A "trial" edition of the liturgical texts in the Slavonic language in a new edition was made and published in a small edition shortly before the Local Council of 1917-18, but never reached the majority of Orthodox churches. The discussion about the liturgical language, which unfolded at the Council, also remained unfinished. Further events are well known: the attempts of the renovationists to Russify the divine services and the rejection of these attempts by the church community. Such attempts are resolutely suppressed in our days by the people of the Church, who stand guard over the Church Slavonic language as a stronghold of churchliness.

All this, however, does not remove the problem of the incomprehensibility of the Church Slavonic language, from the solution of which we cannot escape. For all that is rightly said about the need to preserve the Church Slavonic language, it is also obvious that the divine services are called to be understandable; otherwise, it loses its edifying power. The liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church contain a wealth of theology and moral teaching, which should be accessible to people. After all, it is obvious that in the epoch when the Byzantine liturgical texts, which are still in use today, were created, they were understandable, if not to everyone, then at least to people of culture.

The question is by no means reduced to the translation of the divine services into Russian. We are talking about a much more global task facing the Russian Orthodox Church, first of all before its theologians. This task was clearly formulated by His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia:

The Slavonic language is not understandable to everyone: for this reason, many liturgists of our Church have long raised the question of translating the entire range of liturgical texts into Russian. However, attempts to translate the divine services into modern colloquial language have shown that the matter is not limited to the replacement of one vocabulary with another, some grammatical forms with others. The liturgical texts used in the Orthodox Church are the heritage of Byzantine antiquity: even when translated into modern language, they require special training from a person... Therefore, the problem of the incomprehensibility of the divine services is not limited to questions of language, which, of course, must be posed and resolved. We are faced with a more global, truly missionary task—to teach people to understand the meaning of divine services.450

One of the means for fulfilling this missionary task is a new edition of the Slavonic text of the divine service. The work begun on the eve of the Local Council of 1917-18 must be continued. His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II says in this regard:

... We must think about the organization of the liturgical life of the Church in such a way as to make it possible to revive the educational and missionary element of this life. In this connection, we will pay special attention to the work begun but not completed by the Local Council of 1917-18 to streamline liturgical practice, and we will bring to an end the editing of the Slavonic liturgical texts, which was also begun in our Church.451

Will these words of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church come true?

Obviously, the question should be raised whether it is permissible to use the Russian language for at least some parts of the divine services (in particular, for the Gospel, the Apostle, the Psalter). The Local Council of 1917-18 answered this question as follows:

The Slavonic language is the main language of our divine services. In order to bring our church services closer to the understanding of the common people, the rights of the common Russian language for divine services are also recognized... The partial use of the common Russian language in divine services (the reading of the word of God, individual hymns, prayers, the substitution of individual words and sayings, etc.) in order to achieve a more intelligible understanding of the divine services with its approval by the church authorities is desirable at the present time.452

When deciding on the reading of the Psalter in Russian, the following difficulty will inevitably arise: the Synodal translation of the Psalter, made from the Hebrew, differs markedly from the Slavonic translation made from the Greek. Obviously, in the event of a decision on the possibility of liturgical use of the Russian Psalter, it is necessary to translate the Psalter into Russian from Greek (similar to the translation made at the end of the 19th century by Professor Yungerov). All these questions are not easy to answer now, in the midst of the struggle against "neo-renovationism," when a very sharp polemic is being waged around the Russification of divine services. But sooner or later they will have to be answered.

Now the primary task is to publish special manuals that would explain the divine services in an understandable, modern Russian language. The text of the Divine Liturgy should be published with a parallel Russian translation; in the same way, the texts of the All-Night Vigil, the divine services of the main Christian feasts, the rite of Baptism, Marriage and other sacraments should be published. These texts should be available in churches in large quantities, so that those who want to know the meaning of the service can follow the service from the book.

Liturgical texts need to be theologically comprehended. There was a need for books that would reveal the dogmatic meaning of Orthodox worship, that would introduce Orthodox believers to the meaning of church feasts.

There is a need for books on the sacraments of the Church, written in simple and accessible language and containing an explanation of the rite of the sacraments. Priests are faced with a paradoxical situation: since there are still a lot of people who want to be baptized, there is no time for long-term catechesis, but there are no books that could make up for the lack of such catechesis. The presence of a small book on the sacrament of Baptism, in which twenty pages would explain why one should be baptized, and then the meaning of the rite of the sacrament would be revealed on another twenty pages, would greatly facilitate the life of both parish priests and those who are preparing for Baptism.

Thus, it is obvious that the Church needs to develop a strategy of educational, catechetical, missionary work, which would make the treasury of Orthodox worship accessible to people in its entirety. Without this strategy, it is impossible to fulfill the "global missionary task" of which His Holiness the Patriarch spoke.