The temptation of this era is the poorly assimilated Byzantine heritage, which gives rise to the sacralization of the kingdom and national messianism: "Moscow is the Third Rome." The temptation was overcome, if not always in the consciousness of the faithful, then at least in the deep consciousness of the Church, at the Great Council of Moscow (1666-1667), which condemned the Russian "Old Believers," the adherents of the kingdom of the "White Tsar" and legalistic Christianity, the religion of the letter, the law, the rite, etc. Weakened by this schism, the Russian Church was unable to prevent Peter the Great from abolishing the Moscow Patriarchate and replacing it with a Synod. ruled by a lay government official. The XVIII century is a tragic period for Orthodoxy: in Constantinople, the patriarchate becomes a toy in palace and ambassadorial intrigues; in Russia, the Church is enslaved by the state, which has imposed severe restrictions on the life of monasteries.

The Renaissance came at the junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to a new awakening of "hesychasm." From Athos to Greece, from Greece to the Romanian principalities, from Moldavia to Russia, this movement paves the way, which found its expression in the compilation and translation of the Philokalia, an extensive anthology of mystical theology, permeated with a special luminous spiritual experience. In Russia, this renewal is combined with the need for contemplation, rooted in the very midst of the people, especially among women, and in the Greek world, beginning with Cosmas of Aetolia, with the social service and enlightenment of the people. On the threshold of the nineteenth century, Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, Paisius Velichkovsky, and Seraphim of Sarov, as if in opposition to the emerging triumph of the naked mind, testify to the radiant experience of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, an exclusively personal and charismatic vocation to the "eldership" ("elder" – geronda in Greek) is awakened. Among the laity, the "spiritual father" spread the "Jesus Prayer" and was a mentor who helped others to carry out the feat of prayer in the modern world.

In the nineteenth century, the Christian peoples in the Balkans gained independence, and thanks to it there arose national Churches, which, however, are not free from traces of the ecclesiastical nationalism that corrodes today's Orthodoxy like an ulcer. The Council of Constantinople of 1872 branded it as vainly as unequivocally under the name of "phyletism." And yet, the encounter with the West and, independently of it, the renewal of the spirit of "Love of Love" caused an active awakening of Orthodox thought. The Fathers of the Church are translated into Russian and Romanian; Philaret of Moscow constantly relies on them in his sermons; The Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, united around the Patriarch of Constantinople, warns the Pope against the dogmatic definition of infallibility, insisting that the truth is preserved by all the people of God; Khomiakov and the Slavophile thinkers determine the main directions of the ecclesiology of conciliarity; finally, in prophecies and insights from Dostoevsky to Berdyaev, there is also a overcoming of modern atheism... When, in Dostoevsky's novel, the murderer and the prostitute, having opened the Gospel, read the story of the resurrection of Lazarus with tears in their eyes, we feel that here, as if for the first time, the Christian word is addressed to a modern atheist. And every Orthodox believer pronounces the same words, likening himself to a thief and a harlot, when he dares to approach Communion.

Industrial civilization and the analytical and utopian systems of thought generated by it have fallen with all their force on Orthodoxy, which is already poorly adapted to the modern world. It retained its spiritual prophetic basis among the clairvoyants, but among the masses it remained archaic. Slavophilism tried to build an Orthodox "conciliarity", but the reforms, and above all the reforms of Alexander II, which could have contributed to this, were not brought to an end, and Slavophilism itself slid into a lost rural idyll, unable to turn its face to industrial civilization, posing its own problems and gaining momentum in Russia at the beginning of this century. In Greece in the Ottoman era, the Church breathed life into the existence of independent communities, it was able to unite them, to reveal their beauty, but the pro-Western elite of independent Greece either did not know the life of the people, or neglected it, which gave rise to disintegration, which sometimes turned into frenzy. And therefore it is understandable that communism – not as a science, but as a messianic utopia – found a deep response among the peoples, first of all in the Russians, who had gone through immature secularization and subconsciously preserved the Orthodox hope of the Kingdom. It should be said that the clash between communism and Christianity in Russia, and later in the countries of people's democracy, was purely spiritual in nature. The Orthodox Church in these countries, without associating itself with any economic and social system, simply unconditionally accepted the new socialist order. But by virtue of this very position, burdened, it is true, by a certain servility (which can only be judged by those who know from experience the laws of survival under a prolonged totalitarian regime), the Church has revealed the very essence of the problem, which is primarily the problem of the purpose of man, who accepts or rejects the world of the spirit. In the interval between the two wars, the Russian Church experienced the most terrible persecution that the history of Christianity has ever known. Thanks to her civic loyalty, without concluding the slightest compromise in the doctrinal plan, she received very limited rights of citizenship in Soviet society. She was granted only freedom of worship as opposed to freedom of anti-religious propaganda, and therefore her uninterrupted prayer service remained the only and striking testimony to herself... A new attempt at strangulation, not bloody but ruthless, in 1959 and 1964 clearly failed, although it entailed the closure of many churches...

At the same time, the dispersion of millions of Orthodox Christians of all nationalities, especially Greeks and Russians, in our century has given Orthodoxy an undeniable geographical universalism. In Paris, Russian religious philosophy bore fruit and imparted new impulses to Western thought. Vladimir Lossky in France, Fr. George Florovsky, and Fr. John Meyendorff in the United States have once again discovered and explained for our time the great patristic and Palamite synthesis. Pavel Evdokimov in Paris and Fr. Alexander Schmemann in New York sought, proceeding from this synthesis and the great search for Russian religious philosophy, to creatively solve the problems of the nascent planetary civilization. In Arab Orthodoxy, the prophetic movement of Orthodox Youth, which spontaneously poured out from the depths of the Christian people, renewed the life of the Church, won the trust of Muslims and is now seeking a solution to the tragic problems of the countries of the Third World, without losing the spiritual meaning of the Orthodox tradition. In Greece, much apostolic work has been done by Orthodox brotherhoods, but the present regime controls and strengthens from the outside certain forms of Orthodox life, which are now in particular need of a new liberation of the spirit. The Romanian Church, which, like the Russian Church, went through severe trials in the 1960s, carried out remarkable work in understanding Orthodoxy at the meeting of East and West. Almost everywhere in the diaspora, but especially in France and the United States, the West seeks to meet Orthodoxy in order to realize and share with it the most essential thing that can unite everyone...

It would not be difficult to sum up this long history negatively: the temptation of religious nationalism, the ethical and political divisions in the diaspora, the general weakness of intellectual work, the lack of freedom in the countries beyond the Iron Curtain, the difficult adjustment to the modern world in Greece, the lack of coordination in the diaspora. But there are two threads that testify to the continuity and invisible fruitfulness of this story, and nothing could break these threads. The first of them is the golden thread of the monks, such as St. Nectarios of Aegina († 1920) and Elder Silouan of Athos († 1938); the second is the purple thread of the martyrs: the "new martyrs" of the Ottoman period, the innumerable martyrs in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s (but in the same years, before the eyes of many people, old icons were "renewed" with an unknown radiance), or the martyrs of Serbia during the Second World War. These signs of blood and light always accompany each other, according to the ancient saying: "Give blood and receive the spirit."

Orthodoxy has retained a sense of mystery and has always been reluctant to express it dogmatically. Dogma, in spite of the temptations of the fallen mind, which confuses or divides and strives for possession, preserves within itself the incomprehensibility of the Living God, Who, through love, becomes accessible to our whole being, and not only to reason. That is why the dogma is built on antinomy and glorification; it organically enters into the liturgical doxology and into the realm of reality that is revealed by contemplation. As they used to say in the old days: "A theologian is one who has pure prayer, who has pure prayer, is a theologian." In the heart of Orthodox thought and spiritual life lies the Paschal joy: God incarnate, God crucified, conquered death by death. He allowed hell and death – these two forces, inseparable from our lot here – to take possession of Himself, and like an insignificant drop of hatred He dissolved them in the blazing abyss of divine-human love. The glorified body of the Lord is woven from our flesh, from all the flesh of the earth, from the immensity of the cosmos, transfigured in Him. After Pentecost, this glorified Body, which is already a new heaven and a new earth, comes to us in the Life-Giving Spirit in the sacraments of the Church, in the Church as the sacrament of the Resurrected One. However, this presence, which embraces and gives life to the world, remains hidden out of respect for our freedom. "God can do everything," said the Fathers, "except to compel man to love." Only when personal holiness is attained is this hidden work of the Spirit visible. Only holiness can connect us to it, and not only us, but everything that surrounds us, "accelerating" its final manifestation in the world.

The Living God, Who gives Himself in the Church, is the Most Holy Trinity. The dogma of the Trinity is the holy of holies of Orthodox theology, and therefore it alone is theology in the true radiance of the Word. He discovers that the Living God is at once the incomprehensible abyss and the fullness of love, an absolute unity that coincides with absolute diversity. God dwells beyond every image and every concept. However, the whole reality of God is revealed in His love, and man finds meaning only in the image of God imprinted in him, in his participation in the Trinitarian Union. Just as one God exists in the Three "Persons," and the number three is not a cipher here, but a sign of absolute difference, of otherness, completed and overcome at the same time, so man, split by sin but gathered in the Body of Christ, is one in a multitude of personalities inwardly illumined by the flame of Pentecost. Personal salvation coincides with universal salvation. That is why the spiritual life in Orthodoxy at its heights expresses itself in prayer that all may be saved, "even serpents, even demons," in the words of St. Isaac the Syrian.

The immutable certainty that faith reveals to us must also nourish our experience. This experience is fundamentally sacramental and liturgical. The Liturgy, on the other hand, is aimed not only at proclaiming the Kingdom, but also at bringing its very real presence closer in the radiance of beauty. That is why the icon is an integral part of the Liturgy. It bears witness both to the holiness of the person and to the mystery of the world to come. It reminds us that God has become the Face, and man in communion with the Resurrected One acquires his true face.

The richest Byzantine liturgy is woven from biblical texts and patristic reflections on them. In poetry, oversaturated with symbols, it puts into events what the Bible says about God, and from His deeds it lifts us up to His bottomless nature. "Lord, have mercy!" – "Glory to thee, O God!" – this is the balance that lies at the heart of the liturgy: the penitent becomes a concelebrant, a "liturgical person."

Therefore, the liturgy was always served in the local language. The Orthodox Church, being multilingual, has never known the phenomenon of a single language similar to Latin in Catholicism. If there is a clear discrepancy between Church Slavonic and today's Slavic languages, it is only because of historical inertia.

Everyone communes with bread and wine, Body and Blood. Children, starting from infancy, are introduced to Christianity (i.e., they receive baptism and confirmation, or rather chrismation, which are merged in one rite) and are admitted to communion. Communion, which for a long time was very rare, despite the renewal in the spirit of the "Philokalia" at the beginning of the century, in our time is increasingly becoming weekly, especially in Russia, where this trend has become spontaneous and massive, or in other countries, where it is combined with spiritual renewal.

Every person is called to spiritual work, in which he must consciously become a being "liturgical, or, in the words of the Apostle, "for all who give thanks." Orthodox mysticism, the mysticism of sobriety, sustained in an ascetic and monastic spirit, remains a norm for all believers (tonsured, i.e., predestined for "inner monasticism" from the very day of baptism) – even if it is not often achieved. Eternal life begins here, together with the "second birth" at baptism, and it reveals itself in all the deaths-resurrections of our existence. This life cannot be anything other than participation – through the "spiritual" body of Christ – in the very life of God and the revelation of everyday existence in the light emanating from the Face of the Risen One.

The path of Orthodoxy is the path of the "commandments of Christ", the Beatitudes: it is the path of humility, poverty, the path of tears and love for enemies; and our nature, with all its passion, is crucified and transformed here, turning into "warmth" – not only of feelings, but of our entire being. Nepsis – vigilance and sobriety and katanyxis – painful sweetness, warmth – these are the key words of this asceticism.