This also explains Metropolitan Pitirim's defiantly witty response to the note "How should I address you?" which Vladyka received in 1988 at one of the first meetings of the Soviet intelligentsia with representatives of the Church (as far as I remember, it was in the Central House of Writers). After reading this note, Vladyka smiled and answered: "Call me simply: Your Eminence!"

So, if a person does not have special reasons to emphasize his non-churchliness, then it is better not to use such appeals, which for a clergyman still have a worldly, and, therefore, profane, understating connotation. When people ask me how to address me, I answer: "Usually I am addressed by Father Andrei, more formally by Father Deacon. My patronymic name is Andrey Vyacheslavovich. You can handle it as it is most convenient for you." I add this last sentence to relieve some of the embarrassment of people who are much older than me. After all, here the question is not so much about respect for the individual, for the person, it is a question of attitude to the rank, to the service to which the person has devoted himself.

In general, this is a matter of etiquette, not dogma. To put it forward as a pretext for separation from the brethren and the Church means to keep only in one's mind, and not in one's heart, that strange text of the Apostle Paul, where he says something about the mutual relations between fasting and non-fasting[132]...

In addition, from a purely linguistic point of view, it is necessary to distinguish between naming and addressing; These are different classes of words. In the Gospel we are asked not to call anyone on earth a father (and it is obvious that this does not apply to the real father), that is, not to recognize anyone's paternal rights – and these rights in the East at that time were very extensive. Addressing with the use of so-called "kinship names" is a common thing in all languages: we simply determine both the age relationship with the interlocutor and, almost imperceptibly, our attitude towards him. In fact, which address is more polite – father or uncle? Mother or aunt? Isn't it better to live in a society where boys are called son, and not boy? The normal use of a normal linguistic means can in no way be blamed on the Orthodox. And the fact that we respect our priests and therefore address them accordingly is our right. The Gospel did not take it away from us.

Why is Orthodoxy worse than Protestantism?

The paradox is that practically all the accusations that Protestants make against Orthodoxy are applicable to themselves.

For example, Protestants accuse the Orthodox of preaching too little. But the Protestant mission does not know successes similar to those known by the Orthodox mission. As far as I know, for all their missionary enthusiasm, the Protestants have not succeeded in incorporating into Christendom a single nation beyond those who were converted by the Orthodox and Catholic missionaries. Those peoples and those countries that are still considered Christian were so even before Luther. Over the past centuries, Protestants have managed to tear several peoples away from Catholicism (but I repeat: these peoples became the Christian efforts of pre-Protestant missionaries). Protestants (to a degree quite comparable, and sometimes inferior to Catholics and Orthodox) managed to create fairly large communities in many previously pagan countries. But they could not convert any country to Christ in its entirety. Protestants do not know successes similar to the mission of Cyril and Methodius or the feat of Equal-to-the-Apostles Nina, the enlightener of Georgia.

Today, Orthodox Christians make little use of their own experience. But this experience is there. To become a missionary, it is not necessary to leave Orthodoxy for Protestantism. Moreover, if we put the question of missionary work in a theological perspective, if we think about which of the confessions has potentially richer missionary and "instructive" opportunities, it turns out that it is in Orthodoxy.

Protestantism chose one form of preaching: preaching through speech, appeal, story. Orthodoxy, recognizing and practicing the same verbal preaching, is also able, for example, to preach in colors. What is the name of the greatest Russian Christian preacher of the twentieth century? Who brought the most hearts to Christ? Who, in the darkest years of state atheism, stirred the souls of thousands of people again and again and turned them to the Gospel? No, this is not Father Alexander Men, not Metropolitan Nikolai Yarushevich, and not Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. It is clear that this is not Billy Graham either. This is Andrei Rublev. His icons, as well as the "black boards" of other ancient iconographers, disturbed souls with their striking eyes, did not allow them to finally drown in the streams of atheistic mockery of the Gospel and Russia. Empirically, in fact, thousands and thousands of fates have proven that an icon can be a sermon. Why do Protestants, who are concerned with preaching, not use this method of addressing people?

And how many cases have there been when a person who could not be convinced by the most intelligent and skillful preachers repentantly changed simply from standing next to the priest, from his one word, from the warmth and depth of his eyes?! [133] It is not only words that can bear witness to Christ. So much light of the heart can be accumulated in a person that through his goodness and kindness people will recognize the Heavenly Father (cf. Matt. 5:16): "It was the presence of this tangible, obvious gift from above, that is, the super-ordinary human gift, that raised an indescribable excitement around John of Kronstadt: people reached out to him not for help for themselves, not because of their weakness, not in the midst of their suffering,  – they reached out to him as a living testimony of the heavenly powers, as a living sign that Heaven is alive, divine and grace-filled" [134].

As A. Bergson remarked, "the saints only exist, but their existence is a call." Here is an example of such a call from the life of Francis of Assisi. One day Francis said to a novice: "Let's go to the city to preach." They walked and talked quietly among themselves all the way about spiritual matters. We walked through the whole city, turned back and so reached the monastery itself. The young brother asked in surprise, "Father, when are we going to preach?" But Francis said, "Haven't you noticed that we have been preaching all the time? We walked decently, talked about the most worthy subjects, those who met looked at us and received peace and tranquility. After all, preaching consists not only in words, but also in behavior itself."

Monasteries, separated by walls from the world – are they not preaching to the world? How many people took the step from excursion to pilgrimage when visiting Russian monasteries? We went to the "state museum-reserve", and came to the Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra and were surprised to find that it is possible to be a Christian even today. Is not the preaching of Christ the ringing of bells? [136] Does not an Orthodox church preach Christ – even with a sawed-off cross? Does not the priest who walks through the city in a cassock remind us of Christ? Do not the old Orthodox cemeteries preach the resurrection of Christ? After all, even children's baptisms and funeral services for old parents, condemned by Protestant dogmatics, are not for many the first contact with the Christian world and the first prayer to Christ? Vladimir Zelinsky has a testimony about the preaching of the Divine Service: "Most often, the educational function in our country is performed only by the divine service, the chant itself, the prayer structure or the warmth radiated by it... No one calls to the Orthodox Church, they come there themselves."[137]

The Orthodox tradition of preaching is in fact no poorer than the Protestant one, it provides even richer opportunities for missionary work than the Protestant one. And the fact that we misuse these opportunities is our sin, but not of Orthodoxy. "A careless, sluggish will, a heart alien to living pastoral zeal, a superficial and lazy mind try to see in all more or less persistent calls for the most active and intense evangelism something 'inspired from outside' and 'alien to our ancient foundations', 'you know,' they say, 'there is a little smell of the West here...'. Does it smell like the west here?! West?! So it is the "West" that says that evangelism is our necessary duty, that in the absence of a real organization of church preaching, the religious life of the people will die out? That without a serious catechesis of the flock, our divinely beautiful divine services will remain in vain, misunderstood, unexperienced, and the Holy Mysteries will be marked like beads under the feet of pigs? So, I ask, is this 'the West'? – What, then, is meant by the 'East', what is the organization of pastoral work? Tell. No, no, gentlemen uninvited defenders of the "East," do not slander Orthodoxy, do not impose on it a pagan attitude towards the people in matters of knowledge of God, do not elevate your carelessness and your soft head pillow to the dogma of Orthodox pastoral practice. I do not argue that this may correspond to your temperament and your routine of life, but it is terribly contrary to the essence of Orthodox Church pedagogy... Never forget that since the Tsar Bell fell and stopped ringing, it has turned into a simple historical antiquity-curiosity... The Ustav, as is known, at one all-night vigil indicates up to 7 cases when it is necessary to address the people with this or that instruction," wrote the missionary priest even before the revolution[138].

Protestants also see the defect of Orthodoxy in the fact that the Orthodox have somewhat devalued the Gospel by seeing in the works of the Holy Fathers and in the acts of the Council a kind of continuing revelation of God. The Gospel is sufficient for salvation, and if someone adds or subtracts even a word from it, he sins mortally. The study of the Gospel is the only way to resolve theological questions. Yes, Orthodoxy does believe that God did not cease to reveal His will to people after the last apostle put the last point in his book. Yes, although it is impossible to speak of the Divine inspiration of the books of the Fathers, we still feel the Divine enlightenment of the pages of the Holy Fathers. Through consonance with the Gospel, we establish whether the Holy Father wrote something from himself or whether he was moved by the same Spirit that acted in the apostles. But does not Protestantism build its own "tradition"? Are not Ellen White's books, with her thousands of fully spiritualistic visions (very similar to the voices of Helena Blavatsky and Helena Roerich), accepted by Adventists as the foundation of their faith, as obligatory and authoritative doctrinal literature? [139]. And was Protestantism itself born simply from the study of Scripture, and not from some mystical experience? A word to Luther: "How often has my heart trembled, how often have I been tormented, and have made to myself the only very strong objection of my adversaries: Are you the only wise one, and all others have erred for so long? And what if you err and deceive so many people, who will all be condemned to eternal punishment? And this continued until Jesus Christ strengthened me with a certain Word of His and strengthened me to such an extent that my heart no longer trembles, but despises these objections of the papists. So the religious life of Protestants is not limited to the study of the Bible.