Is there even the slightest reason for that unbridled merriment with glasses of wine in their hands and dancing, with which the so-called "New Year's Eve parties" are usually arranged in our time, in which serious people, as if in themselves, suddenly lose all seriousness at these "meetings" and become, as if frivolous rakes, take part?

Is this worthy of a high Christian calling?

After all, it seems that it should be clear to every true Christian that the only permissible and appropriate "celebration of the New Year" is to meet it with prayer.

And this is all the more so since with each new year it becomes clearer and clearer to any still healthy and undarkened consciousness that humanity is not moving towards "progress," but on the contrary – towards "regression."

Isn't it the same "progress" that promises general well-being and well-being, that all kinds of extraordinary machines and devices have been invented, and that soon, perhaps, people will be able to fly to the moon and other planets?

Does this give well-being and well-being, peace and spiritual satisfaction to the human soul?

By no means "progress," but a terrifying religious and moral regression, with an ever-increasing undermining of all the eternal moral foundations, of which other religions were not devoid of besides Christianity – this is what vividly characterizes the modern life of people!

And even this extraordinary revival of the Church's inter-confessional life, which has never before been observed on such a large scale in the history of mankind, not only does not speak of any "progress" and does not inspire any hope for the "universal peace" about which so much is now being shouted, and for a better bright future, but, on the contrary, testifies to the complete decline of genuine religious life, to the fact that that modern people have become indifferent to everything, and they no longer have any real ideals. Everything here is reduced to insincere, sugary, hypocritical, pompous words, which have no real, essential content behind them.

There is no longer any real faith, but only its appearance, which does not bind a person to anything, does not impose any responsibility on him.

But if all these "ecumenical conferences>, "congresses", "conferences", "symposia" were simply an empty pastime, a kind of entertainment for those who gather at them, with a mutual tickling of vanity and self-love, it would be only half the trouble.

Behind all this, however, lies something much worse.

The goal of all this modern, now so fashionable movement, set by "someone" and systematically carried out, is to infuse into souls complete religious indifference – indifference to the truth – to kill love for the truth which our Lord and Saviour came to witness to earth, in His own words (John 18:37), for the truth which the holy Apostles so selflessly, fearlessly preached throughout the world. for which the holy martyrs died, for which the holy fathers of the Church fought so resolutely and uncompromisingly against heretics and false teachers.

And now, in the twentieth century of the Christian era, everyone's eyes were suddenly "opened" for the first time, and it turned out that, in fact, "there is no truth" and "there was nothing to fight, suffer and die for", but it was simply necessary for everyone to "forget all their previous differences" and... unite.

Indeed, an extraordinary "progress" to which our ancestors did not reach for so many centuries, among whom there were so many truly pious Christians that we no longer see!