The Last Judgment on God

II. JOYS AND SORROWS, THOUGHTS AND SENSATIONS

My Paradise and My Hell (the Meaning of Life and the World)

Sorrowful also for the hearts of the cherubim,

Condemnation to immortality

Cry for Christ

III. WATERSHED

Maeterlinck before the Great Silence

Dostoevsky as a prophet and apostle of Orthodox realism

About the paradise of the Russian soul

On the watershed of crops

Easter and the Serbian Immortals

On the Inviolable Greatness of Man

IV. SORROWS AND DESIRES

Swarming of infinities

On the terrace of the atom

Tick revolt

Down the noisy waterfall of time

She is an irresistible seductress

Chamois in Paradise Lost. Confession.

For the first time, the Russian translation of a series of philosophical and lyrical essays by the outstanding Serbian theologian and patrologist of the twentieth century, Archimandrite Justin (Popović), who is well known in Russia, is published. The author traces the paths of human thought to the acquisition of the truth about the world and man, paved, on the one hand, by humanistic philosophy, and on the other hand, by the Orthodox philosophy of the God-Man. Archimandrite Justin reveals these two paths to the reader in the teachings of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, the philosophy of Materlinck and Dostoevsky, the ideology of Western man and Russian and Serbian saints.

An amazing fusion of theology, philosophy, artistic narration and lyrics, cast in a special language and style, has few analogues in modern Christian literature. The translation, carefully edited and, if possible, collated with the original source, is aimed at a wide range of readers interested in Orthodox thought and spirituality.

From the Editors: when typing the text, for ease of reading, quotations from the Church Slavonic translation of the Bible are duplicated with text from the Russian Synodal translation, with brackets, and quotations recommended for comparison, placed at the end of the book, and for convenience, are linked by hyperlinks.

Editor's Note

Archimandrite Justin (Popović) (1894-1979) is one of the greatest figures of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the twentieth century, who in 1993 was glorified as a locally venerated saint and is deeply venerated in the Orthodox Balkans. Father Justin came into this world and left it on the same day – March 25 (April 7), on the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos.

Father Justin for many years was engaged in teaching at theological seminaries in Yugoslavia and at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Belgrade. In 1948, he retired to the monastery of Celije (western Serbia), where he was engaged in creative, translation and publishing activities until the end of his life.

Archimandrite Justin left behind a rich theological, philosophical, and hagiographic heritage, which is based on the three-volume Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church, or the Orthodox Philosophy of Truth (1932-1978) and the Lives of the Saints in twelve volumes (1972-1978). He is also the author of a number of major scientific studies and philosophical works: "The Problem of Personality and Consciousness According to St. Macarius of Egypt" (doctoral dissertation, 1926), "Philosophy and Religion of F.M. Dostoevsky" (1923), "Progress in the Mill of Death" (1933), "Primary Theology" (1939), "Dostoevsky in Europe and the Slavs" (1940), "St. Sava as a Philosophy of Life" (1953), "Philosophical Abysses" (1957), "Man and the God-Man" (1969), "The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism" (1974); a number of unpublished commentaries on the Holy Scriptures (the Gospel of Matthew and John, the Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul, St. John the Theologian) and translations of liturgical texts into the Serbian language used by the Serbian Church (Holy Liturgy, Trebnik, Prayer Book, etc.). Many of Archimandrite Justin's works have been translated into Greek, French, and Russian.

"Philosophical Abysses" is a collection of philosophical essays that combine the features of preaching, parable and scientific research and are filled with a strong lyrical beginning. These essays reproduce the path of human thought, trying to comprehend the structure of the world, the meaning of life and death, "crashing in the rocks" of humanistic philosophy and finding peace in Orthodox philosophy. Lyrical in genre, this work is poetic, figurative, rich in metaphors and artistic in language.