is experiencing and will experience. The dark forces are opposed by the forces of light, the restraining force of which the Apostle Paul speaks (see 2 Thess. 2:7), the spirit of piety and prayer. On this mystical plane, monasticism takes upon itself the main podvig of repentance and prayer for humanity, and therefore monks who have departed from the world realize the highest closeness to the world in spiritual love and the highest service in prayer for peace. It is not without reason that the demonic power tries to eradicate and destroy monasticism or to kill it. Critics of monasticism say that the depth of life is the depth of love, and the monk deprives himself of love. On the contrary, the life of a monk is love, and not the attraction of dark instincts and passions, not an affect that easily turns into hatred. The love of a monk is directed to the highest being - God, to the highest goodness and beauty, that is, to the only worthy object of love, in which the human heart can calm down. The depth of love is in its intensity. A monk limits himself in external impressions, avoids unnecessary worries precisely so that his love is concentrated, like light passing through a magnifying glass. Love for the Divine is constant, there are no disappointments, betrayals and changes; there is only an ascent from one step to another. In worldly love, there are so many tragedies, so many bleeding tears, so many broken hearts. How often what is called love in the world is destroyed by the slightest trial, like a fragile vessel by a blow, and turns into cold indifference, disgust, hatred and mockery. A monk loves man, but not empirical man, and that which is eternal in him is the image and likeness of God, that is, he loves man with love reflected from God. Even the happiest friendship and family love is like the flickering light of a lamp that illuminates the corner of a room, and the love of a monk is like the light of a guiding star shining high above the world. The Church is the heart of the world, and monasticism is the heart of the Church. Gangra Cathedral (mid. IV century), recognizing the spiritual value of the monastic path, warned against rampant non-Orthodox asceticism. -Ed. ^

Fasting and TV movies

Many Christians believe that fasting is established only to subordinate the body to the soul. St. Gregory the Theologian called the body "a nocturnal and passionate handmaiden." The soul is the queen, the body is her slave, who must share in the glory of her queen. But this "slave" is capricious, disobedient, prone to rebellion, and therefore she often has to be forced into obedience. However, this is only one side of fasting. There is another, even more important, that which the Holy Fathers called "spiritual fasting."

The main thing in man is the spirit; in the spirit is the image and likeness of God, the spirit separates man as if by a deep abyss from all the other inhabitants of the earth. In the spirit is embedded the goal-oriented idea of man - eternal communion with God. To the extent that a person lives spiritually, he lives worthy of his destiny; This is the only way to have joy and peace in earthly life, in this sea of suffering. For some Christians, this trimetrical view of human nature (spirit, soul, and body) evokes the idea of the soul as something base and unworthy in comparison with the spirit. It's not that. Without spiritual abilities, earthly life would be impossible for man and, consequently, the formation of him as a moral personality for eternal life. In the very nature of man there is nothing bad and base; Bad is the perversion of the will, the destruction of the hierarchy and the correct subordination of human abilities and forces; the base and unworthy are passions and sin. In our present, or rather, fallen state, the body manifests itself as disobedient to the soul, and the soul as disobedient to the spirit. Therefore, fasting is not only the taming of the body, but first of all - the taming of spiritual passions so that the spirit can awaken and act. Bodily fasting implies: restriction in food; eating a special type of food; infrequent meals. Spiritual fasting should also include: limiting external impressions - the food of the soul, the information that a person is accustomed to receiving daily in huge volumes, similar to the "feasts of Gargantua"; control over information, that is, over the quality of food that the soul receives, the exclusion of that which irritates the passions; rare meals, that is, periods of solitude, silence, silence, being with oneself, which give a person the opportunity to know his sins and fulfill the main goal of fasting - repentance. All kinds of entertainment and spectacles are incompatible with fasting, uncontrolled reading, long conversations, joking tones, visits to those places and houses where the worldly, non-ecclesiastical spirit reigns - everything that distracts a person, distracts the mind from prayer, and the heart from repentance. Our passions are closely connected with sensual images. Passion appears in the consciousness in the form of a sinful image; and vice versa, a sinful image, perceived from the outside, arouses passion in our heart (St. Syncliticia called the eyes the windows of death). The stage on which human passions are constantly demonstrated in all their variety, showiness and sophistication is the television in our time. It is like a source of constant radiation that irradiates the psyche of people with deadly strontium. Television keeps a person in passionate tension, as if in the space of its screen there is a clot of all sensual emotions, passions, lust, cruelty, crimes. What a person in past centuries could - and then accidentally - come into contact with several times in his life (say, a picture of a murder), now he sees every day. In wide waves from the TV screen, a muddy stream pours on gray-haired old men, girls and small children. It seems that the TV has caught the globe like a ball in its net. He reached the tops of the mountains, penetrated into the tundra and taiga, entered, like a master, almost every house. Television indulges the basest passions of man; Even in seemingly moral productions, sex scenes are interspersed, perhaps out of fear that the viewer will fall asleep from excessive moralization, and sometimes these scenes are the main content of the entire program. A person, turning on the TV, voluntarily includes himself in the field of spiritual filth. It is said that demons themselves cannot commit fornication, but dwell near those places where abominable sin is committed, mentally enjoying it, according to the expression of ancient writers: "smelling the stench of fornication and blood." Likewise, viewers of television and video films feed on "sex meditation" and at the same time feel shamelessly that they are the most decent people: they would be offended and indignant if someone called them spiritual lechers and fornicators. Some say that they watch erotic films completely dispassionately. This is self-deception: if they were impassive, they would not waste time in such an occupation; It is the soul captivated by passions that chains them to the TV, and they leave unsatisfied, if by chance they do not get the usual "doping". In ancient times, the Church excommunicated fornicators from communion for many years, since this sin saturates all the pores of the soul and body with stinking poison, and it takes a long time for a person to be cleansed and sobered up, to stand back on his feet, as after a serious illness. A fornicator is spiritually dead until he brings sincere repentance and performs penances. After erotic programs on TV, a person comes to church as if a dead person were brought for a funeral service; It is in the church, but it is not there. There his body is like a coffin, and his soul is deaf and blind like a corpse, it does not feel grace, it cannot pray sincerely. Repentance implies a willful desire and determination not to commit a sin again, and here a person usually spends hours in front of the TV after returning home from church (sometimes even after communion). Not only is he spiritually devastated, but the very ability to sincerely repent, that is, the ability to regain lost grace, is gradually dying away in him. Another "injection of evil" that a person receives from television is a series of murders and violence to which he becomes accustomed. In ancient Rome, the fight of gladiators in the circus, the fight of people with wild animals and other similar "entertainments" attracted tens of thousands of spectators. The motto of the Roman crowd was: "bread and circuses," as if these words contained their whole life. And the most exciting sight for the crowd was the flowing blood and death agony. Television makes sadists out of people who calmly and secretly enjoy the scenes of murders. If human love and compassion had remained in them, they would have turned away from this nightmare in horror. Television has made crime and cruelty commonplace. If someone tries to say that he is disgusted and scared to look at scenes of violence and murder, he will be considered hysterical and nervous. If a person says that he considers it beneath the dignity of a Christian to look at sexual pictures, then he will be openly declared that he is a "hypocrite" who has obsolete old-fashioned views. The soul has three faculties: reason, emotion, and will. From inseparable friendship with the TV, a person's will is weakened, like those who often take hypnosis sessions; The feeling is dulled and requires new thrills and "doping", and the mind becomes enslaved by successive images that force it to live in some fantasy world, in an ever-continuing phantasmagoria. Reason has two powers: figurative and verbal thinking. Too abundant, unguided information develops a lower mechanical memory, but suppresses creative power and energy. A person who constantly receives abundant food becomes a shapeless pile of fat, which finds it difficult to move and breathe, which can hardly move its legs under its own weight. Too much, uncontrolled information is similar to chronic overeating, in which muscles degenerate into lard. The mind becomes a flabby and passive dependent on other people's opinions and ideas. The pictures that a person saw on the TV screen rotate in his subconscious, pop up in memory, flash in dreams like ghosts. Thinking becomes superficial, and language becomes chatty. The protective forces of the psyche are exhausted, not being able to cope with the avalanche of impressions. Where is the place for silence, for heartfelt prayer? A person does not see himself, he seems to live not in a house, but in a theater with incessant performances. The Holy Fathers say that there are three types of activity of the mind: contemplation, born in the silence of prayer, reasoning and imagination, while imagination is the lowest type of thinking, combined with sensual passions and fantasy. The Holy Fathers commanded us to remain in prayer, to give place, when necessary in practical life, to rational reflection (while knowing its measure and limits), and to struggle with imagination as with our opponent. And television contributes to the opposite: the development of imagination, the suppression of the creative power of the mind and the loss of prayer. A person who spends his time fasting in front of the television is like a glutton and a drunkard who swallows everything indiscriminately, without even chewing the pieces, and at the same time believes that he is fasting according to all the statutes of the Church.

Sunday afternoon