A very clever and perfectly fair judgment! In particular, it can be usefully applied to the liturgical books. Take the Protestant liturgical books and compare them with our circle of liturgical books. A Protestant liturgical book can be put in any pocket, even secular clothes. And what about us? Two Triodions, two Octoechos and twelve Menaions of the month - these books cannot be hidden in your pocket, you need a whole cabinet for them. Maybe all this is superfluous? Many have heard an affirmative answer to this question. With You, my wise and pious Friend, we seem to have hardly spoken about the superiority of our divine services over the Western European ones. Let's talk a little now.

Personally, I see our undoubted advantage in the fact that "our books are incomparably thicker". If our books are thicker, it means that prayerful inspiration worked more for us, we had more church poets-hymn-writers and sweet singers. Indeed, even before the separation of the West from the Church, there were incomparably more church hymn-writers in the East, and our great advantage is that we have not sinfully discarded the rich heritage of the ancient Church. We have preserved this heritage and even multiplied it. And the West, in its proud self-delusion, suddenly neglected all this heritage, considered it beneath its dignity, and replaced the Typicon with a box of cards. Western theologians often assert that Luther and his ilk restored true ancient Christianity. The idea of the "restoration of Christianity," in my opinion, can only be recognized as utter absurdity.

Is it possible for a fifty-year-old person to restore the second or third decade of his life? Is it not the same in the life of the Church? Each century has its own characteristics, and it has the right to have these features. The Holy Spirit did not live only in the Church, but also lives in it always. Why should the centuries be forgotten, starting, say, with the fourth? And why not go back to the first century? Is there a limit to which one should "restore true Christianity"? Where is she? Who defined it? Who can determine it? It is precisely these questions, I think, my dear Friend, that must be raised when it comes to the "simplification" of Christian theology, of the liberation of Christianity from later accretions. We especially often speak of the alleged excessive ritualism in the divine services. Some even call the Church Typikon the "Orthodox Talmud". Utter thoughtlessness! Our divine services became more complex gradually over the course of entire centuries. Gradually, our thick books were compiled: the Triodion, the Octoechos, and others. All this can only be called the development, the progress of divine services. As a result of this progress, the Typikon was obtained, this summary of all the best that has happened in the course of centuries in various countries: near Jerusalem in the monastery of St. Sava, and in Constantinople in the Studite monastery, and on the holy Mount Athos, and here, in ancient pious Russia. The very name "Typikon", that is, a model or ideal, is remarkable. By its beauty, the ideal evokes an involuntary striving for its realization, although it is seldom possible to realize the ideal in all its beauty. Our Typikon is more complex than the Western liturgical orders, and in this, my friend, I see our advantage. The Typikon makes us akin to the entire universal Church, to all its centuries. The West, on the other hand, did not restore true Christianity, but severed the living connection with entire centuries of the ancient Church. Simplification of divine services is self-robbery. Indeed, with regard to worship, the West has fallen into poverty and misery. In fact, what can be observed in all German churches? They will gather in an empty hall, sit on the benches, sing a few spiritual verses, listen to a sermon - that's all. Boredom and monotony are the most deadly! Is it not remarkable that, with all the richness of Western culture, with the constant complication of life, Western worship is becoming more and more poor, impersonal, simplified, colorless! It's not the same with us. Of course, in our country the real liturgical life is maintained mainly and almost exclusively in monasteries. Parish churches have strayed too far from the typicon ideal and have depersonalized our wondrous divine services. I sincerely regret that You, Friend, with all your piety (I know him!), do not see and understand the beauty of our divine services. You need to visit monasteries more. In monasteries, each holiday has its own special character. After all, in the Typikon even special melodies are set for each great feast, "stichera are self-voiced". You expect in advance how the stichera will be sung, for example, the Annunciation, "To the Sole Ruler" on Christmas, "The Most Glorious Day" on the Trinity. And what a variety of services! Christmas and Epiphany with their eves, Great Lent and Pentecost... Ah, Friend, how I feel sorry for secular people who either do not attend divine services at all, or go only to Mass! Mass is the end of the holiday. For me personally, in comparison with the divine services, all sorts of operas, concerts, etc., seem downright pitiful and poor. These days are the last days of Holy Week and the entire Easter week. Of these days I have nothing to say to Thee. You know them yourself, and I hope you feel in your heart all their inexplicable beauty. Well, imagine, my dear, that instead of matins on Great Friday and Great Saturday, instead of Paschal matins, we would gather, sit down on the benches, sing a few rhymes to the music and go home! After all, this would be an insult, a mockery, an insult. This is what is obtained from the "simplification" of the divine services, from the "restoration of the first Christian simplicity"!

So, my friend, I do not envy the Westerners in the least that they have a box of numbers instead of the Typikon. The complexity of our worship is a sign that we are living a church life. We should not be ashamed of our Typikon and, as it were, apologize for it before enlightened Europeans or Russian Westernizers. Ignorance and complete lack of education in the ecclesiastical sense are the only reasons for an arrogant attitude towards the liturgical rules of the Orthodox Church.

But perhaps an even more important advantage of our divine services will be revealed if we pay attention to its inner content. In its inner content and even in its external presentation, Western worship is extremely poor and amazingly mediocre. No matter how much I read Western European liturgical books, I only strengthened my low opinion of their content. In Western worship there is no theology, there is little thought at all. But there is too much in it that is extremely disgusting for me, sentimental, some kind of familiarity with "Jesus". Our divine services are directly saturated with theology, and theology at that, the purest and most sublime. After all, most of our church hymns were composed in the period of the patristic daring of theological thought, sometimes composed by great theologians, for example, St. John of Damascus, this greatest religious poet. After all, only we have "dogmatists" in the divine services. Do you remember, my friend, on Christmas Eve I wrote to you about the distortion of the Christian understanding of life that has become established in Western theology, both among Catholics and Protestants: it speaks of redemption, of liberation from punishment for the offense of sin to the truth of God. Christianity turns into some kind of senseless trade deal with the Lord God. When our school theology fell under the harmful influence of Western theology, then we began to philosophize in the same way. But at the same time I wrote to you that the ancient Church theology was imbued with completely different ideas. The idea of the renewal of human nature, the idea of its deification through the incarnation of the Son of God, prevailed there. Sin is not a crime, but a disease, a corruption of nature, which is intrinsically connected with suffering, while liberation from sin, from corruption, gives bliss. Virtue itself is bliss, and sin is suffering. And it is remarkable that in our divine services one encounters these thoughts at every step. Our divine services are the living element of the ancient ecclesiastical patristic sublime theology. Whoever is in any way familiar with the early Church teaching on salvation will hear echoes of this lofty teaching in almost every prayer, in almost every sticheron. It is not in vain that the "Epistle of the Patriarchs" says of our liturgical books that they "contain sound and true theology." Yes, my friend, if our Eastern Orthodox worship is compared with the Western one in terms of their ideological and theological content, then our superiority will be indisputable. The West, especially the German, Protestant, rejected the deep hymns of the ancient Church's inspired hymn-writers and began to use the rhymes of its own masters. In the West, not only did school theology break with church truth, but also the divine services themselves. The West has discarded the beautiful heritage of antiquity and replaced it with its own misery. This is characteristic of any prideful heresy in general: I want my own, even if it is bad. Look at our sectarianism, at this fiend of the West. The Triodion and Octoechos were rejected and replaced by Mr. Prokhanov's mediocre translations from German and English. Have you seen, my friend, the sectarian collection of hymns "The Gusli"? In "Gusli" I am directly upset by the ideological poverty, theological stupidity, general lack of talent. Consider, Friend, and agree with me, that the East is richer and wiser than the West in its service to the Lord God.

Compare, Friend, even the outward form of our liturgical hymns with that of the West, and again the undoubted superiority is on our side. What breadth, what a flight of thought and imagination in our hymns! Read the dogmatics, the stichera for the Annunciation, the service of Holy Week, remember the kontakion of the Nativity, the Trinity, the Intercession, and much more! If all this is appreciated only from an artistic point of view, and then, I think, it is impossible not to be delighted. Western liturgical hymns cannot be compared.

Turn your attention, my friend, even to the melodies. I cannot say that I have heard much secular singing, but I have heard something; only it could never make such an impression on me as our church singing. I sincerely pity You, my friend, that You know little about church singing and value it little. And secular singing seems to me just poor and boring. Western church singing is significantly different from ours. In our church singing, two elements dominate: the majestic and solemn and the touching "with sweet singing". Even in our sacred Osmoglas, it is possible to distinguish these two elements. Compare, for example, the third tone with the eighth. The stichera are self-voiced, usually majestic and solemn; the melodies "on the like" are for the most part touching and touching. Now I am writing to You, my friend, about "self-voiced" and "similar" and I involuntarily think: "But for your Friend all these are empty words!" And all this can be learned in monasteries, because in parish churches, especially in Moscow, the worst melodies of various "composers" have now taken hold. These melodies offend and indignant me, but various monastic melodies always delight. The singing of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, our Gethsemane Skete, the Zosima Hermitage ("Bless", "Blessed is the man"), the Optina stichera - what a luxury, what delightful music! In Western singing, I am especially struck by the dominance of plaintive motifs. These pitiful motifs prevail in the West even where triumph thunders in our country. Have You, Friend, heard, at least in a Polish church, how they sing "Holy God" there, especially "have mercy on us"? And how is this same angelic hymn sung among us, for example, at the hierarchal mass? And here, in my opinion, is a very significant fact: the West is very proud of its culture, its freedom, its education, and they gather in a church or a church and whine pitifully with some kind of slavish spirit. Yes, in Western Christianity (if you can talk about it) there is a slave spirit. Theology and church practice there instill in man that he is a criminal worthy only of the punishment of Divine justice. For centuries, it is the slavish spirit that has been brought up in the West in the sphere of religion, and therefore the melodies there are plaintive ones. I involuntarily drew a parallel. Rich, cleanly dressed, self-satisfied Westerners will gather in their church, sit on the benches and... they sing piteously, as if criminals are begging for mercy. And with us, gray Russia with knapsacks on its shoulders will gather for pilgrimage to the holy monastery, crowd into the church, barely able to stand, and loud triumphant melodies rush from the kliros, as if a victorious army is marching forward. Yes, my friend, Orthodoxy is the faith not of slaves, but of freemen, not of mercenaries, but of sons, not criminals, trembling awaiting execution, but of ascetics militant against sinful passions, to whom crowns of Incorruption are prepared in Heaven.

Letter Five. Orthodoxy in the West

In these July days, in my solitude among the deserted academic buildings, I often recall, my dear friend, how in the July days a few years ago I also visited Russian Orthodox churches on holidays in various Western European centers. First of all, I remember that a Russian church in the West must be searched for, and it is not entirely easy to find it. For some reason, Russian churches are everywhere in European capitals, somewhere in the backyards, in some alleys, far from urban centers. I'm not talking about resorts, where half of the population was Russian in the summer. I am talking about the capitals. Only in Geneva is the Russian church visible in the general view of the city from Lake Geneva. I wandered around Vienna for a long time, looking for a Russian church; it is not easy to get to the Russian church in Paris. And in Berlin you will not find your native church at all; there is only a house church at the embassy on Unter den Linden. How can you go to the embassy! The embassy building is huge and imposing, but there is not much room for a church. And the real Russian Church is already outside Berlin, in Tegel, where a Russian colony has found a place for itself with its institutions. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit Rome, but I was told about the Russian Church in Rome by people I knew closely. Where do you think it is? In a rented room, in a simple house. They say there was such a case recently. The householder did not want to renew the contract with the Russian mission, because the owner of the cinema wanted to pay more for the premises. So, move out with your Orthodox church, take out your altars and icons - the room needs for cinema! It is extremely offensive for the Russian heart to see such a humiliation of their native Orthodoxy!

And where else? In Rome, where Catholicism appears in all its greatness. The deceased - alas! the now deceased Archpriest A.P. Maltsev of Berlin painfully felt the abnormality of the situation of the Russian church in Berlin and dreamed of building a church in the city itself. He has already collected a significant amount of money to make his dream come true. But now, of course, Berlin will not soon be decorated with an Orthodox church. However, I involuntarily think: why should only individuals take care of the construction of decent Orthodox churches in European capitals? Is this not a certain duty of the entire Russian Church and the entire Russian state? After all, they find it necessary to spend considerable sums on the maintenance of embassies. They are trying to furnish the embassy in accordance with the greatness of Russia. Why not take care that the church at the embassy is worthy of the Russian Orthodox name? And sometimes it seems that there is some kind of deliberate neglect here.

Why our churches are usually driven into some remote alleys, I also do not understand well. In our country, the non-Orthodox who live do not act like this. In Petrograd, on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the Kazan Cathedral, both Catholic and Protestant churches are themselves striking. We also say about this: "Look how the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral is open in the direction of non-Orthodox churches! As if the Orthodox Church has opened its arms to Catholics and Protestants!" And I involuntarily have an addition to these words: "Only the heterodox back away and seem to shrink from the Orthodox embrace!" In the same Petrograd, look from the Trinity Bridge in the direction of the fortress and Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt. You will see how even the Peter and Paul Cathedral is lost in comparison with the dome and patterns of the oriental carpet of the mosque. The Trinity Cathedral - small, old, low - could not stand the neighborhood of Mohammed and burned down.

That's how it is with us! For other people's churches - a better and more prominent place! And we ourselves in the West climb with our Orthodox churches somewhere far from enlightened European eyes, somewhere in a more remote alley.

And the very divine services in churches abroad have their own peculiarities. I will not say that these features are desirable. Seven years ago, I had to perform the duties of a psalmist in the Orthodox Church of Vienna on a festive day. At 10 o'clock in the morning we began to serve matins and soon reached Liturgy. While I was reading the hours, the singers gathered on the kliros. The liturgy began. I saw that the singers sang well, skillfully, although there were not many of them. Suddenly I noticed that our choir director was speaking to his singers in German. Could it be the Germans? They began to sing something musical. I looked at the notes of my neighbor, a blond tenor - the words of the chant are signed under the notes in Latin letters. I asked the choir director who his singers were. It turned out, indeed, not Russians. My neighbor is German, the other singers are Czechs, only there are no Russians except the choir director. In the same way, there is only one Orthodox choir director, and all the singers are Catholics. How do you like it, my friend? Orthodox people in a foreign land have gathered in their native church, but the heterodox, even the Germans themselves, sing to them what they do not understand.