For some time, when I served in the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the village of Altufieva, some of the parishioners, mostly young ones, began to write down the sermons delivered there. Some of them took a blessing for this, while others did not even know that this is how it is supposed to be in the church.

I did not interfere with this, but I always warned that the recording should be carried out unnoticed even for me (for at first it was very distracting), and even more so for the "eye of the sovereign". The "eye" itself did not delve into the content very much, and there was nothing against the "general line" except for the Gospel itself, but the very fact of daily sermons in the morning and evening, and even more so the recordings, could arouse suspicion and organizational conclusions. And I did not want to leave this church and the old parishioners, who would hardly follow me to another parish.

The second condition that I set for the "writers" was that the film should be used only for personal purposes - "to no one and never". And in addition to the main reason described above, there were a number of other reasons for this.

Firstly, such "advertising" could attract too many people, and this regular movement of a certain contingent in large numbers to one place would also not be hidden from the "eye".

Secondly, a sermon, unlike a book or a song, for example, is intended for specific people who are standing in church at that very moment, and if it is given to someone else without editing, it can produce the opposite effect to what is desired.

Thirdly, I did not and do not believe now that these sermons contain any new or theologically fresh and important material that needs to be brought to the attention of a large number of Orthodox Christians. And therefore he was afraid of harm to his own soul, which always arises when fame exceeds the scale of the person himself.

Fourthly, I have never been a theologian, and despite the fact that I passed the exams for the theological academy well, I could well admit some inaccurate expression that a small audience would not notice, since a polemical motif or too "figurative" an expression often arises in a sermon, but if listened to repeatedly, it can warp or repel people unfamiliar with the genre. One sick woman, whom I had given communion at home for six years, was given a cassette with a sermon by "dear father," which dealt with the attitude of a Christian to illness. A parishioner, "as an experienced pastor" who gave a sick woman a spiritual "medicine", caused her a state of shock and created a real threat of losing her faith in general, which then another priest tried to heal for almost a whole year. If in medicine the dose of medicine varies depending on the severity of the disease and the condition of the patient, then in the spiritual life it is impossible to present to a bedridden person what is given to a walker.

And finally, the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (now having acquired a completely different look), like any first church, was extraordinarily dear to the young priest. He became dear to me from the very first day, also because I was ordained in the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross, which bears the name of Elijah the Prophet in Cherkizovo (after the side chapel), and was baptized in Ilyinsky in Obydensky. This love sometimes reached such stupidity that I once mentally chose a place for my future grave there (you know? a kind of narcissistic romanticism). In addition, later, a few years later, I learned from the younger sister of my late grandfather that her grandfather was the rector of it, that is, my great-great-grandfather, priest Pavel Smirnov, who was also buried here.

But an important factor was also a purely spiritual moment. Even in the seminary, when the guys asked where I would like to serve, in the city or in the village, I had to answer that there are advantages and disadvantages everywhere. In this sense, the Altufyevsky Church (at a time when there were no terrible "people" around) was an ideal in my understanding. Ten steps - and you are outside Moscow, and there are as many transport leading to Moscow as you want, that is, any Muscovite can get there without any trains, although this option is also possible. The distance from residential development is quite large; a forest, a large pond where ducks used to swim; on the territory of the temple there are trees that probably saw both the builder of the temple, the nobleman Nikita Akinfiev, and my great-great-grandfather. And the trees are my favorite oaks. Silence, peace, at the service you can hear the birds singing, rare cars are almost unheard, nightingales... a wooden gatehouse, with a porch, flowers, a bench between two, I think, linden trees, the holy spring of St. Macarius of Zheltovodsk nearby.

We served in weeks: the rector Fr. Michael for a week, I for a week, and the holidays together. In 10 years, we quarreled only twice. The first one was reconciled in half an hour, the second one was the next day. All household chores are on the abbot, and later on the headman. So there was something to regret if some kind of bungling would lead to the loss of this paradise on earth. And I, as a novice priest, still needed a "hothouse" atmosphere.

He wrote a lot, but not yet about what he wanted, but it is pleasant to remember, since what he once grumbled about is now forgotten. Although in his mind he always understood: if you live in paradise, you appreciate every breath of air. The same thing was said by his priest friends, who had already had a taste of grief. I never forgot about the possible transfer, especially since my peers were transferred from church to church quite regularly.

Thank you to everyone who showed obedience and thereby made it possible to spend the first half of my service in Altufievo. But after the regime in the country began to change and on the day of the Icon of the Mother of God "Assuage My Sorrows" I learned that I was entrusted with the restoration of the Church of St. Mitrophan of Voronezh – a great saint who before his death took schema with the name in honor of Macarius of Zheltovodsk and was previously the abbot of the Makarievsky Monastery – I very easily, which even surprised me. transferred this message, later confirmed by the decree of His Holiness Pimen. No wonder our whole family drank water only from the Makariev spring for ten years. I was especially pleased that there is a direct bus between the two churches, and soon the Altufyevo - Dmitrovskaya metro was launched. So I did not have to part with those with whom I had grown together in ten years – as it is said in the rite of holy baptism, "splintered".

And a year later, the small Mitrofanievsky Church could not accommodate everyone, since it was built for an orphanage, where 80 orphans were raised, so our warden Vasily Sergeevich Krivozertsev came up with the idea of bothering about the Annunciation Church, which stands a kilometer away. Thus, after a while, two churches were formed in our parish, the number of those who recorded sermons increased dramatically, and it became more and more difficult to somehow regulate this spontaneous process. When, about five years ago, people began to come to me from different places with a request for some cassette tapes, I realized that resistance was losing all meaning, and from that time on I lifted all restrictions on the distribution of audio recordings.

But the imperfection of oral preaching has always bothered me, and when our parish publishing house offered to edit and publish the sermons, after thinking for several years (also about five), asking the blessing of my spiritual father, I decided on the first experiment that is in front of you. I will be very glad if some of what has been said, and now written down and published, will be useful to someone. You can read from either end, although we have begun to adhere to an approximate chronology. And for those who cherish the Altufiev period of our communication, we decided to revive the book with old, but dear to us photographs.