Father Sergius read poetry. They listened with undisguised excitement - behind every word there was a precise, apt, visible image. And so kind. And so recognizable. An hour and a half of recognizing ourselves, an hour and a half of recognizing God in the poetry of Father Sergius.

He talks about many things with humor. With good humor, without a hint of cynicism. About many things - with sorrow. In the smile of his poems there is immeasurable love for those about whom he writes. He is calm, but not indifferent. He does not give in to talk about how Petrov’s fast is inexorably long these days. He serves in a small Siberian city, came to Moscow for only three days - to hold several creative poetry evenings in order to quickly return home to Minusinsk, where there are only three priests in the entire city. Priest Sergius Kruglov, who has long been loved by many for his poems and correct, clear - bull's-eye - answers to the most difficult questions - spent two creative evenings in Moscow - the OGI club and the Church of St. mts. Tatiana at Moscow State University.

The main event of the Moscow day for Father Sergius is the service of the Liturgy in the Church of St. Mitrophania of Voronezh together with his friend and brother Father Konstantin Kravtsov. “Imagine what joy I have today, Father Konstantin invited me to serve in his church,” Father Sergius said first thing in the morning on the phone, arranging the time for the interview. He returned to this festive Liturgy more than once in his stories. “There’s just one disorder in the bookstore, even if you take part of what you need to read, there won’t be enough money, and there won’t be enough space in the apartment. But what joy we have today – we managed to serve the Liturgy!”

“Today at the sermon I conveyed a bow from Siberia to the parishioners and asked what is the most main shrine Moscow,” with these words Father Sergius begins his poetic evening in the Church of St. mts. Tatiana. “The most important shrine of Moscow is Muscovites, people! Christ rose not for the sake of walls, not for the sake of objects, but for the sake of people.”

Shortly before his baptism, in 1996, Father Sergius stopped writing poetry. Or rather, they stopped writing themselves. Inspiration is gone - there is technology, but no inspiration. Afterwards, he burned all his poems written before his baptism. The break was long - Father Sergius did not write poems for eight years. Now his poetic word is not only a portrait from life, it is a word about Christ. Poems are a word from person to person, therefore, Father Sergius is sure, they can lead a person to faith, if only written from the bottom of his heart.

Father Sergius read poetry. They listened with undisguised excitement - behind every word there was a precise, apt, visible image. And so kind. And so recognizable. An hour and a half of recognizing ourselves, an hour and a half of recognizing God in the poetry of Father Sergius. At the end of the meeting, the little girl asked: “Father, you told us everything, but you forgot to tell us about the kitten that lives with you,” and the grateful listeners did not want to let the priest go for a long time.

Let's take a quick look at Father Sergius' evening and listen to him read poetry.

Antipascha

Fedor Vasiliev and Oblakov_Shtanakh

Not everyone who is blind is blessed.

Not everyone who is thirsty will get drunk,

When the thousand-year captivity

To end, will begin.

But do you recognize Me?

In the intercourse of wine and bread,

In the humility of death and fire,

Thomas with his finger in the sky?

Russia before the Second Coming

There is no repentance—all damnation.
But he persists and waits for something,
The restless one is saved by drunkenness
And the patience of the Russian people.

How can we save our cruel neck,
Suitable for the last line?
Childlike faith: we are not strangers
The Russians will be judged at the Court.

Popov's lyrics

To Father Konstantin Kravtsov, with brotherly love

The Great Entrance shines menacingly.
The pale priest hangs, no one,
Clinging to the Chalice.

But everything will pass, it will go away,
He will be pardoned
He will become light and verbose,
Like a mischievous child who escaped spanking.
Intoxicated by the eyes of the flock,
From the pulpit he will say a speech,
And the halos of the icons will fade.

And the formidable Gates obediently
Let yourself be hung
Catapetasma of everyday life.

* * * * *
humble yourself parishioner!
I am your shepherd
Do you know us shepherds too?
nothing sheepish is alien

(especially the skin)

before giving the initial exclamation
last look
in the altar mirror
(did you forget to trim your beard? – everything is fine
pimple? - not yet ripe
eyes? - the eyes are still shining
calm and calm
burnout light)

“Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadata going
party
mutters in everyday life
as always as yesterday
like tomorrow

Poultry yard

Before the funeral service, the deacon puzzled me with a question: the name “Edward” is written on the note - how should we pronounce it, probably “Eugene”? Why would this be, I asked. But he died, and his family knows that he was baptized long ago, and with what Orthodox name– no one knows... What nonsense, I said. Just call it what it is. The Lord Himself knows what to call him, so why invent something absurd?..

To this the deacon replied that other priests reproach and rebuke him when he like this proclaims out loud names that are not contained in our holy calendar, and how can this be done?

Hmmm, I scratched the back of my head... and advised the deacon: in such cases, you will learn to squeak.

Like this?!!

Yes, just like on TV they squeak if someone uses an obscene word in their speech. So you too shout: “..the departed servants of God: John, Darius, - PIIIIIIIII - Simeon...”

Unicorn

Has life gotten to you?

- come on, push your horn!

Oh, can't you?

did the horn break off?

so you have a second one.

Where? - C'mon!

Humble yourself and admit at least now that how majestic you are, all in white, magical, mysterious heraldic unicorn—

You’re just an ordinary Sidor’s goat, shameless eyes, bought for a buck and butter, all sides are peeled.

Ashamed? - Nothing! With shame, it will be more life-saving.

To the right are lambs

To the left - goats

And there seems to be no place for a proud unicorn

So it stands in the middle

In the harsh spotlight of the Court

My veins are trembling from tension

But he still holds his mark

bit his lip and doesn't cry

So as not to show himself as tears, he doesn’t look at the Judge

And the Judge doesn’t look at him and flips through the Book of Life

And everyone else is silent

Scrolls slowly

Carefully moving your finger

Browsing through the pages

Time is stalling - sorry fool

Yes, only in the Book of Life -

Well, not a single picture

With proud heraldic unicorns

(Other suitable ones, however, too

No pictures:

In the era of honor and lists

Traditions to depict on coats of arms

Animals poor in spirit

Apparently it didn’t work out somehow)

And at that very moment

When flammable

Essentially childish

The tear could not stand it and rolled down

Leaving the ugly wet

A trace on sleek silver wool

The judge slammed the book

Smiled wisely and tenderly

As light as the first rain in April -

And he made a decision.

Spirit Sand

Our fathers
supper in the upper room
Zion ruled.
They drank by the throat
there were vessels,
full every day
wine of the Spirit,
hit the corners
wheezed, instructed
glass roses,
crooked fragments
canons, legends,
brother to brother
into the jugular veins
for one.
The bones were cracking
upper rooms walls
walked around shaking
mixed with yushka,
The Spirit flowed into the sand -
wine of God.

Men are fighting -
don't interfere, women,
there you go, little papa children!

It became quiet in the morning.
The upper room is empty.
The shutter slams.
Draft rusty
whistles down throats
broken bottles.
Mother over the dead
howls in the corner.

Blind children
approached timidly,
we're crawling now
under the table, looking
the shed Spirit,
we are dying, we are thirsty.
We collect and eat
handfuls of sand,
suck out every drop.
And thanks for that,
fathers, grandfathers.

Sand hurts my throat.
Oh...whose fingers, -
I came across it
fumbling in the darkness
predawn,
smooth, orphan,
towards me -
is it you, brother?

Me, brother.
Hold on, honey.
God will not leave:
there is a lot of sand.

Split

Inspired by levkipp*om

little priest
the pointed tips became dull
picking up the skirts of the cassock
fled to blefusca

"who cares -
- calmed his
small
pastoral conscience
-and there
the same Lilliputians"

Cippollino

A young deacon, consecrated on the run,
He wakes up crying: he dreamed
That he served feverishly, among some scenes,
And it smelled of mice, and the stage crawled into darkness.

That he served in sweaty disgrace, wearing only his shorts,
In an orar taped to his shoulder, pale as chalk,
And the voice trembled, and in a destroying answer
The invisible chorus “anaxios!” thundered.

And then I woke up; and shook - where is the heart,
Where's the spleen? - and so the deacon sobbed:
“My scum guides me in the night!
I didn't read the rules, God, I'm so small!

My Christ! Snot is choking me, but I don’t have a clean handkerchief,
Let me go, Lord, there is no day of forgiveness for me, a sinner!
I dreamed that Balsamon’s guards ruled the law: they knocked down, growling,
And, robe after robe, they tore off my vestments!”

And the Lord sat down, consoling: “You onion cleric, you’re not sleeping again!
Well, don't cry, honey, forgive them.
Well, you can’t hold on to either strength or glory!..
Oh, your hands are full of holes - like Mine.

Well, they tore off the surplice, well, the cassock with a beard,
Well, body, soul, so what? still not yours.
It is mine. And the core of the onion - look! - intact,
Here she is! And no one will dare her.

Behold, in order for a child to be born, they rip off the afterbirth,
And his mother is taken off him; and - clean, dirtier than dirt.
So, layer by layer, behind love, love is you
I will clothe you with light, an onion, like My robe.”

Chalcedon, the sign of controversy

The lamps do not go out over the graves of the martyrs.
The evil wind howls in the night,
Fights with tremulous flames,
Evil laughs:
“What kind of God are you if you died!
What kind of a man are you if you have risen!”

The grandson of the executed priest,
First-year seminarian,
Preparing for the exam past midnight,
Fell asleep while sitting.
Chilly brittle shoulders,
A red cowlick, a drop of saliva - that's all
He sleeps in it. Under your head -
Book, history of the Ecumenical Councils.
The boy smiles in his dream: he sees
Like in white and gold, there in the sky,
Cyril and Nestorius
We met and hugged, crying.

Rage helplessly, evil wind!
You are a sign of decay:
After all, God and man are two perfect completenesses,
And when they were reunited
In blood and the radiance of tears - to the world
It became impossible to accommodate them, and the night
It cracked and burst. And into the seams
Morning came.

The ice crunches, March prophesies
Lilac star.
The small town sleepily tosses and turns
In Christ's bosom.

Sleep, it’s still early, sleep, my suffering one,
My vain one!
Soon the alarm clock will explode and go off
New spring.

The sky, like bread, we will break in two -
Blue, height!
Joyfully they will drip from the gray roofs
Blood and water. †

Prodigal son

So I tried not to be anyone's slave,
That he was captured in the land of the deaf and dumb,
And the foamy taste remained
In your, oh my life, translated poems.

Has it been twenty years? yesterday? Today? –
I stood with You, face to face, evilly,
And from the front, as if from hell,
It reeked of intoxicating freedom.

It was a dashing May, and drunk and green,
And you gave me envelopes on the way,
But I didn't believe in postmen then
And he despised the epistolary style.

And here...the day's work is enough for me,
To write on manure with a pitchfork,
And I don’t remember either the street or the house,
And there is no saliva to lick the stamp.

Everything is as it is; only sometimes, at night,
I look into the standing glass of water,
And gray hair, and grief, and eyes
I am becoming like You.

Egory from Skotoprigoryevsk

Ksenia Luchenko

Turn around, son!
(Gogol)

And so our altar boy grew up,
Left us for Big city
And, having completed the first year of seminary there, he arrived on vacation.

Condescendingly walking around the temple, which had become too small for him,
First of all, he struck
Sunday school girls
(Nodding restrainedly to their timid greetings, like the young Tikhonov-Stirlitz)
The polished cut of a black seminary pair.
Then I finished it with a beetroot blush.
The young headmistress of the same school,
After asking if they had opened one yet at the parish
Orthodox youth night club,
And also sympathetically noticing,
It is a popular superstition not to kiss icons during menstruation.
Then, going up to the choir, where the singing was going on,
He listened and chuckled in a low voice: “Tone tenth!...
We call this groan a song!” –
And, shining with gilded glasses,
I read it in an instructive tone to the quiet pensioners.
Lecture on demesnic chant.
Entering the altar, I looked at the icons,
Written in synodal times, it
On which well-fed archangels raised folded
Tufts of white liverworts under the guise of fronds
And gas burners with handles disguised as swords,
Archangels with big-boned, simple-minded, important faces
(Models of unknown gods, honorable burghers,
Long since laid to rest in the loam, under the rowan trees of the local churchyard),
And, curling his lips, he said:
“Hmm!... Skotoprigonyevsky style, degeneration!...
And where is the opposite perspective?
Archimandrite Zinon would be shocked!..”
And finally, when he pointed with an accusatory finger
On a wooden one, painted white,
Dove over the Royal Doors
And he began: “A decadent trend! Even at the Great Moscow Cathedral...",
And the dove in response, unable to resist, accurately and deliciously dropped
On his ironed collar, incidentally
Glasses of glasses splashed, -
He was so offended, so red and cassocked
Tears welled up on fluffy brown eyelashes,
That the old priest laughed:
“Glutton glutton! How big you have become, my dear!”
And, stretching on tiptoe, he kissed the child
Into the unruly, curly crown.

Process

Church wardens, quoting mystics,
They have to catch heretics red-handed.
Heretics, quoting the same mystics,
They try to put snowstorm in the milk of elders
(If fasting, then soy milk, of course).

The process has grown so much
That case files took up two-thirds of the premises
Diocesan Administration. Something will happen.

Mystics are silent. They know:
No matter how things turn out,
All the same, they will have to answer for everything.

Like children in the rain, they stand silently
(When the family was kicked out of the house,
And the adults, vowing revenge, went to the mountains).
IN A DESERT

Leaving the evil, rotten, dying world,
You turned away and went into the sands,
Away from the filth, away.
There, in the desert, you started anew: prayer and fasting,
Heaven and you.
God sighed softly
He picked up the abandoned world and wandered after you.
Getting stuck in the sand
God came and awkwardly adjusted the world
At your feet. When you didn't turn around
He coughed and moved the burden closer.
(So, emerging from the jungle, the native mother,
Without understanding a word in human terms, he puts
A hopelessly bloated child in tropical dropsy
At the feet of the great white man:
Save my child, sahib.)

And what a battle breaks out! In which
Furious despair you two!
They grappled, growling in each other's faces,
The veins are swollen, not a single one will tremble!
Heavenly powers - and those
They hid in horror, afraid to look!

But the world sees nothing. The world is sleeping
In his sticky sleep, his teeth creak - apparently worms,
The sun beats down on the eyelids, eaten away by ringworm;
The world is having a gouache dream:
The sun has six thick rays, white sand,
The Red Sea is azure in the distance,
Pavel - a brown old man - in profile, weaving under a palm tree
A belt of fallen leaves,
Gingerbread raven, amber bread.

AYA EARENDIL ELENYON ANKALIMA

in a suburban forest belt - a victory holiday

good over evil:

there peaceful Tolkien role-players fought with Gopniks

survived, prevailed, tied up

planted at the edge of the forest

wait for sunrise

when the sun turns the gopniks to stone

Tolkienists - all under forty

eleven men and two aunts

everyone has radiant names with only vowels

plebeian language and you won’t pronounce it, you risk

screw up the larynx -

quietly smiling they sharpen

wooden swords

sternly and affectionately in Sindarin

Gopniks are exhorted:

“that’s why trolls, servants of the gloomy asshole, humble yourself

rejoice you will soon

good ornamental stone carnelian

suitable for talismans runes and cloak fasteners

serve for the cause of victory

forces of light!

Gopniks - two out of three are fifteen

one is eighteen - no answer

lying side by side on the grass

shivering from the early morning chill, sniffling

through the holes from knocked out teeth clicking pink viscous

sweatpants are wet from dew

bridged elbows behind the back

blue palms on tiptoe

they listen doomedly: there in the fog

the first train whistled

the sun will rise

Flood Song

Follow me, follow me, cheerful Noah,
Brave captain!
Drive the clockwork boat
Through reefs and fog!

Load your belongings on board quickly
With a dog and a cat,
Fill a straw for the road
With fragrant tobacco,

Load a bottle of wine,
And even more than one,
And take your sons,
And a faithful wife,

And the volume of poetry, and the light of the candle,
And sweet dreams will come,
And the cockroaches that are in the night
There's rustling behind the stove,

Take sorrows and worries,
And dead friends
And all the neighbors who live
On your street

And put the city on board,
All his ashes and decay
(The boat groans, but it will take you -
If only I didn’t give in!..),

And the years that have passed are a heavy burden,
And the death that lies ahead -
Take it while I turn away
Put me in a boat.

Hurry! Otherwise My wrath will come -
And you are standing at the port!
Whatever you take away, let it live.
Whatever you bless.

MOSCOW – THE THIRD ROME

Autumn is a raging fire, but rotten inside.
Golden, but essentially death.
The fire of schism was kindled by Habakkuk,
But it was Filofei who collected the firewood.

Pride has fallen away, humbled to the core,
Yes, it was wet with rain - dirt and ash.

Rus' will come, and the heart is deep,
And in the heart there is dirt to the bottom, and on the dirt to build
not easy
Tower of Babel, third Rome,
Holocaust Museum.
COMMUNION OF SAINTS

We once believed that the halo -
Just a shiny metal disc
With which the head is attached to the board.
We revered the soot of icons as a miracle
And the indistinguishability of colors. Miracles
We did not know. But it happened
The opening of the heavens, the light of the day.

How young you turned out to be!
With our mouths open, we look at you,
How younger brothers, having forgotten the scoop,
They look in admiration from the sandbox
To the white-toothed brother-sailor,
Coming for leave in the spring.
Radiant laughter, radiance of shoulder straps,
Strong arms, the baby flies up.

So that's what purple is - living blood!
So this is what existence is – vohra and sankir!
So that's what gold is - not a metal,
But a living condensation of light! So here it is
What is white!

When you bend down, stand close,
We forget despondency and sadness,
Loneliness, anxiety and captivity, -
Actually, everything that constitutes the subject
Our tearful prayer to you.

“Down with protective Orthodoxy! – many will exclaim. - Down with intermediaries between us and God! God is close to us, now it’s just Christmas - He came into the world, lies in a manger, let me in, let me in to Him, I want to see this Man!” Wait, brother, wait, don’t rush...

7 Jan 2012 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

The decorated Christmas tree, a symbol of Christmas, has repeatedly participated in the turbulent political history of Russia. Following Akhmatova, the tree, if it had the gift of speech, could well repeat: “I was always with my people Where my people, unfortunately, were...”

28 Dec 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

So there was always a sifak in the house, the aunt was a dashing woman, a switchwoman at the station, she drank, she drove men, but she took care of these photographs. And she always prayed at night on her knees in front of them. Her husband was also Nikolai. Don’t understand who I prayed to – either that Nikolai, or this one...

19 Dec 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Rumors about important events spread among the people instantly; people learned that the Belt of the Virgin Mary had been brought, in addition to any announcements, and passed on this news from mouth to mouth. Is the news about a new translation of the Book of Books being passed on from mouth to mouth in a modern language that everyone can understand?

14 Dec 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Here is a person with a whole “bouquet of Abkhazia”, a set: stomach ulcer, pancreatitis, diabetes. Such people come to the priest (whom, moreover, they have known for a long time) and say: “Father! I have sinned! Bless us for milk for Lent!”

28 Nov 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

I see, Russians, you seem to be especially pious: you have built an altar to the Angel of Unworthiness. You should not worship him: he himself will worship you. The Angel of Unworthiness is always late for the morning divorces of the Heavenly Officials: He serves as a janitor at concrete panel entrances...

11 Nov 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

What the priest writes on his blog - what is it? Deliberately missionary message? Is it a church sermon? Or simply human reflections, in which there is a place for both imperfection and doubt, and therefore a place for the opportunity in dialogue to ask for forgiveness and say “I was wrong”?..

28 Oct 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

How passionately gypsies love to take vows. They swear - and then, unable to fulfill it, they go to the temple in horror, saying, take off my oath. The other day a woman came crying. What, I say? - “And I don’t know what to do! And I swore on the grave!...” - On what grave, what is it?! - “And at the grave I swore that I would kill him! I swore by this as a child!..”

5 Oct 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Well, I can no longer, father, seeing all this, continue to repeat along with the monotonous chorus: our children suffer for the sins of humanity, but the Lord, having taken them to Himself, makes them angels... Because there is momentary torment for your child, who flies lifeless into ditch And this momentary torment stretches for eternity.

30 Sep 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

A man came to the temple in the morning. The appearance is identifiable: bluish puffiness, slight stubble, jacket wrinkles. - Here you are serving God... But for example, how can a person stop drinking? Do you have any prayers there, or do you heal in some way?

19 Aug 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Recently one aunt came to confession. She says: I got ready for communion, but I wasn’t at the evening service, I watched the All-Night Vigil yesterday on the Soyuz channel, God forbid, it’s so convenient...

10 Aug 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Pets, our favorites, cats and cats, dogs and hamsters, parrots and veil-tails, our smaller brothers - how much smaller are you compared to us, the great?..

13 Jul 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

I hear a conversation: “Grandma, why do you say Peter’s Fast?” Posting again? Was Lent already, in the spring, when is Easter? - And that was a Divine fast, and this is a human one...

20 Jun 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

- Yes, I don’t mind, I’m glad that he’s from Dagestani, there’s a good, strong family there!.. And he himself is not a fanatic, he treats Islam insofar as. But the daughter... She doesn’t find a place for herself. It would seem, what difference does it make, an empty formality, for the sake of a loved one, for the sake of the future, because this is the most important thing in life! Well, won’t God forgive?!

May 12, 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

I received a response to the article “The Logic of the Cross of Love”: “Why do all the people whom God loved, best case scenario– a sad, and at worst, a completely terrible fate?” Is it really true, as Christianity says, that God is love? How can believers answer this question, and with what? What words?

28 Apr 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Exclaiming on the days of Easter “Christ is risen!”, we sincerely rejoice, but at the same time we cannot help but feel acute anxiety: He is risen, and we?.. Again and again, looking away from the risen and glorified Lord and looking around, we we are wounded to the very heart: how terrible we ourselves are against this background, how pitiful, unhappy, half-dead the nature and the world around us that was once given to us into our possession...

25 Apr 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

When on Great Friday we stand in the temple in front of the crucifixion and listen to the funeral chants, it is not for nothing that we feel melancholy and emptiness inside, it is not for nothing that we are ashamed to raise our eyes to the Crucified One: we remember the love that we have hurt - with our selfishness, indifference, and inattention. Love for your neighbor - not for your neighbor “in general,” not for “humanity,” but for your neighbor who is nearby: husband, wife, children, friend, girlfriend, mother-in-law, grandmother.

22 Apr 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Terrible disasters in nature are a reflection of sinful disasters in man. The created world is coming to an end - but it is you and me who are responsible for the fact that it dies in painful writhing, exhausted, wounded and corrupted by us; in responsibility for the house God built for us, in which we, its owners, sometimes live so mediocrely and predatorily...

22 Mar 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Critics of church life reproach us with the fact that the Orthodox deliberately invented unnecessary things, that once there was no Great Lent, and the first Christians simply and joyfully celebrated Easter...

16 Mar 2011 | Priest Sergius Kruglov |

Every year, some stern and benevolent priest, raising his finger to grief, sternly denounces, whether from the pulpit, from the television screen, from the pages of the church press, the wicked international women's day, and after him no less stern parish activists, who have read well-known brochures, pursed their lips and tightening the knots of their black scarves, they anathematize Clara Zetkin...

“I can’t imagine what to do... Is it stupid to accept the will of God...” And what should the priest answer to this bewilderment of a completely conscientious parishioner? “First of all, I don’t want to die. Never." - what should I say to the strange guy who flies up with such a statement of the problem?

About the everyday life of a priest, his thoughts at the throne and on the way home - A new book poet and publicist priest Sergius Kruglov “Wall newspaper. Notes from a diary", which is compiled from his entries in LiveJournal. We present to your attention excerpts from this book.

A line of people standing in line for the Court. Everyone has a pass: a puzzle, everyone has their own... You look, you look at this life of yours: what nonsense, what futility, for what did you live, like sleepiness and canopy... what bitterness (and belated burning regret, not without a note of doubt, however: it is necessary There was, I guess, a different way to live, for the sake of the “spiritual”?!)... What a meaningless puzzle! A yellow spot, half a blue circle, a dot. And - what's what? Some kind of bullshit! We should throw away such rubbish, but for some reason they ordered us to hold it in our hand, not to lose it... so we hold it.

...And whoever endures to the end will be saved. He will see the whole picture in full.

God's will

Yesterday, in a conversation, one person, undoubtedly a believer and a church member, thinking about how to act in a pressing everyday situation, said: “I can’t imagine what to do... Is it stupid to accept the will of God...” - “On my own,” I say , - did you hear what I said?!” Well, we laughed, of course...

In fact, there are moments in life when inaction is the most difficult and responsible action. Don’t twitch within yourself, don’t extend your desire beyond tomorrow, don’t make plans, don’t set (to whom?.. To whom?) conditions, don’t try to extinguish the smoking flax, break a broken reed... This is possible under one condition: the presence (acquisition) within yourself a kind of silence, full of meaning, a kind of clot of hesychia*. Finding - and carefully holding Him there... Creating a solid place within yourself on which you can step out of the boat after Him, starting your journey across the waters...

Listening

At Vespers, at prayer services, I listen (I try to listen) to the words of the canon, troparions, kontakions...

Why do many people have blank faces and no one listens to what is being sung or read?

Do they sing and read poorly? Why do they sing and read poorly?

"Translate to Russian!" - they will exclaim.

That’s not even the point... I’m not talking about that at all. I mean that experience is concentrated in the prayers of the Church, in bundles of words and images that are now lost to our ears. But - not ours, alien to us. (Not everyone, not everyone, of course! I’m not talking about everyone, not everyone...)

Experience is not “standing-presiding, fasting-prayer” and so on. Life experience.
A terrible experience, by the way.

But we don't have it. (For many of us, I’ll make a reservation. For others, I see that they have it.) We are afraid to live, because... Oh, I won’t go there: it’s scary to even touch...

In other words, I will say: many try to learn life in Christ not from life in general, that is, from real ordinary life, but from these same troparions-rites-rules-canons... They read prayers, but do not live. Simulacrum, in a word. Living in Christ without living. There, in front of Him, one simulates “life” by performing rituals, but here, in life, one does not let Him into life and does not really live oneself. (Just don’t say: “Ah! He’s against rituals! That’s it!” No, I’m not against rituals, they are necessary and full of life, it’s just that we are still strangers to that life...)

Such melancholy crushed my soul from the brief realization of all this...

Basically, I’m saying banal things about our Christian lifelessness... Do you know why they - in blogs, in the media, in sermons, etc. - have become banal and for whom? Not just for those who, in general, don’t give a damn about them, who just happen to chat about them “knowingly”, but also for those who seem to understand their importance - but do not live them.

* * *
When the batteries run out, in the fight against the inexorable absurd world we run out of strength and the darkness of despondency and despair obscures our eyes - it is useful to remember: all this darkness is inside us.

And outside...

Outside, it's just December.

Thought it was important...

About Lazarus from Bethany - nothing is said in the Gospel about his spiritual virtues and exploits, about his special apostolic mission and so on...

Lazarus was simply His friend. Jesus loved His friend Lazarus.

And he resurrected him, already decaying...

Will he not resurrect us too, if he loves us, and we love him?

Will death and decay, sin, non-coincidence, absurdity, suffering, separation, aging, fatigue, the viscous tar of time - dare not let us out of the grave?

Easter is coming soon

Yesterday Sunday at Liturgy, Gospel reading from Mark.

He will have to suffer in Jerusalem, be killed and rise on the third day...

And they - clap-clap their eyes, were silent; a painful misunderstanding... and - again about his own things, with passion, his eyes are burning: who will sit with you? right hand, and who is on the left?

And He was silent (with sadness, probably, and with tenderness - he loves them to death!)... And will you draw the Cup that I drink?

Yes of course, of course!!! What a conversation! At least we are now! (They're jumping up and down, squealing, pushing each other: wow!)

...Children, purely children.

Are we not like that?

That’s all too - we expect something like this from our church-going Christianity... Zykansky. The results are there, the guarantees...

What are the “results”?

Nobody, nobody knows what awaits us tomorrow.

And we won’t avoid anything, we won’t escape “happily”...

Suffering, work, anxiety, illness, loneliness, fatigue, disbelief and disappointment (including in our Church, in its organization, in the foundations, in the healing of various “shrines”, in the “triumph of Orthodoxy” in this world), care or betrayal of children, departure “beyond the line” of those to whom we have become attached, impoverishment of all nature, insanity, old age, death - on the path of each of us, why should we delude ourselves?

Nobody knows what will happen to us tomorrow...

But we all know what will happen the day after tomorrow.

Our Lord, whom we took a risk and loved (some with all our hearts, some with the hundredth part of an unclean, weedy heart), resurrected, bearing wounds in His incredible body (the seal of the fact that to this day He is ours, and we are His), somewhere out there, “ascended”, but in an incredible way remaining with us, so much so that we sometimes do not feel His presence (that’s how much He loves us and our freedom), will come to us again.

We are not the ones who go to Heaven with Him (how many times have we tried to climb into this “heaven”! Now with our imagination, now along the fragile rope ladder of apophase*, now along the card tower of such and such theories, now by bravely riding the next cosmic piece of iron and tea, that on on the dusty paths of distant planets our traces will remain, then somehow, but invariably crashing down, breaking bones, peeling off skin, taking the last brain out of the poor skull) - He, He comes to us, to the poor, polluted, raped, half-dead earth, our God-created holy land! As a Judge or as someone else - what difference does it make, rather, rather, again - with Him!

Arise, shadows!

Everything will be the day after tomorrow, everything that began - can you see it or not? - today!
Christ is risen - and so are we.

A funny picture in the temple today: a tall, tanned, carefully trimmed figure, small black dress, evening jewelry and makeup (this is early in the morning), dress shoes with stiletto heels, on my head - an old lady’s cotton scarf, you know, white with a lilac flower, tied in a knot under the chin... She stood next to the place where I make confession, there is a large icon of Panteleimon the Healer and a candlestick. I looked at this icon, lit a candle, thought... I took out some kind of icon of my own from my purse, small, under glass, took it firmly with both hands, brought it close to my face and began to speak into it, as if into a walkie-talkie, something insistently and demandingly ...

We are all children, such children...

* * *
A guy who is considered mentally underdeveloped... Alarmingly shares something important right away: “First of all, I don’t want to die. Never. And secondly, I want to be saved.”

When I said that the Lord would arrange everything, he beamed openly at me! It was as if the train had burst out of a tunnel on an azure sunny day.

* * *
The priest says to everyone approaching Communion with babies: “Put the baby on your right hand... Hold it as if you were breastfeeding.” A muscular man with a baby in his hands approaches, freezes catatonic and thinks about the recommendation...

Doubles

And a man’s enemies are his own household (Matthew 10:36)…

Who are the enemies? Who is Christ talking about?

The ascetic fathers of the Church sometimes interpret it this way: your main enemy at home is inside you, it is your double.

Your old man, your Cain.

And sometimes, alas, it is you who are the enemy, your new man, your Abel...

There are two of you, but you have one heart, a common one.

The task of the new man is to kill the old one, to kill the enemy, the dark alter ego, Mr. Hyde*, with the weapon of faith and self-denial, repentance and humility, fasting and prayer. Starve him to death, depriving him of the food of sinful passions. Infect with the virus of light and wait for the light to absorb the darkness. Dodge and get hit, bleed, get captured, rebel again and again.

And - to suffer yourself, because doubles have a common heart.

It may happen that by killing his enemy double, the new man, Abel, Dr. Jekyll, will die himself. And it’s not “maybe” - he’ll definitely die. And he will be born again - completely different... To those who no longer have a double, to whom God will give a new luminous name, written on a white stone.

Peace of mind

Acquire, said an experienced person, the spirit is peaceful, and thousands around you will be saved... It is said absolutely correctly.

You and I don’t know exactly about the thousands, but we have an idea of ​​what this very world is within us, this spirit is peaceful. When it exists, it is the Kingdom of God. Or at least just paradise. Or its threshold. When he's not there, it's hell. For ourselves. And for our neighbors through us. Already begun here, in the earthly period of our life, in time...

Any reason can deprive us of this world. From a sudden arrest based on slander to a fly falling into the soup...

Question: what to do to restore peace of mind?

Answer: do not pull, but immediately swallow the hedgehog.

An ordinary hedgehog, alive, with sharp spines...

The hedgehog of selfhood.

I understand that it doesn’t fit into the esophagus, but don’t give up and despair! On the contrary, we must try and persistently push it there. And it will certainly work out; swallowing a hedgehog in this situation is as completely realistic as it is vitally necessary. Perhaps there is no other recipe against the loss of spiritual peace and calming the hell that burns inside us...

Admit your wrongness and repent of selfishness and self-pity... It’s easy to say, but to do it is like death. How not to remember the words of Berdyaev: “Resentment is tattered pride.” The skinned area hurts, and quite a bit.

But when the prickly lump pushes its way inside and falls out, it emerges as a spiritual, excuse me, aphedrone into the outer darkness - then the Life-giving Spirit will pour into this empty bleeding place. In the meantime, while the lump is there, while the self nests there, there is simply nowhere for the Spirit to fit.

Everything in a person is mixed. Both dirt and holiness are right there, in one bottle, and something that is incomprehensible to any mind; and you can’t imagine any wonder when dealing with a person.

You should never idealize anyone or be flattered by anyone. There is no need to be fascinated by a person. You should never be disappointed in a person.

A person must be loved.

* * *
At the service today: N., tall, stooped, with a large bump on the bridge of his nose, hair as hard as a black felt boot (you can feel it under the epitrachelion in confession), his eyes glow quietly, peacefully... A sick man, weak-minded. He loves the temple very much (and, as I noticed, children). So today, the parishioner who brought him, a patronage social worker, joyfully complained about him: she took him to the bathhouse, and he ran off to work again.

About “personal”

After the Liturgy, I rush to the post office to pay for the phone (I hurry, because these days, after the holidays, there are a lot of people at the post office).

Some lady is hurrying in the same direction... It occurred to me: go and she’s at the post office, and for the same purpose, and her desire is to come as quickly as possible to get in line... So she looked at me aloofly and unkindly: apparently, thinks the same thing, how can she get ahead of me... The manifestation of the evil in which the world lies, in its simplest, everyday form...

But if I approached her, spoke to her, asked: “Are you going to the post office?” - and even more so suggest: “Are you in a hurry? Well, let me take your turn at the cash register!” - and all that, that is, come into personal contact - the consequences could be stunningly heavenly, beneficial! I have been convinced of this many times, in all sorts of queues and more. In the end, the lady was not going to the post office, but that’s not the point...

This is what came to mind.

The manifestation between people of truth (that good, gospel truth, about which - Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for truth (Matthew 5:6)), mercy, selflessness, forgiveness, love and other things, is possible only after establishing personal contact between them. No way before that.

And the same is true in the relationship between God and man.

And no ideology, even the most Christian, can achieve this. The beast-world has seen and devoured thousands of these ideologies... Only personally.

Here we have a parent’s day* for two days, it’s been that way for a long time. And in many other parishes, I know, it’s the same, especially rural ones, where there is one priest for two or three villages: on Monday he serves funeral services in one village, on Tuesday in another or a third, so that he can be on time everywhere...

Today I served a memorial service at the Home for the Invalids. They brought a stack of funeral notes: they collected them from the buildings, from bedridden patients, and commemorated their own...

In one it is written, in clumsy handwriting, like an old woman’s:
Petra

mothers (don't remember)

Lord, I think...

In a nutshell - here it is, the whole life.

Miracle

Why don't miracles happen on the Moon?

Because there are no people there.

The miracle of God is not a mysterious, addressless something: it is always directed to a person, whether one or many, it is a message to the addressee, containing not only information available for reading by this addressee, but also a call: “Respond, it’s Me! And this is for you. In the rays of a miracle, see not only Me, but also yourself, look at yourself, into your darkness, which you have not touched before, through which you have not penetrated - behold, it has become light in it, so understand yourself - and change, I want this change in you, because I love you, and I love you with my godfather.” And if the call is followed by a response, then the action of God follows, from which a person changes... or - does not change, for according to your faith it will be to you (cf.: Matt. 12, 38, Matt. 9, 29.), not against faith never.

It seems that Hans Urs von Balthasar* called miracles “the words of God spoken to the deaf”...

* * *
Indeed, the priests of Christ, the “professional” clergy (one is tempted to say: especially the current ones) are the most disgusting of people. This awareness, sometimes unbearable, is like payment for the fact that during the Liturgy they are the happiest of people.

Non-barking dogs, lying raving

(Compare: Isaiah 56:10)…

(Crisis: they took out loans, but suddenly there was nothing to pay with and, it turns out, never had anything to pay).

“Whoever is near Me is near the fire.”

Who wanted to just warm up there?

On the very edge of the abyss. Clay, rubble, legs shaking, looking for support, nausea from dizziness, you walk, closing your eyes tightly all the time.

Today is a cloudy, cold day. By evening it started to rain... We carried the Shroud to procession in the light rain, and it pressed on my head and raised arms like lead.

You close your eyes - and from below there is a white pulsating sky, flocks of black birds.
They keep flying and flying.

* * *
When you stand at the altar during the Liturgy, it seems that the all-stone, centuries-old floor of the cathedral is swaying under your feet... On top of the temple is a ship. The throne in it is the helm, the refectory is the deck where the crew is busy doing their own thing. The icon on the high place is the horizon, something on the line of water going into the sky, orienting where we should swim. The crosses on the roof are anchors that firmly hold the temple to the sky. And in unbreakable inviolability, in peace among the roaring water, and in the still incessant movement - an amazing, inexpressible, organically irreplaceable combination! There are also rats on the ship - as without them in this fallen, still emerging eon of sailing - but they are in an ongoing process of panicked mass abandonment of the ship: it still seems to them that the ship is sinking, while the sea around it is sinking, and the ship is floating.

Drawings of Maria Zaikina and son
priest Sergius Kruglov - Savva

Our little brothers are what remains of heaven on earth. Together with the stars, flowers, trees, the first snow and summer rain, they are part of the original creation, which remained unfallen in the very core of the fallen universe, corroded by evil and death. Text and poems by priest Sergius KRUGLOV

Jan Brueghel "Paradise"

Any writer or poet, I think, has more than once encountered the problem: depicting hell is easy and exciting, but heaven... One of my friends, reading Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” read it selectively: “Hell” - willingly, “Purgatory” - so myself, but never made it to “Paradise”. And he said: “It’s a bit boring, you know... And judge for yourself: who is interested in reading about a place in which there is no villainy, and therefore no dynamics, about those relationships in which there is no intrigue, destructive passion, tragedy?.. Even the news is savored by everyone criminal and scandalous, but no one is interested in something good and creative...”

I remembered his words when I accidentally saw a Japanese anime called “Dante.” In this cartoon, Dante was a superhero who descends into hell to find his beloved and lift his curse, and fights terrible monsters there. In fact, you can’t draw a manga about heaven!.. And you can’t say anything at all, unless you know how to speak, in the words of the apostle, “with ineffable verbs,” while hell, its images, its laws - here they are, inside and around us, we were born in them, they are oh so familiar to us.

In fact, everything is the other way around, and Christians know this: hell is not only terrible, but above all, dull and boring, let us at least remember our lists of everyday sins, persistent like flies, with which - with the same ones - we have been for years we go to confession. They are the very stuff of hell, what's so fascinating about them? And heaven is life. Love, creativity, adventure, joy, health - all the best that is in our life was created by God as “great good”, and, no matter how spoiled it is by our mortal vanity, carries within itself a grain of heaven.

What should we do to see with our own eyes glimpses of heaven here on earth? We cannot see angels, but, in truth, and thank God: for our sinful eyes the appearance of an Angel is too brilliant and menacing, they are not at all the touching fat cupids from Raphael’s paintings and not the tinsel creatures from Sofrino’s Easter cards, remember those that amaze a person appearances of angels in Old Testament. In addition, the revealed Angel is not at all obvious: a child or a saint will be delighted with him, but a materialist will not even notice, as, remember, in Lewis’s “Space Trilogy” Ransom felt the presence of the Eldil on Malacandra, but the villains Weston and Divine did not.

But we can all see something heavenly here on earth. And this “something” is very big, despite the fact that it is ordinary and everyday. These are pets. The same ones who did not remain in the deserted Eden, but did not go wild after the tigers and mosquitoes, but immediately formed a silent meeting among themselves, sat for a minute, discussed the situation, nodded their heads - and set off to catch up with the exiles in order to be side by side with them on all the paths of the unknown world, already fallen...

Pets

I fell asleep on a green hill
And he woke up crying in his sleep:
I saw two kind people
I dreamed of two bright ones.

I dreamed of my distant youth,
And with two I walked home,
And one loved the lost shelter,
The owner of the shelter is different.

I am golden, in full, I gave them names,
Drunk from verbal wines,
And even if the dog's shadow is a wolf,
But the light of a cat is a lion!

I fell asleep on a green hill,
And I woke up on bare ground:
There is no dog, no cat, just me, an orphan!
Yes, the road is in the autumn darkness.

And can a wise living creature
Follow me into this distance?
No one is next to me, and November is dying with cold,
And I wander and freeze, not home - to a foreign land.

Once upon a time, all creation revered man as their king and master. Adam, using the sacred verbal power entrusted to him by the Creator, gave names to all of them, and he remembers this - vaguely, through the veil of millennia, but he remembers - both the elephant, which is called an elephant, and the crocodile, which only due to fragmentation, discord and natural selection, generated by the Fall and rooted in nature, they are sometimes called caiman, sometimes alligator, sometimes gharial. Moreover, man is remembered as a king, the heir of God, and even domestic animals still honor him as such.

Praise the Lord from heaven,
Praise from the ground too!
Praise Him, burnt forest,
Blackening in the distance

Praise also the dove whose wings
Soldered in the darkness
With care as strong as resin,
To the cracked earth,

Praise, you black sheep,
Walking up to my neck in mud,
And you, pig, praise the Creator,
Bent under the blade,

And you praise, concrete choir
Factory gray rats,
And the kite is like a meteor
Suddenly falling down
And, with a depressed-dull muzzle,
Hairy Persian,
Both a useless pug and an evil one
Killer Doberman

A mosquito itching in the heat of the day
Asphalt fields armor,
And rusty water -
But don't just praise me
Nowhere and never.

Your Hosanna is full of tears,
And I have to finish it,
For giving you names,
But I forgot mine.

Among church people, I often come across a complex of prejudices, and even superstitions, associated with cats and dogs. The latter especially get it: they are unclean, it is a sin to keep them at home, if a dog runs into the temple, the temple has been desecrated, it must be re-consecrated... No references to the prayer rites for the re-consecration of the temple, which are performed, according to the canons, only if the animal, as well as and the person who died or gave birth in the temple with bleeding, or the book of Tobit in the Bible, in which the young man and the Angel were accompanied by a dog, are not affected by these prejudices. Is it a matter of lack of enlightenment, the persistence of parish prejudices, or what Dostoevsky wrote about when he said that in Russia animals are valued utilitarianly, a horse for plowing, a cow for milk and meat?.. I don’t know. Fortunately, since then I have learned many Christians who love pets, feed them, treat them and save them, and this is not the perversion that is sometimes talked about: they say they hate people and pet dogs... No, in care and mercy In relation to these little ones, I often see a sober manifestation of remembering the words of the Savior: if you are unfaithful in small things, how can I trust you with big things? Will you be able to love and have mercy on your neighbors, take responsibility for them, if drowning kittens and puppies seems to you an inevitable and practically useful thing?.. If you are an organic part of the world system, in which a kitten is in the trash, an old stray dog, a homeless person station, an orphan child with cerebral palsy, a rootless old woman - just ballast, an obstacle on the path to success and a “normal life”, then how do you live and feel in the Kingdom of God, where everything is the other way around, where the last become first with God?...

To the dog

The clumsy, shaggy dog ​​was driven out of the house
Covered by the rain and dozing inadvertently,
Like an eternal husband who has forgotten the wedding date,
The overbearer is the one to blame.

Sleep, get wet, dog! stinks of aging and dirt,
Reminding me of the irrevocable;
And where, having escaped, where is the joy of the dog’s whole life,
Like not in a dream.

And you remember, while sleeping, that the angel is a black male
And white dobel, spreading his wings,
They will return your age, both young and agile,
And all your sin will be washed away white.

And that, as before, things will not be bad,
That they will open the door to you and give the zholt a bone,
And the skin dries, and the fleas are emerald
They will lead their former life accordingly.

Pets, I am convinced of this, are given to us for a reason: their integrity, humility, simplicity, patience, loyalty are a reminder to us, people, of the heavenly qualities that we have lost, without which a person cannot be a person. At the same time, domestic animals are silent and unresponsive, they tell us about these qualities (not virtues, virtues are conquests in the fight against sin and are the prerogative of only humans) - without words, directly, clearly and obviously. A cat and a dog can be seen and understood by both a highly learned man and a foolish baby, a cat and a dog - God's living sermons about paradise, all the more effective because they can be heard by an atheist. They, along with the stars, flowers, trees, the first snow and summer rain, songbirds, giraffes and koala bears, who are so unable to defend themselves that, fleeing from forest fire, do not run away, but wrap their paws around a tree trunk and cry - part of the original creation, which remained unfallen in the very core of the fallen universe, corroded by evil and death.

In memory of a cat

These ones
Our neighbors, whom we have loved as ourselves,
They leave us, leaving us to ourselves.
They return to the eternal womb.
They take everything, everything of theirs with them:
Damask, honed humility,
Diamond loyalty
Fiery persistence
Scarlet silver deceit.

Memory, woolen, shabby, gray,
Shrunken from use, lost shape and size,
Torn here and there (darn, wear a little),
But it’s still warm, at least we managed to keep this for ourselves.

Wrapped up to the shoulders, we don't sleep,
We sit and sit with you on the porch,
We are silent,
We look after them with our heads raised,
On an incredible bottomless night,
In which they flicker with greenish hope
Their life lines are on their paw pads.

Reader, you have already noticed and are ready to remind me that, reflecting on the manifestations of paradise in our earthly life, I did not say about the main thing: about Christ, about His Church and its sacraments, about prayer and the Gospel, about the Kingdom of God promised to us... Yes , it's like that. We see the light of heaven in the eyes of the God-man Christ, the light of Christ in the faces of our neighbors, whom we are commanded to love. I just remind you that before we try to be Christians, many of us would do well to become just people. And for starters, to see again, with joy, amazement and gratitude, the familiar shaggy Barsik, who every evening settles down with a warm weight right on your radiculitis back, and the no less familiar shaggy Ball, who in the morning, as soon as you go out onto the porch, rattles his chain and wags you, smiling from ear to ear, with all my being.

At home

That's interesting
when no one is home -
You are at Golgotha, we are at the Judgment -
what are they doing there, these
Are our pets small?

They sleep curled up
lick the bowl
chasing a ball,
re-hiding the old bone,
nibble under the tail?

Yeah, well, all of this -
just an appearance. In fact
all of them, as has been said, to this day
moaning
are suffering
waiting for the door to open,
finally the creaking, the noise of footsteps
and tired, happy, not believing himself
voices so familiar:
“Hey, wow! Kitty Kitty!
Where are you there? Here
We're home too!"

« The meaning of life is to live! And how to live - God will tell you!»

On the eve of 2013, the priest of the Spassky Cathedral, beloved by the Orthodox Minusinsk people, Father Sergius Kruglov, gave his last interview for our newspaper, as it seemed then. And although the parishioners knew that the priest was going to move to serve in the capital, we still did not focus attention on this event. They didn't say goodbye! And they did the right thing.

Father Sergius returned to serve in his native Siberia three and a half years later. And we, of course, did not miss the opportunity to meet him in a warm editorial atmosphere over a cup of coffee.

- Priests, like military men, don’t choose their fate?

Both those and others serve - this is true. Moving or being assigned to a parish is sometimes connected with necessity and with the interests of the church. But in my case, it is rather the Providence of God. Plus, a personal desire that I had been nurturing for a long time. Besides everything, I am also a writer and a literary person; I had my own plans for the capital. I approached our bishop, Metropolitan of Krasnoyarsk and Achinsk Panteleimon, with them, and he responded with understanding. Said: " Well, go and try your hand there. If it doesn't work out, come back" The dean of the Minusinsk district of churches, the rector of the Spassky Cathedral in the city of Minusinsk, Archpriest Evgeniy Neshcheret, also blessed me, for which I am grateful to him.

I served in Moscow, in the Church of the Resurrection of the Word in Bryusov Lane, we filmed in the Moscow region, in Sergiev Posad. At the same time, he broadcast on radio “Culture” (about modern poetry), on the Orthodox radio “Vera”, and was engaged in literary activities. Moscow is a wonderful place, although a big city takes a lot of energy. Age, illness, roads, moving, family difficulties - all this, of course, leaves its mark. At some point I decided that I had to return to my native land. At the same time, I never forgot Minusinsk, because most of life has passed here. I always remembered and prayed for the Minusinsk parishioners. Now I have friends and flock both in Moscow and Minusinsk.

- Is the capital’s flock very different from the Siberian one?

People are the same everywhere. The Japanese poet Basho has a wonderful poem:

"West East -
Everywhere the same sadness:
The winds are still cold..."

- Is your return the will of God or more your will?

In Christianity there is the concept of “synergy” - the co-creation of God and man. After all, God is the Father, and people are children, and man is not some kind of puppet controlled by God, but an independent person. And just as a father teaches his son something, God teaches us. Dad tells the child, let’s teach him how to hold a hammer, and we’ll make a stool together. It’s not the father who does it instead of the son, it’s not the son who does it on his own, but they work together. Therefore, in every everyday situation, both our will and God’s are manifested, and His will is simple: He wants a person to be kind, happy, hardworking, selfless, know how to love, be free and responsible for this freedom, and learn to cope with his sinful passions.

It is important to understand all this and learn to live with God, according to the commandments He gave. This is Christianity. After all, this is precisely why the Son of God came to earth and became a man - so that man could have close contact with God, the one that was once interrupted in the Fall.

Usually they go from the provinces to the capital to improve their life, make a career, in a word, for a good, richer life. Doesn't this apply to priests?

Who said that material wealth is bad? God himself became material when he became a man. You could touch him with your hands, you could even nail him to the cross with nails... He ate, drank, slept, just as he needed everything. The world is not some kind of sin or filth, but a beautiful creation for which we must thank God. And the fact that a person is trying to improve his material conditions is not bad in itself. Another thing is, what does he sacrifice for this? It is important not to create an idol out of material wealth. You look, it seems like a person is baptized, Orthodox, but his god is a mortgage, and another’s is a career. He lives for this, teaches his children to his life values, and plunges them into the same bondage. And another, for example, is a talented artist, but his god is art or poetry. Wonderful, of course! But... where did Yesenin and Vysotsky end up? Idolatry is a shaky structure, sooner or later it will break and you will fall.

- But, you must agree, when clergy suffer from this sin, preferring “Zhiguli” “Mercedes” - is this especially striking?

I repeat, a priest, like any person, should have a sense of proportion. I remember the harsh but true lines from Aranovich’s old poem: “ Whoever wants to preach a sermon to people should not eat more sweetly than they do“... It’s one thing when a priest, serving in a small village church, is looking for a sponsor to open a shelter for orphans at the church. Another thing is when a priest uses his flock for personal well-being... I have visited many cities in Russia, for many it begins right outside the Moscow Ring Road - life everywhere is approximately the same as in Minusinsk, with an often poor and difficult existence. And in such conditions, priests often acquire money, but not for themselves - but for the church.

And although all acquisition is a sin, in this case The sin of condemnation is much more dangerous. A person is distracted from himself and begins to switch attention to others, trying to expose their imperfections. But any change always begins only with oneself. You can't change the world! Life rolls like a wheel, it is indifferent to everyone, it doesn’t matter whether you are a righteous person or a sinner. Only the Lord has mercy on man!

Eat good rule: what you condemn a person for, that is, in yourself. Example: Small child walks with mom down the street. Everything is happening around: prostitutes are standing, drunks are yelling, drug addicts are staggering. But the baby doesn’t notice this, because he doesn’t have it in him.

Therefore, there is no need to rush to judge. The New Testament says: first tell the person in private, if he doesn’t listen, bring witnesses, if not, tell the church. A person who condemns priests must be asked: is he Orthodox? If you are a Christian, act like a Christian. If not, God will be your judge. Then you can not only condemn, you can come with an ax and hack the priest to death, as happens in our time...

It is always easier to vilify and inform than to understand and help. Still, the country that went through the Gulag has, alas, become very experienced in this regard. Writer Dovlatov said: “ Stalin, of course, is a monster, but who wrote four million denunciations?..»

But Christianity teaches: cover evil with good. Someone hurt someone, try to heal it. If you can’t, give it to another person to do it.

Father, many people argue, why go to church, God is inside, in the soul. And you can stand near the icons and at home. And some even elevated Orthodoxy to a certain trend modern society. So how important is it to attend church?

I always wonder, “God is inside” - in what place? Maybe in duodenum?.. And where did the concept of “necessity” arise, that someone forces a person to go to church? Christianity gives a person freedom. A person is free to choose for himself - to go to church or not to go. Such judgments are most likely a legacy of Soviet upbringing. In Soviet times, everyone was supposed to join the Komsomol, and everyone did. Do you think they firmly believed in communism? No, it’s just that if you don’t join the Komsomol, you definitely won’t go to college, you’ll have all sorts of everyday problems.

There is a wonderful story in The Decameron. Two friends - a Christian and a Jew. The Christian constantly persuaded the Jew to baptize. He agreed on the condition that he would go to Rome and see how the Pope and the bishops lived. The friend left, and the Christian grabbed his head: “ Dear Mom, when he sees enough of all this chaos and debauchery, he will finally renounce Christianity“... And he arrived happy, baptized.

Where were you baptized?

But haven’t you seen how high church people live?

“I saw,” said the Jew. - But I thought, if, despite all this, the church has been alive for one and a half thousand years, then there is something true in it... And I joined it.

In answer to your question, I would like to focus on the fact that a person, when going to church, must, first of all, think WHY he is going there. The point is not to rush to be baptized and cross the threshold of the temple. The meaning of a believer is the path to God. To the Father. And there is only one way to the Father - to return to the family, and the church is such a family. Or, as the Orthodox writer and confessor Sergei Fudel said, “the church is overcoming loneliness.”

Father Sergius, today Pokemon have come back into fashion. And if earlier they chained children to televisions, today young people catch them on the streets through smartphones. How does the church feel about this?

Touching always raises the question: how does the church relate to this or that fact? To be frank, there are a lot of people in the church, and each person approaches what is happening in his own way. Deacon Andrei Kuraev, a famous preacher and apologist, was once asked how the church views Harry Potter? He replied: " Yes, it is a lot of honor for Harry Potter that the church would treat him somehow».

About this Potter, by the way, at one time there were such debates on the information network... One woman, a Sunday school teacher in one of the cities of Russia, once even wrote a play about how Harry Potter came to Orthodoxy, could not bear that the one she loved character - and suddenly unbaptized.

I remember as soon as Pokemon appeared on TV, they began to say that it was a terrible Japanese cartoon that zombified children, causing them epilepsy... There is nothing like that. You just need to watch cartoons in moderation; a sense of proportion is needed in everything.

If you watch anime from morning to night, you'll go crazy. And watching even the most well-intentioned TV channel around the clock will also not lead to anything good.

There is so much going on in the world, it is important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes there are, as they call it, “challenges of time” such that where are the Pokemon…

One day, let’s say, a young lady came to a Moscow church. And he says to me: Father, my husband and I are Orthodox, we lived together for eight years. - So what, he left? - I ask. - No, he changed his gender, so I don’t know how to pray for him now: as a man, or as a woman?

- They changed their gender, but they live together?

I don’t know who lives there with whom - I didn’t ask. And even more so to educate. A man asked me a question, please answer. I went through the canons in my mind Orthodox Church, of course, didn’t find anything on the topic, and said: if you are truly a believer and prayer is important to you, pray for the kind of person God created him to be.

And one day a gay man came to the temple, who also considers himself a Christian. He was raised in a normal family; in the 90s, his parents converted to Orthodoxy. And by the age of 16, the guy realized that in terms of gender he was not like everyone else... His parents condemned him. But that's not the point. Unfortunately, even in a city with a population of millions, a person sometimes simply has no one to talk to about his problems. When talking about Orthodoxy, the gay crowd gets a headache. Like, are you crazy? And if you come to church, they’ll give you a cross in the forehead; many priests have just such a sharply intolerant reaction to such things.

- How do you feel about this?

I don’t justify it, but I don’t try to destroy it either. It is important that a person understands his weakness and infirmity. And I didn’t justify my sins in the spirit that this is my nature. Nature - yes, but it is a spoiled, sick nature. And if a person suffers from this, but tries to repent, fight, clings to Christ, then he is a real Christian.

There is a secret of confession. Can a priest violate it if a person really poses a danger to society?

There are no cases in which the secret of confession can be violated. As St. Theophan the Recluse said, when making confession, put a knife next to you, look at it and think: I’d rather cut out my tongue than tell anyone anything.

The basis of the sacrament of confession is repentance. A person understands that he has committed a sin and wants to get rid of it. If a pedophile comes, repenting from the heart for raping children, the priest’s duty is to forgive him his sin, console him and pray for him.

But the sacrament of confession is not always performed! The basis of the sacrament of confession is precisely the personal repentance of a person and his appeal to God with a request for help in never doing this again. If the priest sees that a person has come without repentance, and at the same time flaunts his sins, saying that I killed and will kill, then what kind of confession is this? At this point the priest himself can call the police.

The sacrament of confession is always performed live. But it is absolutely normal for priests to communicate with parishioners via the Internet. God created it for this purpose, to unite people around the world.

- Father Sergius, good people?

I remembered Bulgakov, the conversation between Yeshua and Pilate in “The Master and Margarita”: “ Do you see Mark Ratboy? Good people rushed at him like wild animals "... Just a joke, of course.

Man is by nature good and beautiful - he is a child of God. Only spoiled by sin and sick with its consequences - death, loneliness, unbelief, despair... What should a person do? There is one good Indian parable. Inside a person there live two wolves: one white, the other black, they are always fighting with each other. Which one will win? The one you will feed.

- You watched the Russian national football team play, did you have any desire to anathematize them?

I'm not a football fan. And I don’t have the right to anathematize. Although sometimes I want to anathematize the person I see in the mirror in the morning... I know about my sins much better than others.

- Do you often confess?

Yes. Sin is as disgusting and boring as dust on a closet. Today I wiped it with a cloth, and tomorrow it appeared in the same place. Therefore, you need to confess as often as possible. Sometimes they come to me and say: “ I’ve been going to confession for 20 years, and I’m still angry, condemning... what should I do?“What can you do here, you need to have patience with sins...

Many priests say that you need to find personal contact with God, learn to talk. What is a clear conversation with God?

Prayer is a conversation between a person and God, and not a monologue, but a dialogue. It is important that it comes from the heart (and it is not so important what exactly is in the heart - inspiration or, on the contrary, everyday dullness, or murmur, or crying... Whatever we are, we will trust ourselves to God, because He is always ready to accept us) . Of course, important prayer rules in the prayer book, they teach Orthodox man to prayer work. But we must learn to talk to the Lord in our own words. Muttering a memorized prayer under your breath, doing what you are supposed to do as an excuse - this is not a conversation with God. We don’t communicate with mother or child from a book. So it is here. Prayer is communication, not a spell.

- Do you often feel ashamed before God?

Of course, sometimes it’s embarrassing to look in the mirror... But more often I feel gratitude towards Him. After all, He gives me so much! And this teaches that everything real is always given for nothing, freely, out of love. It is impossible to earn grace with any bonuses. Like, you know, a man wakes up with a hangover and starts “earning points”: walking with the child, helping his mother-in-law, doing everything so that his wife doesn’t swear. This doesn’t mean that he has improved... That’s why I say that God does not need Right words, but sincere words. In his writings St. Augustine talked about his difficult path to God. In his youth, he was hot, his passions were boiling, but at the same time he reached out to God and asked him: Lord, deliver me from these passions, but... just not now. This is fair!

-Are you a strict priest?

Probably not. A person, figuratively speaking, gets hit in the forehead all his life. Why else would I create such conditions for him in the church... Maybe someone doesn’t like this position, but that’s the way it is. Priests are people too, and, fortunately, everyone is different. Some serve God and people with their severity, others with something else, but together we do the common work of Christ.

-What does the Lord expect from us?

What can we give him other than joy and gratitude? That's what he's waiting for. But not moaning and suffering, as some believe. Many people tend to do this: “ Oh, I have a toothache - it was the Lord who sent me suffering. It is I who suffer for my faith" Yes, I just had to eat less sweets, and my teeth wouldn’t hurt.

Compassion, empathy, sadness, by the way, are easy to fake. My mother also told me about such “compassion.” On the day Stalin died, she was still at school, and all students were forced to cry. But she and her friend had no tears. It was spring, they sat down on a heap under icicles and waited for tears to drip down their faces...

But joy is hard to fake! And sometimes it’s hard to say thank you. It happens that a person wants to hang himself, there is no work, his wife is nagging, illness has overcome him, the children have gone to great lengths, but here you have to give thanks. I noticed that it is especially difficult for residents of megacities, most of whom do not keep up with life, are dissatisfied with it, and are often in a state of hypertrophied despondency and depression.

Some people are bored even in the provinces! Always! They catch themselves thinking that life is monotonous, as in the song: home, family, work, money... what to do then?

It’s actually good that a person began to catch himself thinking - it means there are still thoughts in his head! - and think. This means that the soul is sick. This means you need to go and look for the meaning of life. The main thing is not to stop. Boredom can also be the beginning, albeit a long, difficult, but still, process of human recovery. Returning him from despondency - to joy and thanksgiving

- What is the meaning of life, father?

There is a good Jewish joke on this topic: “Rebbe, what is the meaning of life? “Oh, dear, such a great question, and you want to change it to such a lousy answer!”

There are questions for which there is no simple, immediate answer. But it is still necessary to ask them. Because the search process itself makes you live. The meaning of life is to live! And how to live - God will tell you.

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