I gave a lecture at the House of Journalists under the program of public Orthodox lectures. And after the lecture, a film crew from the Soyuz TV channel came up to me: a girl and a guy in his 20s to take an interview. I thought that they would ask about something that I understood better than they did—well, for example, about biblical texts. But the questions turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, I would like to get an answer to them myself. "There are a lot of young people in the hall, what attracted them here?" they asked me. And they added: "Why is all this important for young people at all? Why does she need it?"

Of course, I wanted to answer another question: why do we need youth, why does the Church need them? I know the answer to it, and how can I not know: all people are mortal, if there is no change of generations, we will simply die out like dinosaurs. Though... after all, you can also come to the Church in different ways. In Khrushchev's time, there were practically no young people in the church, it was too dangerous: they could be expelled from the Komsomol and the institute, they could not be given a decent job. It is worth looking at the photographs of those times to see that there are almost all pensioners in the church.

However, even to this day, in many churches, the basis of the parish is elderly women. So, they came to the church just in the Soviet years? And grew old in the Church? Not necessarily. Usually it was like: youth, middle age - a time of activity, work and creativity. And by old age, as soon as you retire, as adult children scatter around the world, it will be time to think about your soul, to pray to God. At the end of the Soviet regime, new people constantly came to churches, and most of them were not young at all, but those who had already done everything in this life, and it remained for them to repent of what they had done.

In short, even if the young do not come to church today, this does not mean that they will never come to it. They will live, console themselves, understand how much a pound is worth, and then in their old age... But for some reason, I don't like this prospect at all. In the Soviet years, everything was clear: they deliberately tried to make the Church a community of illiterate old women, since it was not possible to get rid of it. But today there are more and more young and children's faces in the churches of big cities, and pensioners are already in the minority, and they themselves feel it, they themselves are no longer so much teaching young people as learning from them: after all, today's people are literate, not like we once we...

And in this, in fact, I see hope for good changes in our church life. When people come to church to repent for the life they have lived, you can't change it... And then it turns out that Christianity is tired and disappointed, a kind of quiet refuge in the declining years. But if a young person comes to the Church, he, on the contrary, wants to live this life with God in order to change something in himself and around him, and this is a completely different matter! True, it often turns out that parish life itself is already set in a different mood, that, in fact, all that is expected of him is to grow old and calm down as soon as possible. But when there are a lot of young people, this trick does not work so easily with them.

I myself was baptized as a 17-year-old freshman a quarter of a century ago. This, of course, was an escape from the dull late Soviet reality, from total propaganda, from the senselessness of official communism. We, students of the 80s, came to the Church literally at random, because there was nowhere else to go. And the beginning of our church life was largely determined by whom we would meet in the nearest church, who would talk to us or, on the contrary, who would refuse to talk. How many disappointments, how many mistakes then stemmed from simple ignorance... Prayer books were copied by hand, and there was nowhere to get the Bible at all.

Today, the situation has become completely different. A person who comes to faith makes a conscious and thoughtful choice, he can get access to any information, meet with a variety of people, visit any parishes. And most importantly, he grew up in completely different conditions, he was used to personal freedom. One can argue for a long time and persistently about how things are in our country with democracy and the rule of law, but there is no doubt about something else: in private life today a person, especially a young one, is quite free. He is not driven to party meetings or prayer services, and he is very high. In fact, he appreciates his freedom, although he does not always think about it. It's like air: while we breathe it, we don't think about it, but if we start to lack it, it is impossible not to notice it.

And so I came to the answer to the question that was asked to me: why do today's young people need all our lectures, all our publications (including this article itself)? Of course, it is up to her to decide, but if someone comes to lectures, it means that someone needs them. As usual, I say to them what I would have liked to hear myself at the dawn of my Christian life, which I lacked so much at that time. What exactly?

First of all, this is a conversation about... meaning of life, if you will. Or, more precisely, about its meanings. Usually, a person who comes to church begins to be taught forms: do this, and that, and that... For some time, he learns, and sometimes even very actively. But the question inevitably arises: why exactly do this? The symbolism of the divine services, the Church Slavonic language, ascetic rules and dogmatic formulations become clearer, but they do not necessarily become closer to this. What is all this for, for what?

И самое интересное, что дать какой-то общий ответ тут просто невозможно: смысл своей жизни и отдельных ее частей каждый человек может открыть только сам для себя, и что пригодится одному, то может помешать или навредить другому. И все, что я могу сделать — это помочь другим людям в поиске смыслов. Помочь им встретиться с тем главным, что есть в христианстве.

Для меня это, прежде всего, Священное Писание. Оно обращено к людям любой эпохи, но в разных эпохах оно может пониматься не одинаково. Христос говорил притчи о рыбаках и пахарях, о винограде и овцах — о том, что окружало его слушателей буквально на каждом шагу. Мы все, конечно, знаем, как растет виноград и как пасут овец, но для нас эти образы уже утратили свою живость и конкретность — очень мало кому доводилось своими руками подрезать лозу или нести к стаду отбившуюся овечку.

И это еще простой случай. Гораздо сложнее бывает современному человеку понять что такое, например, жертва и почему всё, произошедшее на Голгофе, описывается как искупительная жертва за грехи человечества. В те времена каждый человек, иудей равно как и язычник, видел множество жертвоприношений и участвовал в них сам. Он прекрасно понимал, в чем суть этого события, почему оно так необходимо людям, и когда он слышал, что на Голгофе совершилось главное и окончательное жертвоприношение, он понимал самое главное без посторонней помощи. Но когда об этом говоришь современному человеку, он недоумевает: а зачем? Неужели нельзя было как-то иначе обойтись? Приходится объяснять.

Цель моих лекций и статей, в конечном счете — убрать подобные барьеры, подвести современного человека к реальности древнего и вечно живого текста, показать ему, что говорит этот текст людям нашего времени, а не только древним рыбакам, мытарям, фарисеям и прочим людям со странными именами и устаревшими профессиями. Нужно ли это слушателям и читателям, каждый решает, конечно, сам.

Но мне отчего-то кажется, что смыслы жизни — это одна из главных вещей, которую ищет современная молодежь. Да, желанны для нее материальный достаток и карьерный успех, многое кажется ей стильным, крутым и всякое такое — но всё это обычно легко взвесить и измерить, на это можно заработать. Суть не в этом. Как двадцать лет или как двадцать веков назад, перед людьми, вступающими в жизнь, встают всё те же вопросы о смысле и цели, и каждое поколение ищет свои ответы. Да что там поколение, каждый человек их находит… или не находит. Если всё, чем мы, якобы умудренные опытом люди среднего возраста, можем с молодыми поделиться, поможет хотя бы некоторым найти свое место в этом мире, и нам к тому же окажется с ними по пути — значит, не зря мы всё это писали и говорили. Ну, а судить, насколько удалось — действительно, им, молодым.