Love, overcoming the line that morally separates one person from another, thereby overcomes the individuality of responsibility and voluntarily takes on the burden of someone else's responsibility. This is the true, sublime meaning of the Substitutionary Sacrifice. Christ takes responsibility for our sins and calls us to do the same, to do the same: to take responsibility for ourselves. The phrase I have just quoted is taken from the wonderful book by Semyon Ludvigovich Frank "God Is With Us". This book was published in Paris, by the YMCA-PRESS publishing house, whose activities are directed by Nikita Alekseevich Struve.

Today's evening broadcast, at five o'clock, we, together with Father John and Father Ignatius, devoted precisely to that ugly article in which Nikita Alexeyevich is called a "sorcerer", called a "magician" and "destroyer of Orthodoxy and Orthodox morality in Russia." Therefore, here is another proof of the inconsistency of the arguments used by the authors of the brochure "Antichrist in Moscow" – the book "God is with us", an amazing book by an Orthodox thinker, published so far only in Paris, only by the YMKA-PRESS publishing house, and not by any other publishing houses. So far, I do not know that it has been published by anyone in Russia, Radonezh or any other companies that publish books.

Christ helps us to overcome alienation from each other, helps us to overcome the evil that reigns in the world – through love, He helps us, first of all, by those who stand among us – so defenseless, so vulnerable. And in His defenselessness, in His vulnerability, it is He who remains the winner. Remember the painting by Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge "Christ and Pilate". Who is the winner here? Christ, in his washed tunic, or clean-shaven, perfumed, well-eaten Pilate, dressed in a luxurious toga? Of course not, Jesus. Jesus, who did not sleep all night, with unkempt hair, in His patched tunic, He is the Victor here, because He shared with us the fullness of trouble, the trouble from which mankind is choking. He is among us, wherever we are: where it is bad, where it is bad, where there is trouble, where there is despair. It is there that He takes us by the hands and leads us through the jungle of trouble, brings us to the light, supports us where no one else will support us.

There are only a few days left before the Pascha of Christ, but these few days are filled with amazing pain and, at the same time, amazing wisdom. It is important, very important, every hour, every moment during all this time, to be close to the One who guides us through life, to be next to the One who strengthens us in an amazing way, next to the One who gives us a new vision of the world, a new vision of life around us – with Jesus.

On Christian generosity

RADIO CONVERSATION BY FR. GEORGY CHISTYAKOV

16.04.96

(cassette 7, side B)

Among the Christian virtues, there is such a virtue as generosity, alas, far from being the most widespread. At the same time, how we suffer, how people around us suffer, how the Church as a whole and our life in general suffer from the fact that there is little generosity in us! I want to give you one example of our "non-generosity". These are the harsh attacks that we often hear, especially now, against the heterodox or against Christians of other traditions. Now it is customary to say that they are on the offensive, it is customary to say that they have too many churches, parishes, communities. At the same time, when one compares the situation today with the situation before the revolution, one is convinced, and one is easily convinced, that in former times there were much more Catholic churches than there are today, and there were also much more Protestant communities than there are today. A few days ago, Nezavisimaya Gazeta published statistics on Russia, which clearly show that there is no Protestant aggression in Russia today.

Why did I connect this topic with the theme of our Christian generosity? Because in Russia the air itself is Orthodox! In Russia, both Catholics and Protestants, absorbing this air over time, become Orthodox. Take, for example, St. Archbishop Luke, a remarkable ascetic of our century, a great surgeon, scientist, professor. The archbishop's father was a Catholic, his mother was Orthodox, but the bishop inherited his faith in Christ from his father, because (he speaks about this in his memoirs) his mother, although Orthodox, was an unbeliever, and his Catholic father was a pious and believing Christian. Vladyka Luke took his faith in Christ from his father, but at the same time he became an Orthodox and then an Orthodox archbishop.

Look at the names of many of our wonderful priests: Father Vsevolod Shpiller, Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Father John Meyendorff, Metropolitan John Wetland of Yaroslavl and Rostov, Archbishop George Wagner. And Father Vsevolod Shpiller, and Metropolitan John Wetland, and Father John Meyendorff, and many, many others came from German Catholic, Lutheran, and Minonite families. Many of them had grandparents who were not yet Orthodox, and some of them themselves, some in the person of their parents, accepted the Orthodox faith, because they lived in Orthodox Russia, because they delved more and more into the traditions of Orthodox Russia. And not because they betrayed the confession of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, no, for a completely different reason: simply, having absorbed the treasures of Orthodoxy, at some point they took their final step towards the Orthodox faith.

And now, when I am talking about this, another figure comes to my mind – this is the Optina Elder Father Clement. His name was Sederholm, and he was the son of a Lutheran pastor, a very pious man, and, as Father Clement himself emphasized, he learned Christian piety, love for the Word of God, from his father. But when he came into contact with the Orthodox faith, he was pierced by its depth! It is depth – the versatility, the multi-layered nature of the Orthodox tradition. And so, having been taught the faith in the Lutheran confession, he became an Orthodox monk, then an Optina elder and became one of the great ascetics of our last century. It's really an amazing path. A path that shows that it is impossible to push away Christians of other confessions, that it is impossible to declare them heretics, distrustful, enemies of the true faith, that they cannot be declared people who knock honest Russian Orthodox Christians off their pants, no, everything is much more complicated.