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.

Generosity is a great blessing, generosity is a great gift from God! If we are more generous to each other, we will learn to avoid those pits, those dangerous places on the road of life, because of which so many (in the spiritual sense, of course) break their legs, break their arms, break their necks. Nervous, psychological, spiritual breakdowns, of which there are quite a few around us, very much stem from the fact that there is little generosity in you and me, that we do not know how to accept the other. If they knew how to accept the other, the fate of this other would have turned out differently. It may well turn out exactly as the fate of St. Archbishop Luke developed, as the fate of Father Alexander Schmemann, Metropolitan John Wetland, or Elder Clement, whom in the near future we will glorify as one of our venerable fathers.

FR. GEORGY CHISTYAKOV

ОТВЕТЫ НА ВОПРОСЫ

ПОСЛЕ РАДИОБЕСЕДЫ «О ХРИСТИАНСКОЙ ЩЕДРОСТИ»

16.04.96 г.

(кассета 7, сторона В)