I will tell you, Friend, frankly that I do not like huge churches, like, for example, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where thousands gather and where, therefore, there is no "parish" and where the sacrament of assembly does not take place. It is dogmatically absurd when the divine service turns into some kind of spectacle, when the pilgrims only observe what is happening, remaining completely alien to each other. It is a completely different matter when our own people gather, when our father serves. And you especially experience the sacrament of gathering in sparsely populated monasteries, for example, in the Paraclete Desert, where everyone has his own place at the service and everyone gathers for their own. In such monastic churches, the sacrament of the Church, the sacrament of assembly, is perceptibly performed, but in the "Isaacs" this sacrament is in no way felt as if it does not exist at all. But we began to build huge churches again following the example of Western heretics, and earlier, for example, in Moscow, we preferred to build "forty forty" churches, even if they were not huge.

So, my friend, this is what the Cologne Cathedral is talking about, if you look at it more closely. He speaks of the rationalization of Christianity in the West; he speaks of the dreaminess of the morbid mysticism of the West. Rationalism absolutely does not tolerate ecclesiastical splendor; he wants temples to be as dry and lifeless as logical schemes, and to turn driven and suppressed feeling into stunted sentimentalism. In rationalism, both Catholicism and Protestantism are equal. And here, in my opinion, is a remarkable fact: they have the same church architecture, and the interior of the churches is equally colorless, although the Catholics recognize the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which forever blessed all ecclesiastical splendor. Rationalism fundamentally undermines the main nerve of Christianity: the ideal of the deification of human nature, which is affirmed in the incarnation of the Son of God. The Orthodox Church lives by this ideal, which is also evidenced by our ecclesiastical splendor. After all, according to the thought of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, "the image of icon life-painting" serves us "to assure the true, and not imaginary, incarnation of God the Word." Protestants rejected the dogma of the veneration of icons, and now they are not at all sure of the true incarnation of God the Word. What did the Protestants turn Christianity itself into? They turned it into a kind of doctrinal system, which, moreover, everyone can compose in his own way. Protestantism is Christianity without Christ, the Son of God, it is the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. But the Catholics also turned Christianity into a bargaining deal with God: good Catholics do "good deeds" and present to the Lord God a detailed invoice for payment in the form of a "reward". Just as in earthly life a penalty under a writ of execution can be transferred to another, so, according to the Catholic faith, one can act in the matter of salvation: one can purchase someone else's writ of execution, and the Lord God is obliged to pay the due "reward" in full. There is no place for the true incarnation of God the Word here either.

It's an amazing thing.. I have seen many Catholic and Protestant churches and involuntarily thought: "You, gentlemen heretics, have decorated your churches with various architectural curls, your altars sometimes look like the windows of furniture stores - well, tell me frankly, is this really better than our icon painting?" No, it is precisely the West's perversion of Christianity itself, the obscuration and even the rejection of the true Christian ideal. If Christianity is a scholastic system, then Christian meetings need a more or less comfortable audience, and not a temple. All Protestant, especially Reformed churches are similar to auditoriums: benches and pulpit - that's all the interior decoration. You know, my friend, sometimes the Western temples have terrified me; I was indignant with all my soul when I saw these fruits of religious poverty, religious misery. I will tell you about one of my similar experiences. It was in Dresden. Sunday. I hear the bells ringing all over the city, as if in some of our cities. Although the ringing was pitiful, pitiful and cracked, not our solemn, majestic, soul-lifting, it still became pleasant: even heretics, they say, revere the Lord! He went to mass in an Orthodox church. It is especially pleasant to hear an Orthodox service "in a foreign land." After Mass, I went to the city center by tram. I saw that almost the entire carriage was filled with pilgrims of the Orthodox church. Only Russian speech is heard. Here sits a priest in a cassock with a pectoral cross. (At that time I was still in indecent clothes, that is, in secular clothes!) It was so nice! I drove to Altmarkt. There is a large Protestant Kirche nearby. I think it's Frauenkirche. However, I don't remember exactly now. I walk through the door. The stairs lead up. Climb. What then? Just like, for example, in the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, when you go up to the gallery. You go up to the floor - the door. Another floor - again the door. I still do not dare to enter, but I have already climbed high - I think to the third floor. He opened the door and entered. What did it turn out to be? I found myself on the balcony of the second tier. The huge church is built in exactly the same way as theaters are arranged. At the bottom there is a parterre, and on the sides there are balconies in several tiers. In some places, not very densely, there are visitors. Near one of the balconies there is a high pulpit, and on it the preacher-pastor delivers a sermon, as if he were giving a lecture in a well-equipped auditorium. I remember well, such pity seized me for the unfortunate heretics who had so devastated and discolored Christianity, made it deadly boring! There are no sacred images in the temple: balconies, armchairs and a pulpit - that's all, nothing more. Oh, how I felt at that time the incomparable superiority of Holy Orthodoxy.

Yes, in the West, churches are constantly turning if not into theaters, then into concert halls. You enter the church and see posters hanging on the porch. What the? It turns out that concerts are given in churches on certain days after the service. Organist so-and-so, who came from so-and-so. Everything has been announced. One concert - the price is 1 mark or franc, 12 concerts - the price is 10 marks or francs. I especially remember one such concert, which I heard in the beautiful Swiss town of Interlaken at the foot of the Jungfrau. It was announced that the London organist was giving a concert on a huge organ driven by an electric motor. After the evening service, when the people had left without a stowaway, the altar boys walked between the benches and turned their backs to the altar. Just like in some Moscow trams, when you need to go in the opposite direction. Those who remained sat down to listen to the concert with their faces to the organ and their backs to the altar. My surprise increased even more when, having bought the program, I saw the numbers of secular singing. In each concert, for example, the program included the piece "Sturm" ("Tempest"), I don't know which composer. The thing is really magnificent, and in the powerful performance of the organ it is downright delightful. I think You, my Friend, who understand music a thousand times more than I do, would have liked this piece very much. I wish I could listen to it with you, experience and feel together this magnificent sea of sounds - now mighty and menacing, like the waves of a fiercely stormy sea, now quietly roaring, like the sound of a distant sea, when the clouds have disappeared, the sun has come out, and the sea does not yet want to calm down. Yes, but to listen to it in church... You need to forget in advance that you are in church. In the West, this is easy to do. In all Western churches, beginning with the Cologne Cathedral, it is easy to forget about the church, and precisely because, as I said at the beginning of my letter, they lack God, lack holiness. In our Orthodox churches, you can't forget about God. Try to face the west in our Trinity Cathedral or in our academic church - instead of the iconostasis you will see a formidable picture of the Last Judgment. When you see this picture, you will not dream of a musical "Tempest", but rather think about how to calm the storm of passions in your soul and disperse the black clouds of sin.

Letter Four. Divine service

It was on the picturesque shores of the wondrous Lake Geneva, in Lausanne...

I, my dear Friend, cannot be indifferent to Switzerland. I was born and still live in central Russia, and I love the mountains and the sea. Our Caucasus is beautiful and formidable, but there is some kind of strict, sometimes harsh beauty. There are not enough mountain lakes there. And Switzerland is rich in the most beautiful and beautiful lakes that can only be found among the mountains. In fact, it is such a mountainous country, and almost all of it can be traveled by steamer! You sail on a steamer, and bizarre mountain masses come to the very shores, sometimes whitened with snow above. Streams rush noisily from the mountains, often even turning into waterfalls. Our Crimean tourists come from Yalta to look at the Uchan-Su waterfall. After the Swiss waterfalls, it is somehow embarrassing to mention our sights. The combination of mountain beauties with the beauty of streams and lakes gives me the impression of something majestic and at the same time soft and gentle. I love, my dear, the beauty of God's world! How many times have I been delighted and touched by this beauty! How many times have I wanted to pray in the great temple of nature! I recall a story I read somewhere about Archbishop Innocent (Borisov). He watched the sunrise on Chatyr-Dag (oh, this is also a beautiful place!). He had to serve the Liturgy. He said: "I have already listened to matins on Chatyr-Dag." I understand this saint-poet, a saint-artist with a gentle and lofty soul! Mountain peaks bring man closer to God and tear him away from the earth. Among the mountain beauties, all our "affairs" seem to me at once small, insignificant, not worthy of attention. And if you tear yourself away from all these "deeds" - and involuntarily you will feel God in your heart. I regret very much that I did not have the opportunity to attend a service on Athos in that church, which was built on the very top of Mount Athos. I think that the liturgy there should be special. But among the beauties of nature, it is our Orthodox liturgy that is needed, our Orthodox service - majestic and thankful.

I have, my dear and beautiful Friend, the memory of Lausanne, do you know what it is inseparably connected with? With thoughts of the superiority of Orthodox worship over Western European heretical. Why is that? But just by a small accident, which I will tell you about now.

When you climb from the coastal Ouchy to Lausanne, to the mountain, you have a beautiful view of Lake Geneva. All of it is among the mountains. From the opposite bank, Mont Blanc himself looks from afar. On a summer day, the lake is covered with haze. Steamships plough it in different directions. You look at this beauty - you don't want to tear yourself away. High, as if on a special ledge of the mountain, stands the cathedral. For a long time I sat under the shady trees near the cathedral, immersed in silent contemplation of the beautiful picture of the great Artist of the world flooded with sunlight. What a wealth of beauty in this picture! But then I went to the cathedral and... I am amazed at the wretchedness of its builders and "beautifiers". Oh, how vexing it was for me to see this fruit of the religious poverty of the Protestants right here, in the midst of the soul-delightful charm of God's world! Bare gray stone walls and wooden benches - nothing more! Do not the permanent inhabitants of Lausanne feel this contradiction, which at first caught my eye, the contradiction between what is inside and what is outside their cathedral! Beauty and wealth are outside the church, but in the church there is miserable monotony. Their own houses are decorated with flowers, twined with plants, balconies are everywhere. Why should the temple of God be without any decoration, dry, monotonous and inhospitable? Yes, what else did I notice in the cathedral! There must have been statues in it before. Now these statues have been removed and lie disfigured on the floor in the corners of the cathedral, I don't know why; must have been a curious curiosity for visitors to see. Such an unseemly disregard for the saints of God!

With such thoughts I sat for a long time on one of the benches in the cathedral. It was Saturday. The cathedral was empty. An altar boy came, like our watchman, or perhaps a sacristan, and began to prepare what was necessary for the service. Usually, in Protestant churches, worshippers hold in their hands a Gesangbuch [3], a book with prayers. These prayers are each marked with a special number. And what numbers should be sung, it is hung on a special board on the wall somewhere, sometimes in several places. I saw that the sexton (I will call him that) pulled out a drawer from one of the tables. In his drawer he has numbers on his cards, similar to those used in schools when children begin to learn numbers. From these numbers, the clerk made three or four numbers on a special board. I look at the phone to the pulpit, call somewhere, I must have called the pastor, talked a little, changed one number on the board, and then hung the whole board on the wall.

With me was a friend and colleague from the academy, now a teacher of liturgics in one of the seminaries. I said to him: "Here is the whole Typicon for you!"

Indeed, what a simplification of the service! After all, our Typikon is a book of more than a thousand pages. And take the Edinoverie edition of the Typicon in a leather binding - almost a whole pound in weight! There are so many details and various subtleties here! Just look at some Markov or temple chapters! So the question arises: which is better - our Orthodox Typicon or a box with numbers?

Remember how Leskov's Tula blacksmith, who visited London, says about the advantages of the Orthodox faith: "Our books are incomparably thicker" ("The Lefthander").