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.

One more example. There is a wonderful person in the United States, Archpriest Vincent Severino, an Italian by birth, a cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church (the parish where Father Vincent serves does not belong to the American Autocephalous, but to the Russian Orthodox Church). Father Vincent's elder brother is a Catholic bishop, and he himself, Father Vincent, has been an Orthodox man since he was sixteen years old! Raised in a Catholic family, in a very strict tradition, in a very ecclesiastical environment (it was no coincidence that his elder brother became a bishop), the future Father Vincent decided to become an Orthodox man at the age of sixteen. We do not know his deeply personal reasons why he became Orthodox, while he does not break with his relatives, he continues to be friends with his brother and is attentive to his advice, while at the same time choosing the path of Russian Orthodoxy in America.

But such a choice, such a decision is possible only on one condition – when we, Orthodox people, do not incline ourselves aggressively against representatives of other faiths, against representatives of other traditions! Because in the event of our aggressiveness, they will not cast any glance even in the direction of Orthodoxy! If our grandfathers and great-grandfathers in the 19th century had been as aggressively disposed as we are sometimes today (which can be judged especially by publications in our press - in such newspapers as "Sovetskaya Rossiya" or "Rus Derzhavnaya", etc.), then Father Clement Zederholm would not have come to Orthodoxy, he would have been frightened at the first stage. he would not even be able to be interested in the faith to which he would then come.

The same applies to Father Alexander Schmemann, and Father Vsevolod Shpiller, and Metropolitan John, and, moreover, I am sure that Father Vincent Severino would not have come to Orthodoxy if Vladyka John Shakhovsky had not been there, if Father Alexander Schmemann and other people who were absolutely open to people and the world had not been there. Other people, whose experience attracted him to such an extent as the experience of the road to Christ, that he took such a serious step, despite the fact that his environment was purely Catholic and quite traditional, became Orthodox at the age of sixteen (I emphasize!).

The path to Orthodoxy of Father Clement Zederholm was very similar. To some extent, the path of Vladyka Luke is similar, and it is also surprising that his old father, Pan Felix Voino-Yasenetsky, who lived to see his son's episcopacy, accepted his son (when Vladyka passed by the city where his parents lived, and saw his old parents for the last time in his life) precisely as a bishop! This is also a great victory for our faith! A great victory of the purity of Paschal joy, crystallity! And such a victory is possible only when we treat our brothers and sisters – Christians of other confessions – without irritation, when we do not accuse them of sins they have not committed.

Or here is another example: Dr. Fyodor Petrovich Haass. Formally, he remained a Catholic until the day of his death, but he was more often seen in Moscow Orthodox churches, and on the kliros, where he sang along with the singers. And as a publisher, this wonderful rich man published books for the Orthodox: the Gospel in the Slavonic language, a Slavonic prayer book with our prayers, which we read in the morning and in the evening. Working and laboring in Russia, he worked for the Orthodox Church and within the Orthodox Church, although formally he was not yet in the Church.

As for the fact that some of our boys and girls, today's schoolchildren, today's youth, students come to Christ in Protestant churches, I am deeply convinced that it is only a matter of time. Yes, very many people today come to Christ through Protestantism, but two, three, four years pass, and these young people, these boys and girls, who came to some new, Protestant confession for meetings in the cinema, go to an Orthodox church and become Orthodox. Others come to the cinema in their place, then another two years pass, and these others disperse to Moscow Orthodox churches. Moreover, very many of those who were Protestants three or four years ago are even becoming Orthodox Christians of monastic orientation. And to these Protestants, to this most notorious cinema, new people come again. The late Archpriest Father Gleb Kolyada once said very well: "Protestantism is the first grade, and it is very good when a child enters the first grade, but you cannot remain in it throughout your life." Therefore, I do not have any irritation towards those Protestants who exist in Russia today, because they help those people who would never have come to church in any other way, in the end, to find their way to an Orthodox church.

The paradox is that the majority of Protestant preachers are not ardent supporters of the Orthodox faith. Moreover, some of them are wary of Orthodoxy, some almost with rejection, some are simply indifferent, but I think that there are no people among them who are passionate about Orthodoxy. And despite this, the Lord wins! The Resurrected Christ wins His Paschal victory! Having received the Gospel from the hands of people who are not particularly open to Orthodoxy, these boys and girls in two or three years open up to the Orthodox faith, come to an Orthodox church and ask to be united to our Holy Orthodox Church. I am a witness to many such destinies, and a very deep, I repeat, truly deep growth into Orthodoxy of those people who began in Protestantism. Therefore, I have no hostility towards Protestants, although in many respects I always argue with them and argue uncompromisingly.