No, I quit a long time ago. I tried to be a doctor and a priest for six months at the same time, and nothing worked: it is incompatible simply in time. At I had a full practice that took all day, and then becoming second priest in the parish, I had to be free to respond to the needs of the parishioners, when they appear. And I chronically had such a situation: I now have to to serve in the church, I have ten sick people who need to be visited: it means that I am in front of the if I do not go to them, but people stand at the door of the church and also have some rights, but I don't ... And I was guilty all the time, and in the end it becomes boring to be always guilty before everyone: at least sometimes to be A glimpse that you are not to blame! As a result, it would be necessary to have two lives each day. In fact, it would be a wonderful combination. I think it's possible, for example, as it used to be in Africa or such undeveloped countries, when a person could have been engaged in both as if in parallel, but in the Parisian situation it was turned out to be impossible for me personally.

In addition, I did not consider it fair that when a person calls for a doctor, as a priest would enter secretly; I thought it was fair to separate these two areas: An unbeliever has the right to have only a doctor come, nothing else. I wanted To say that I feel: I have no right to come to a person and begin with him to preach the faith, he has the right to see me as a physician without me he pressed on him: "Oh, you're in bed, you have a broken leg, you don't care about me if you leave, let me preach to you"... We had one such surgeon in Paris who he abused this: as soon as the patient got to him, he lay in bed, he could not escape Maybe he is on it with his faith. And, in my opinion, he did not convert anyone, because people were indignant that he took advantage of the opportunity, violated them freedom of conscience.

For a believer, it is the same that you are a doctor, and an unbeliever wants only to have medical relations, this could create difficulties. This has not yet created difficulties, because I was known as a priest for too long, but it could to create. But the main thing is that all the time was simply spent on medical care work, from seven in the morning to midnight: what to do with the rest?

A physician, whether he is a believer or an unbeliever, must heal only the body, without touching the person as a person?

No, I think a doctor should treat the whole person, because even in bodily illness, a colossal role is played by the mental state of a person, his the determination to live or his refusal to fight, and there is no such area in man that For a doctor, somatics is indifferent. Of course, there are specialized areas, For example, not every somatic person should treat mental illnesses, because it is requires specialization, but the same applies to the departments of somatic diseases: one deals with nervous diseases, the other mainly with other diseases. But I It seems that the doctor's task is to penetrate into the whole person and, as it were, to use all his strength for recovery – all his psychic power to excite, sometimes to revive. It would simply be professionally unwise to say: "I'm interested in your muscles and bones, but what's going on inside is not," because it is becoming more and more evident what a huge role they play in the disease states of mind.

At the bedside of the dying, questions arise: why? What to do? Someone feels On the other hand, there are young people (and not only young people) People are voluntary helpers, for example, in hospices...

It seems to me that illness and suffering are given to us by God so that we could be freed from such attachment to life, which does not give us the opportunity to look to the future with openness, with hope. If everything were completely, we would not have the courage to depart from this perfection. But after all, The perfection that we have on earth is so far from that fullness, that we can receive in God!

And it seems to me that people who have been ill for a long time need help in two ways. First of all, in what I have just said, it is to help us realize that I am God now it frees me from captivity, gives me the opportunity not to be attached to life, which is so painful, painful, gives me the opportunity to look into another side — to the side where there will be no more pain, suffering, or fear, where the door will open and I will find myself in the face of the Savior Christ Himself, Who I went through all this myself. For Christ, by His own free will, entered into a life where death reigns, and suffering, and the loss of God, and by the way of our death, as if taking upon Himself all our human nature and mortality, returned to the realm of Divine eternity is the only way that frees us from everything that makes us captives, slaves.

And the second (and this seems to me very important): when we are seriously ill or go to death, those around us take care of us, and a person who is often sick worries about the that he became a burden to others. This is what the sick person needs to be dissuaded of. He did not become a burden. He gave some people happiness with the opportunity to show their love, their humanity, to be their companion through the last period life — into eternity. The sick must be persuaded that while they were healthy, strong, they cared for others, helped them, not necessarily in illness, just in life; Now they can receive from these people the love that they themselves sowed in their souls, and give them the opportunity to show their love and their gratitude. When we refuse the help of others during illness, we refuse them deprive us of the greatest happiness — to love us to the end. This is not necessary Our relatives are any person who responds to us.

I think that if one who cares for the dying could perceive what is happening to him, just sit next to him and do not contribute anything yourself, but only to be the most transparent, silent, as deep as possible, then probably he I would see how this man is at first blind to eternity, as if closed from eternity his flesh, his physicality, his humanity. Gradually, all this becomes more transparent, and the dying person begins to see another world. First I think a dark world, and then suddenly the light of eternity. I experienced it once: asked to sit with an old woman while she died. It was so obvious that At first she set sail from temporary, bodily, social life (she was very immersed in earthly life: she was 98 years old, and she came from the depths of her bed was engaged in its own commercial enterprises). And then gradually it went away, And suddenly she saw a dark world, a demonic world... And the light came into this world God's world, and this whole demonic world was scattered, and she entered into eternity. I I can't forget it, I was young then, I was a medical student of the first or second year, and I still have it.

Therefore, those young people who care for the sick, in addition to the fact that they give the patient the opportunity to accept love with gratitude and openness, which is given to them – this is very important – can sit with them at the moment, when the patient can no longer tell them in any way about what he is now sees or feels, but to know that the transition is now taking place, and to be with him This is time, the time of transition.