The singers at our divine services sometimes replace all those present and praying. There is a certain difference in the liturgical books: one should be sung by the "face", the other by the "people", that is, by all the people in the church. But in practice, all singers sing. They sing "Lord, have mercy" during the litanies, they conclude the priest's exclamations with the word "Amen," thereby expressing their agreement and like-mindedness with the priest. A truly Orthodox person cannot only listen to the liturgy - he must participate in it. And so, in churches abroad, during divine services, the Orthodox are replaced by heterodox Germans, who are not at all of the same mind with the Orthodox priest. In Russia, since the time of Peter the Great, the Germans have stood between the tsar and the people, and in the West the Germans have even stood between God and the Orthodox people. And what a divine service is obtained with foreign singers! After all, it is difficult to convey Slavic words in Latin letters; It is clear that singers often do not quite well in pronunciation. Even "Lord, have mercy" is bad for them: it sounds like "have mercy." From a distance, of course, you get a certain illusion of Slavic singing. Yes, when they sing something musical, then often even among Russian singers you cannot understand the words, only sounds and musical intricacies remain. I then talked to the blond tenor. He turned out to be a rather free-thinking Catholic. He praised the Orthodox services, saying that he would not mind converting to Old Catholicism, but he was afraid of losing his service. Before the Orthodox mass, he had already sung a service somewhere in a Catholic church. In a word, it turned out that he was some kind of inter-confessional singer. I asked the choir director why he recruited singers from among Germans and Czechs, and I heard from him a not particularly flattering characterization of his compatriots. "I tried," the choir director told me, "to recruit Russians, but they are only unhappy: they are lazy, careless, you can't call them to the rehearsal. It is better to deal with the Germans. First of all, the people are quite intelligent. Did you see a blond tenor standing on the kliros? After all, the Doctor of Philosophy, yes, in addition, has a special musical education. Let the words be signed in Latin letters, let him sometimes limp in pronunciation, but how he knows the notes! Have you noticed how confidently and even artistically he sings! There is almost no need for rehearsals."

Later I learned that foreign singers and non-Orthodox are the most common phenomenon in all our churches abroad. Once I happened to celebrate the day of my (worldly, of course!) Angel in Paris. I inquired about the time of the service. It turned out that the vigil was served the day before. I lived not far from the temple, at the very end of the rue de Rivoli, behind the Louvre. Something delayed me, and at about six o'clock in the evening I went underground and rushed along the subway to the Russian church. The clock showed twenty minutes past seven when I approached the church. Well, I think I was too late, probably the stichera on "Lord, I have cried" have already been sung. I enter the church. It was almost completely empty, there seemed to be only two people on the kliros. But I can't immediately figure out what they serve. What then? It turns out that they sing "The Most Honest". Soon they will serve! A quarter of an hour passed, and I was on my way back. In the morning, the Liturgy. Now the church is full of worshippers. Alas! You don't feel Russian, Orthodox. The audience is the most Parisian. Ordinary people are not visible, and without the common people, what kind of Orthodoxy! I listen to the singers. I immediately notice that the French are singing. The French are not at all good at Slavic speech. And when they sang "The Most Pious", it was impossible not to smile. It is difficult to imagine what they got out of "The Most Pious". The service was over. They began to disperse. The ladies at the exit had lively conversations about shopping. And I had a feeling of dissatisfaction in my soul. I am standing in a Russian Orthodox church, but I cannot say that there is a Russian spirit here, that there is a smell of Russia here. And they left the church and immediately drowned in the mass of Paris.

See, my friend, how our Orthodoxy appears in the West! Our churches are hidden away from sight, the service in churches is short, non-Russian and non-Orthodox people sing. I don't know about you, but I find this state of Orthodoxy in the West quite deplorable and even offensive. What is this desire to hide so that we are not recognized? And this tendency to concealment is also manifested in the fact that our clergy abroad wear duckweed only during divine services, and at all other times wear secular costume. I saw one venerable archpriest abroad - he wore a full secular suit under his cassock, except for a frock coat. After Mass, he would take off his cassock, put on a frock coat and go to his dacha outside the city. I strongly disapprove of the custom of our clergy in the West to dress in secular clothes. A Catholic priest will not be ashamed and ashamed of his cassock anywhere. And we are too shy. I think, on the contrary, it was necessary to put ourselves in the West in such a way that we would be noticed. I am not thinking of an empty demonstration. No, but our religious proof in the West could also have missionary significance. It is surprising how poorly and how little the West knows about Orthodoxy. For the West, all Christianity is exhausted by Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholics and Protestants know each other, they follow each other, but Orthodoxy does not seem to exist for them. I'm not talking about ordinary people. Even people of theological science do not know Orthodoxy.

In our theological scholarship on Catholicism and Protestantism, one can find the most detailed and versatile information for everyone. One can find entire studies devoted to the history of Western confessions in different periods; other works have as their subject the doctrine and organization of heretical societies. There are entire books even on parish life, for example, in France, or on the mutual relations between Church and state in various Western countries. Our theological professors spend whole years on scientific trips to the scholarly and religious centers of the West. But the West can be reproached for its unwillingness to learn the Orthodox truth. There, too, people of science know many times less about our Orthodoxy than our scientists know about Western errors.

Fifteen years ago, the outstanding theologian of Germany, Professor Adolf Harnack of Berlin, gave 16 lectures at the University of Berlin on the "Essence of Christianity". He devoted one (13th) lecture to "the Christian religion in Greek Catholicism." Strange judgments are expressed in this lecture on Orthodoxy. First of all, it is clear that the most brilliant professor has very vague ideas about modern Orthodoxy. It is not in vain that he refers only to some stories by L. Tolstoy and to his personal impressions. But Harnack could have had these impressions in Yuriev. Well, is it possible to study the spirit of Orthodoxy in the semi-German Yuriev! And it is clear that the Germans have formed a certain template for judgments about Orthodoxy, and the template is very unflattering for Orthodoxy. Harnack, for example, declares that Orthodoxy is something alien to the Gospel, that in Orthodox Christianity religion is a cult and nothing else, our very worship seems to him to consist of only formulas, external signs, and even idols. Traditionalism, intellectualism and ritualism - these are the characteristic features of Orthodoxy according to Harnack. It seems to me, my dear Friend, that in the West there is no longer a deviation from Orthodoxy, but a complete ignorance of Orthodoxy. The Lord commanded the Apostles to go and teach all languages. In fulfillment of this commandment of the Lord, we should at least try to enlighten the Orthodoxy of the West with the light. The Catholic Jesuits do not leave without their care, for example, the idle ladies of Moscow and Petrograd. Why should we turn away from the West, giving it the full right to distort Christianity as it pleases, and even hold to ugly opinions about Orthodoxy itself?

An interesting phenomenon can be observed in our theological literature. We have a great many polemical works against Catholics and Protestants. We are constantly at war with them. Polemics penetrate into dogmatic, ecclesiastical-historical, exegetical, and canonical works. It is difficult to say why all these polemical works are composed. We ourselves read all these works, and those against whom they are directed usually do not know them and often do not even suspect their existence. In the West itself, there is a lively polemic between Catholics and Protestants; They watch each other closely. A Protestant scientific book appears, in which the interests of Catholicism are touched upon in one way or another, less than a year passes - you see, on the Catholic side a whole book has been written on the same issue with a refutation of the Protestant one, and critical articles in Catholic journals appear in the first book that appears. And no matter what they write about us, our voice is not heard at all. In our journals, we still respond, in one way or another, but these responses are not heard in the West.

Which of our Orthodox theologians has directly addressed the West itself? One can only point to A.S. Khomyakov with his polemical treatises, written and published in French not for the Russian reader, but specifically for the Western one. He also wrote polemical letters to individual Western theologians. In this respect, Catholics are incomparably more enterprising than we are. At the end of the 1980s, we had several scholarly works against Catholicism, especially against papal supremacy. In response to the Russian language, the papists published in Freiburg an extensive (584 pages) book "Church Tradition and Russian Theological Literature." This is almost the only case in recent times when our polemics were noticed.

So it is in science, in theological literature. It is no different in life. We can see real Catholics and Lutherans in our country. We don't have to occupy Germans in our own country. And what about the West? The West sees Russian people, but Russian people go to the West who themselves have very little to do with Orthodoxy. In some European centers there are many Russians, but they are usually people without any faith; Orthodoxy cannot be judged by these people. In fact, in some European capitals, for example, in Paris, Russians live in thousands. And these thousands on a feast day cannot fill even one church. It is clear that Russians abroad, with small exceptions, of course, are religiously nihilistic. If we judge by such "representatives of the Russian people," then one might perhaps think that the Russian people have no faith at all, that Orthodoxy is not at all a native element for the Russian soul. Such people will say nothing to the West about the Russian popular faith.

Yes, my Friend, it seems to me that we are to blame before the West. Unfortunate historical circumstances tore the West away from the Church. In the course of centuries, the ecclesiastical perception of Christianity in the West was gradually distorted. The teaching has changed, life has changed, the very understanding of life has departed from the Church. We have preserved the wealth of the Church. But instead of lending to others from this undependent wealth, we ourselves in some areas have fallen under the influence of the West with its theology alien to the Church. In recent decades, interest in the Russian Orthodox Church has also been manifested in the West. But who on our part went to meet this awakening interest? There were individuals, and very few of them, and even then in most cases secular people. This phenomenon - I mean the attempts of the Old Catholics and Anglicans to draw closer to us - is, of course, very gratifying, although I personally do not attach much importance to them. But it is interesting to note how these phenomena came to be. They arose not at all because we were able to interest anyone, to convince someone of the advantages of Orthodoxy over Western confessions. No, attempts to get closer to us have a different basis.

The Old Catholics and Anglicans, having torn themselves away from their former soil, felt that something very shaky and unreliable remained under their feet. For example, it is impossible for a few Old Catholics to consider themselves the only Christians in the world. I need to connect with someone. In a purely theoretical way, they remembered that in the East there is an ancient Christian Church, in which there is no papacy, hateful, for example, for the Old Catholics. Getting to know each other more closely, we saw that it was impossible not to recognize the purity of the teaching of the Eastern Church. So, they found us because we were torn away from our soil. So Columbus discovered America, although he was not looking for America, but a new country in general. America is not at all to blame for its discovery. She did not move from the place and accidentally got caught in the path of Columbus. It was the same with the Orthodox Church. She, too, lay motionless, not calling anyone in the West to her. The Old Catholics went in search of a new land, leaving the old continent of papism, and met with Orthodoxy. On our part, however, there was no effort to interest anyone, to win over anyone.

Those foreign churches that I have seen, they are symbolic for me. They are hidden, often completely invisible. Such is the general situation of Orthodoxy in the West. Orthodoxy there not only does not preach about itself, but as if it hides, dresses up in secular costumes so that it is not noticed. In the West, they know little and poorly about Orthodoxy, and the Orthodox do not at all try to say anything about themselves.

And in the end, I still cannot reconcile myself to the fact that in some European capitals there is not even an Orthodox church at all. It would be necessary to show the West in all its beauty the Orthodox service. It would be better to arrange, for example, a whole Lavra in Rome. To build a cathedral at least like our Lavra Dormition. Next to it is a bell tower with thousand-pound bells. The singers would not be Germans, not Italians, but a real monastery choir, which would sing not Italian partes, composed in one evening by some maestro, but our Orthodox melodies, created over centuries in pious monasteries. Let the trezvon reverberate throughout a foreign land (only, probably, it would be forbidden by the police!), let our triumphant melodies be heard under the arches of a real Orthodox church! And near this church it would be necessary to settle learned monks and laity, to whom we would give a special obedience - to proclaim about the Orthodox faith among the heterodox, to proclaim both orally and in print, so that those who are interested in religious truth could not fail to notice this sermon. It would be necessary to say loudly and confidently to the West: "We are Orthodox and are not in the least ashamed of it, even unshakably convinced of the superiority of our eternal truth!"

This, dear Friend, is what dreams I sometimes have! It is unlikely that they will ever come true! For a long time in the West, our Orthodox churches will stand in remote alleys, and strangers, distorting the Slavic speech, will sing liturgical songs for the few Russian people praying to their God in a foreign land!