- Is there an official position of the Church regarding cryonics?

- There is no official position. If the body of an already deceased person is frozen, it is either a medical experiment (which is not bad), or a business (which is not good). If the body of a sick person, but not yet dead, is frozen, this is euthanasia, and here the Church is against "soft murder."

This is about the assessment of the actions of doctors. As for the patient, by agreeing to his freezing, he signs his disbelief in the life of the soul outside the body, in life after death, as well as in his disbelief in the resurrection of the dead. Of course, if the priest knows that he is invited to perform the funeral service for a person whose body will go from the church to the refrigerator, because the deceased hoped not for the life of the future age with Christ, but for the progress of science, the priest will not perform the funeral service for such a person. Why bid farewell to a person in Eternity, if he did not want to go there?

- How do you perceive AIDS from a spiritual standpoint, as God's punishment or a devilish invention?

- In the "Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate" for 1985, there is probably the first mention of this disease in the Soviet press. It was about some kind of ecumenical meeting in the West, and among other things, the author wrote: "And also, the participants of the meeting were informed that a new disease called EIDS had appeared, which affects sinners." The author of this article clearly wrote about this with disbelief. I also experienced a surge of disbelief when I first heard about it: well, there can't be a disease that only affects homosexuals, prostitutes, and drug addicts! That would be too obvious a miracle! When it turned out that this was really so, the first reaction was shocking: perhaps this is really some kind of God's punishment. And regardless of its origin, even if we follow the version that this disease did not arise naturally, but was created in a laboratory. But in Christianity, any illness that enters my life is from God.

From God means, first of all, that it is not from the devil. The most stupid and primitive reaction is to believe that the pain that has entered my life is from the devil. From this begins the search - who brought the curse, who cursed. Spirals of hatred begin: self-justification, condemnation of others, fatal suspicion. The clergy never welcomed this. If misfortune comes, then have the courage to say that it is the Lord who puts you in such conditions, and you must grow through this pain.

And it is not necessary to say that every illness is precisely a punishment sent from God for sins. Everything is more complicated in the world of our faith.

Yes, it happens that illness is the result of sin. I'm not talking about the vulgar sense - let's say, syphilis turned out to be the result of a drunken night. We are talking about something more hidden and therefore more serious. As the English writer C.S. Lewis (converted to Christianity by Tolkien's preaching) said, "God whispers to us with the voice of love, speaks to us at the top of his voice through the voice of conscience, and cries out to us through the megaphone of suffering." It happens that illness, pain comes into a person's life because he used to cause the same pain to other people.

But still, this is not the "law of karma". The effect here is not a copy of the cause. Any sin, especially a sin that is established and inveterate, is a falling away from God. And where can one fall away from God, who is the source of Life, the source of Meaning? - This is a fall into the world of dying, into the world of agony. Illness is the first convulsion of agony.

And yet, it cannot be considered that any disease is a punishment for sin and a consequence of sin. The Church's teaching (Synaxarion), traditionally pronounced on the fourth Sunday after Pascha (the "Sunday of the Paralytic"), says: "For it is not every illness that comes from sin, but also from natural illness, and from gluttony and uselessness, and finds many others."

In Kiev, recently Metropolitan Vladimir besieged some priests who were too "spiritual": "In Kiev, there are some clergymen who practice proofreading, without any blessing from the ruling bishop or diocesan confessor. These are serious things, you can't play with it. They aggravate the delusions of our believers, or rather even unbelieving people, that any illness is already a demonic possession. Everything is equated to this: success or failure, itchy left ear or right, even bad or good mood - already from the devil. In this way, there is a perversion of the Church's consciousness. Yes, indeed, the demon is a real force, the demon is a rational force, a dark force that exists in reality and acts within the framework of the Lord's permission. But the demon is not yet the main leadership of the entire church people. And it is not worth ascribing to demons such broad opportunities as some priests give them. Whatever happens - everything is from the devil, let's proofread. Because people like it, it's profitable... Such an attitude is unacceptable for both young and old priests. It is unacceptable because it provokes the people and leads them astray. This is truly a demonic delusion. Proofreading should be done very carefully. Yes, there are prayers of St. Basil the Great, there are prayers in the service book for the exorcism of evil spirits, but, I repeat, to attribute everything without prayer from beginning to end to a demon is a very harmful delusion, which spreads mainly among the young clergy. This is what is called young eldership."256

Many things in our lives come not from our past, but from our future. The Lord can give illness so that those people who are next to you can heal their souls in the experience of caring for a sick person, in the experience of compassion. Or maybe the Lord touches the pain so that your soul changes in this experience. So that later, on the other side of the illness, you would be able to contain more than you were able to contain before the illness. So it is very important for a Christian not to succumb to the provocation of linking other people's illnesses with other people's sins. If, having fallen ill, I say: "Yes, Lord, I accept what is worthy according to my deeds," then this will be a normal formula, a moral one. But if I walk up to another person that's sick, and say, "You're sick. It means that there were sins in your life and you are paying for them" - then it will be vulgarity. A healthy person has no right to condemn a sick person, no matter what disease he has.

Christianity is an ethic with a double bottom: I have no right to do to others what I should do to myself. According to Academician Averintsev, Christianity has created a truly virtuoso culture of appreciating one's own guilt. I must forgive others, but I have no right to forgive myself. I should not look for the sins of another person, even if he is in misfortune, but if a misfortune has happened to me, I should think about my sins.