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Hieromonk Simeon Mazaev. Hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev): Disappointment in the Church

The life of the Church is often discussed in the media, and not from a positive side. Our media are always very interested in the topic of people who have left the Church, become disillusioned with it, and speak negatively. They are especially interested in the fate of people who have left the priesthood. Why is that?

– This is not an easy question, and before I answer it, I’ll tell you a little story. Once I came to the military registration and enlistment office after defending my PhD thesis to get a military ID. It was summer, hot. The lieutenant colonel, having greeted me, began to fill out the form in his office. The first three columns (last name, first name, patronymic) did not cause any difficulties for him, but when it came to the “civil specialty” column, he asked: “Mazaev, who are you according to our diploma?” I say: “Philosopher.” - There’s about five minutes of foul language here: I was joking, they say. And further: “I’ll joke to you, you’ll serve in Magadan.”

I feel that serious arguments are needed, and I show the diploma - a state document, with the state round seal, signed by rector Sadovnichy. The lieutenant colonel is a serviceman and must accept it. And so he reluctantly writes this incomprehensible, strange word - he probably never wrote it, especially in official documents. And in the column “civil specialty” he writes the word “philosopher”. But then he scratches his head: this service officer’s heart is still not in the right place, he cannot understand what such a person is doing... And he asks a second question: “Mazaev, do you have rights?” “I say: “Yes, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, category “B.”

He slaps himself on the knee: “Why were you silent before?” After the word “philosopher” he puts a hyphen and adds: “driver of category “B””. That's what it says on my military ID.

Why did I tell this story? It is painfully difficult for a person to admit that there is another person in the world who is completely useless for the army, whom you cannot squeeze into a plane, into a tank, or into a trench: a philosopher is a completely useless person.

Very often we suffer from the same complex: we cannot bear the very idea that there are useless people. For example, what are monks for, why are they there at all? You hear this question very often. The deceit lies in the fact that we are forced to justify our very existence. And this is a very important thing: the view of a person as a means in itself is wrong, sinful. Even secular philosophers talk about this. Immanuel Kant formulated the so-called categorical imperative, and one of the particular formulations reads: “Always treat a person as an end, and not as a means.” Everyone can easily notice in themselves that “we all,” as the poet said, “look at Napoleons;// There are millions of two-legged creatures // For us there is only one weapon”...

We view the world like Bazarov, a character in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons,” who says: “Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man is a worker in it.” If the world is a workshop and not a temple, then everything that is not a person himself is only a means for him. The question is – who is the target then? The goal is only him. Such an instrumentalist, pragmatic approach to people is nothing more than a manifestation of pride itself.

With this approach we often come to the Church and extend it to God: we are not interested in Jesus Christ, the Personality of God does not interest us - we are interested in His power, strength, His ability to bestow blessings or take them away. Remember how the Jews, who followed Jesus in a crowd of thousands, at some point dispersed, disappointed? They expected that He would be an earthly king, that He would use His power that could control the wind and the waves, that could multiply the loaves and fishes and feed 5,000 people with loaves, the power that could turn water into wine and raise the dead, and they hoped that With this power, he will become an earthly king, leading an uprising against the Romans, against the comprador government of the Jewish elders. But He refused, at some point he said: “My kingdom is not of this world.” And everyone, except a small group of people, dispersed. And Christ asked: “What are you? Would you like to leave too? As the Gospel reports, Peter was responsible for everyone. He was also confused, but he answered: “Lord, where should we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.” This is called fulfilling the fourth commandment from the Decalogue of Moses.

We mainly focus on the commandments “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery,” but all commandments are important. And the fourth of them: remember the Sabbath day. We generally ignore it - we don’t particularly honor the Sabbath, it’s Jewish holiday. But we are talking about the fact that a person learns to love God through the fourth commandment: like a young man who is in love with a girl, he is able to throw everything away, give up everything, turn off the phone: “I am going to the one I love, and let the whole world wait.” "? He can make this gesture. But it turns out that often a person who loves God cannot, for His sake, abandon everything that makes up his life, his worries, the subject of his care for one day a week in order to go to church. A person cannot make such a gesture, which means he does not love God.

This ability to act unreasonably for the sake of the one you love, to throw everything away - and let the whole world wait, is such an anti-pragmatic approach. Like, for example, the artist Niko Pirosmani sold all his modest property and bought his beloved Margarita a million scarlet roses. Essentially, the fourth commandment says this. The Apostle Paul speaks of the same thing: And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, that I may gain Christ. That is, he shows that he can simply follow Christ without expecting anything in return from Him. Dostoevsky has a good idea: “Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth” (letter to N.F. Fonvizina, No. 61, February 1854). These are the words of a real Christian!

And we are always looking for some blessings from God, even spiritual ones. Sometimes you hear people complain: before, after Confession, the heart sang (imagine a dog sitting on a chain all day, and then the owner came and set it free to run, frolic, take a walk...): “The heart felt such delight before. Previously, you took communion and grace obviously descended into your heart, you were touched by everything around you, every manifestation of life makes you happy, but now you seem to be confessing, as if you are taking communion, but your heart remains empty. Why is that? Maybe I'm doing something wrong or something else?

We have such a temptation - to follow not Christ, but what He gives, grace. A person develops a taste for grace; he can, like a drug addict, “get hooked” on some high, spiritual experiences. And here Christ no longer becomes for him the final goal, not the Alpha and Omega, not the Beginning and the End, but only a means: “I am following You so that You will give me this “drug” - high spiritual experiences: grace, inspiration.” Apparently, this is why the Lord allows us periods of spiritual cooling - He is silent and gives us the opportunity to be real Christians and prove by deed that we came to the Church for Him, for Christ, and not for what He is able to give us as King and God. We came for Jesus first, not just the King.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “thorns and flints nourish love, and prayer is blessed by the silence of the Lord.” There are also in the monastic (and, probably, in family life) cooling periods. When you are tonsured a monk, the first months are an ecstatic state, you just fly. And there are periods when prayer becomes mechanical, all monastic deeds also do not respond with grace - a feeling of being abandoned by God. And so the fathers say that there is nothing terrible in this: the Lord gives you the opportunity to test yourself, why did you come to monasticism - for Christ or for what He is able to give, for some high spiritual experiences? Apparently, the same thing exists in marriage: the Lord gives a person the opportunity to express himself, to know himself and to prove that he took a person into his life for his own sake, and not for the sake of that feeling of deep moral satisfaction that communication with him gives. We must learn to think of man and God as the ultimate goal and to follow Christ, and not what He is able to give us, even in the form of the greatest gifts - in the form of grace in answer to prayers.

At some point, Christ deliberately humbles himself and becomes useless to us, becomes a philosopher in front of the lieutenant colonel. So can we pass this temptation? There is nothing more joyful than to follow the triumphant Christ, the Christ who raises the dead, but can anyone follow the crucified and dead Christ, the inglorious Christ?

People who are disappointed in the Church, in fact, have not reached the very heart of the Church. Only those who do not reach the Church Citadel - to Christ Himself - leave. I can assume that these people were looking for anything, for example, some spirit-bearing elders, or revelations, or the meaning of life - anything, but not Christ Himself. And in the Church everything is transitory, except for its Founder. Once upon a time there were miracle workers and miracles, time passed - the elders appeared, now this time is passing, or maybe it has already passed. Perhaps there are still reasonable, intelligent, smart priests in the Church; most likely, there will be a time when they will not be there either.

Everything in the Church is transitory, so if a person is looking for something other than Christ in the Church, sooner or later he will be disappointed. Even if he had a thousand years of life and remained in the Church, he would certainly be disappointed in it: everything in the Church is transitory, except Jesus Christ Himself.

Can you not be selfish? Can you admit the existence of another personality in the world other than your own? Can you put up with a God who is of no use to you at some point in time, who does not answer your prayers? You can tolerate a silent God in your spiritual life, then you are a Christian. See how the Apostle Peter expresses the situation when Christ became poor and lost His supporters. He says: “Lord, where should we go?” Only that person will not be disappointed in the Church who does not look for anything else in it except Christ, and can say from the heart: “Lord, where should we go? We know no other God besides You.” This is how I would answer this question.

We often meet people who are disappointed not in the Church and its people, but in themselves, they say: I’ve been going to church for 20 years, but there’s no effect.

– Yes, in my small pastoral practice I have often encountered such situations. A person is disappointed not in the Church, but in his ability to change something in life. He says: “Maybe I’m some kind of damned person? Church sacraments do not work in my case. I’ve been going to church for 20 years, fasting, praying, in general, I’m doing as I was taught, but I can’t say that I’ve improved even one iota, the old sins still exist. So you come to Confession to your confessor, and he greets you like a wolf from the cartoon “Once upon a time there was a dog”: “What, again?” “Yes, twenty-five again: the same sins have not gone away, the same passions have not gone away. And it doesn’t work.” And in this case, the person thinks that either he is somehow especially sinful, unworthy, so why torture himself in vain... He becomes despondent and closes the doors of the Church to himself from the outside. Or he thinks that God exists, but He is not in the Byzantine sacraments, not in that Church - the Church as an instrument of communication with God does not work, the sacraments do not work. In any case, he is already close to ending his relationship, if not with God, then with the Church.

What can we say here? It is very important in spiritual life to clearly and distinctly know its purpose and objectives. Such a person has set himself a deliberately impossible task - to make himself better by himself, by the hardening of his will, to overcome his passions or overcome his sins.

A simple consideration: if a person could get rid of his passions himself, there would be no need for Christ to come. Once again we need to remind important point, about which the Gospel speaks: it says that a person is spiritually sick, damaged by sin, as cancerous tumor. A cancerous tumor is treated with chemotherapy: they simply kill a person - they also kill living, healthy cells in the hope that the cancer cells will die a little earlier than the healthy ones. Then, by stopping chemotherapy, it will be possible to “fatten” the person to a healthy state. The Lord does the same: He takes a person through death and resurrection, kills a person along with his evil and resurrects him, passing him through Himself, as through a kind of filter, through the communion of His Flesh and Blood.

If a person could defeat evil himself, there would be no need to carry out such a painful operation, expose him to death and teach him resurrection. The gospel would be different. And if so, then the lifelong task that most of us set for ourselves - to become better - is impossible. We cannot defeat the beast of our passions in our own strength, but we can prevent this beast from defeating us. Like the Zapashny brothers in the circus? After all, they don’t kill their tigers, they simply don’t let them kill themselves: they train them, put them on a chain. And the goal of our spiritual life is to put our passions on a chain, to prevent the tigers from devouring us and becoming stronger. Our task is not to become better in the Church. The challenge is to not get worse.

Look at the everyday life of a soldier at war: he does not think about whether victory is far away, does not set it as his personal goal, but simply pulls out the soldier’s burden. An enemy appears - he shoots, there is no enemy - he gets ready, digs a trench, smokes a pipe, brews tea. And he thanks God that the day has passed and he remains alive. Just recently we celebrated Victory Day, and already in television reports there was a noticeable difference in the perception of war and Victory between veterans and us, who did not know the war. We celebrate the victory over a terrible enemy, we celebrate the power of Russian weapons, on occasion we generally say something stupid that we can repeat - this is the boasting of a man who, perhaps, has never even seriously starved. What can we repeat? 872 days of the siege of Leningrad or 27,000,000 dead?

The veteran says: “And I’m glad that I’m alive.” And on May 9, 1945, they were not happy that they had won, no one even thought much about it, they were happy that the boring war was over, that they could finally get married, start families, and take care of their children. You can work, sow grain, build a university, study, and so on. So, the soldier does not think about victory, as it became clear from the dialogues of journalists with veterans. A soldier wonders how to get through the day.

And we, as soldiers of Christ, must imitate them in our spiritual life. We should not think in general terms. Conquering our passions is not our task. Our task is to overcome daily temptations. This also makes some sense. It’s not even about defeating temptations, but about resisting them. There is nothing particularly terrible if it didn’t work out and the battle ended in a loss - he got up and moved on. There is no need to despair because you fall into sin and even over the years you cannot become better: this is a false task. Here somewhere the enemy intervened - we ourselves set ourselves a deliberately impossible goal, which no one else set for us, including the Lord. Naturally, we were not able to achieve it, and this becomes a reason for us to be disappointed in ourselves. Isn't it stupid?

A person can say that since the Spirit breathes where it wants, it means there is no need to go to God’s church. I was disappointed in the Church, the people there are bad, but God is everywhere: God is at home, God is in my heart?

- This is a simple question. You can’t take communion at home, but that’s the way it is, of course. In addition, the Church is a two-thousand-year-old organism; it is a culture of spiritual life - prayer, congregational prayer, pious life (at least attempts at pious life).

You can, of course, do without all this and say that intermediaries are not needed. Then let's be consistent and not send our children to schools. For what? The child has a mind. And the whole world, the results of whose research are captured in textbooks. There is a lively, inquisitive mind and, on the other hand, peace. Why school? Why teachers? Why are there intermediaries between the eye and the world? Why conservatories and music schools? You can buy a piano: you have fingers, you have ears - listen, try, learn, reinvent the wheel, going through all the experiences that people have created centuries before you. Of course, you can do this, but for the next 30 years you will be doomed to play some “Dog Waltz” on this piano with one finger. So it is in spiritual life. You can, of course, ignore the Church and reject all the experience of spiritual life that has accumulated in it over a millennium. In this case, you are doomed to remain self-taught.

Unfortunately, it's time to finish. Let's summarize.

– In order not to be disappointed in the Church, firstly, you should not look for anything in the Church other than Christ, and you should not expect anything from Christ Himself other than communion with Him. As the Lord Himself says: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, and everything else will be added to you.” Everything will work out – you can hope for it, but you shouldn’t expect it, so as not to be disappointed. We must remember that we are all affected to one degree or another by the cancer of egoism, and we cannot bear it if we see something in the world that cannot be used. And with exactly the same eyes we look at our neighbor and at God - this is already wrong. We must look at God as God, and not as a force capable of giving life or punishing. And in the Church one should not expect anything other than a meeting with Christ.

The second point is that you need to correctly, clearly and distinctly set a spiritual goal for your life perspective. Our task is not to overcome our passions, this is impossible, Christ will do this by subjecting us to death and resurrection. Our task is to prevent passions from gaining victory over us and finally turning us away from Christ.

And the third important thing is the ability to peer, listen, the ability to do good, finishing the work that the Lord began and offered to complete for you. This is how good is done.

This concludes our meeting. Bless our viewers.

– May our Lord Jesus Christ bless and have mercy on us all.

Recorded:
Ksenia Sosnovskaya

Our generation was born early,
Foreign lands are alien to us, and home is boring.
Disbanded Generation
We are alone towards the truth.

A. Voznesensky (Juno and Avos)

Free Thought Zone

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Reflections on free will. Hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev).

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato once asked the question: what is man? And he proposed the following definition: “a person is a biped without feathers.” Then the Cynic Diogenes caught a rooster somewhere, plucked it and threw it on Plato’s table: “Here is your man.” After this scandal, the words "... and with wide nails" were added to the original definition.
You can laugh at the ancient joke all you want, but how can you still answer the question posed by Friedrich Nietzsche: what gives the right to such a weak animal as man to appear to the world as the crown of creation?
It is easy to see that a dog, for example, cannot fast in principle. If she is healthy and hungry, if there are no barriers between her and the food, the dog will certainly begin to eat. In the structure of her being there is no gap between what she wants to do and what she will ultimately do. In other words, the animal has no will. This is a biological “robot” whose behavior is entirely determined by objective conditions.
A person, on the contrary, is capable of being the root cause of his actions. He can deny himself, doing what he doesn’t want and not doing what he wants. It is this innate ability that raises the question of a person’s moral and legal responsibility for his actions.
Will is essentially the ability to perform a miracle. Raspe has a story about how Baron Munchausen ends up in a swamp. There is not a soul around and the resourceful hero, accustomed to solving his problems on his own, gets out of the shifting mud, pulling himself out by the braid of his own wig. From a physics point of view, this is impossible. But this is exactly what each of us does almost every day, overcoming the sweet morning nap and pulling ourselves out of a cozy and warm bed in order to begin an unpleasant but necessary task. A heavy smoker does the same, giving up his favorite and very strong habit.
Without this truly royal ability to sovereignly initiate one’s actions, a person would not be able to creatively build his own personality. Let us note that man was conceived in the image and likeness of God, but was created only in the image. That is, God trusts his creation to independently complete the work he has started. And the one who follows this path becomes truly perfect.
It is not difficult to see that if a person did not have a will, he would not be able to show love to the world. A dog, contrary to popular belief, does not love its owner - rather, it only responds with kindness to kindness and affection to affection. But love is more than a mechanical reflex. Often this arrangement is not “thanks to”, but rather “in spite of”. And therefore, only two people are capable of loving, that is, wishing good to those who crucify and kill you - God and man. It is the will that allows a Christian to remain in the Church, despite personal temptations, as well as scandals and abuses that are encountered here at every step.
The so-called “free will” question once split the Christian world. How can we understand human free will in the light of the dogma of divine omnipotence? The Apostle Peter tried to defend Christ with arms in his hands from the guards of the high priest in the Garden of Gethsemane, but was stopped by the words of the Savior Himself: “Return your sword to its place, for... how will the Scriptures be fulfilled, that this must be so?” But isn't it possible to apply the same words to the actions of another apostle - Judas? After all, his betrayal was the fulfillment of the Scriptures. In other words, if everything happens according to the will of God, then what can man be blamed for? Or what deeds can be credited to him?
The Reformers, following Luther and Calvin, came to the conclusion that there is no free will. Everything is initially predetermined by God and every person is destined for salvation or destruction. This is his fate, which he cannot change. Judas is a loser, cursed from the creation of the world. A small group of writers, like Nils Runeberg, on the contrary, revered Judas as the supreme apostle, who sacrificed his own name, the glory of the apostle, and even the salvation of his soul for the sake of fulfilling prophecies, that is, he showed the highest obedience to God, truly “denied himself for the sake of Christ and the Gospel.” However, Erasmus Rotterdamsky convincingly refuted both of them. He pointed out that there were no specific names in the prophecies. And even the Savior’s command to Judas during the Last Supper is devoid of specifics. He did not say, “Go and betray Me.” His words were: “Whatever you are doing, do it quickly.” That is, God's predestination is not a play with pre-selected and approved actors for the roles. This is a formula consisting of almost only variable values. Therefore, Judas did not have to insert himself into this formula as the value of the “traitor” variable.
The providence of God is similar to the providence of a merchant going to the market in the morning: he does not know the names of those people who will buy his goods during the day, but he is firmly confident that these people will be found. Future buyers also leave their homes without always having a firm intention to buy anything. But after seeing suitable product, make a deal because they were morally and financially prepared for it from the very morning.
In the Sermon on the Mount there are the words of Christ: “Whoever looks at a woman with lustful desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It is here, “in one’s heart” or, in the words of Immanuel Kant, “in the intelligible world”, that a person’s free will is realized. “To look at a woman with lust” or “to be angry with your brother in vain” means to completely go your part of the way towards sin. What happens next depends on God: whether this sin will be fulfilled or not. real story. Obviously, Judas committed his betrayal long before the kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane. That is why he, and not the Apostle Peter, was chosen for the subsequent terrible role.
Simply put, if someone is planning a dirty deed, he is unlikely to go looking for performers among the Sunday school students. Future criminals will be those who have already committed something similar or have become embittered to such a state that they are morally ready for an actual crime. So the desire of ascetics for purity of desires and thoughts is completely justified. Crimes freely committed “in our hearts” bring us to that critical point, which can be followed by the fatal words of God: “Whatever you do, do it quickly.” And then the secret simply becomes apparent.

Olga, exactly, as Vladimir explained, I had in mind, i.e., I thought that this is indicated by the words “Freedom of will is expressed not in the fact that there is a possibility of choice, but in the fact that there is such a fullness of life in which There’s not even a question: to the right or to the left?”, but I see that I misunderstood. But the point is different. W...

Andrey, I’m a little sick, it’s hard to write, but I’ll try anyway. The fact is that spiritual science (and the teaching about God, about man, and asceticism, hermeneutics, etc.) is quite accurate, at least it has clearly defined boundaries, which are patristic works, tradition, etc. d. As I wrote above, and this is extremely important - this is the foundation: “God’s will-volition (desire) and will-action coincide. The will of God is His natural property. It is always good and unlimited - absolutely free. God does not need to choose goals and means, for He knows everything and always acts the best way. We, who have not been recreated by ourselves (Shestodnev’s interpretation is appropriate here, namely the interpretation from Hebrew, and not Lopukhin), but as the only beings who have received an immortal soul as a gift, cannot independently govern ourselves, without the Divine fullness of communication, without Her life-giving and guiding and healing energy. And these are not just words, this has been learned empirically for centuries. I really like the Monk Peter of Damascus, he put everything into order, I am amazed at the greatness of his truly learned works: “...Among these two paths a person stands, that is, righteousness and sin, and whichever he wants, he enters and follows it. The path that he followed, and those leading him along it were either Angels and people about God, or demons and evil people they bring him to the very end of the path even against his will. The good ones go to God and the Kingdom of Heaven, and the sinful ones go to the devil and eternal torment. But no one is the cause of death except his own will; salvation is God, who has given not only existence, but also good existence, knowledge and power, which man cannot have without the grace of God..." Therefore, free will cannot be explained by its absence or mechanical cutting off. And where is GOD in this system? Only Grace makes it possible to find and glue together scattered shards: will - action. It is not for nothing that the reverend fathers, to the extent that they united with God, had free, that is, good will. The example given by Vladimir is just an example of the struggle with and it is extremely dangerous to bring it as a guide to action in such a concrete and practical action for the majority of the audience, since before this teaching Abba Dorotheus taught both about the rejection of the world, and about humility, etc., i.e. with this text, without any connection with God, as if - it would be easy to say: “Look there.” But he answers the thought: “Truly I will not look!” If it were so simple, we would become saints without prayer, without repentance and humility God should be the center. I will finish again with the words of St. Peter of Damascus:

There is no shortest progress for the soul than cutting off one’s desires and understandings, and there is nothing better than to present oneself before God day and night and ask Him that His will be done in everything. And there is nothing worse than loving freedom for soul or body.

No other virtue can comprehend the will of God so much as humility and the abandonment of all one’s understanding and one’s will...... Or again:... nothing can hinder every person, if he wants to be saved: neither time, nor place, nor undertaking. Only so that he acts as the matter requires, as he should with reasoning, directing every thought towards the intention of God. For what is actually needed is not what is being done, but what is being done for. We do not involuntarily sin unless we first voluntarily agree with the thought and fall into captivity; then (the thought) of the captive, involuntarily and against his will, leads to his fall. Likewise, sins that occur out of ignorance come from those that we commit in knowledge (in consciousness)....

Olga, I wish you recovery and thank you for your answers. Having thought about what I’ve written, I can’t help but ask two more questions.

Olga, I wish you recovery and thank you for your answers. Having thought about what I’ve written, I can’t help but ask two more questions.
1) This is the second time I have come across a phrase in which freedom is spoken of as something that allows for measure. This is quite consistent with the dogma described, but is at odds with the usual use of the word freedom. Usually only two possible meanings are assumed: freedom or lack thereof. How to understand partly free action? In my opinion, the words: “Reverend fathers, to the extent that they united with God, to that extent they possessed freeness, i.e. good will" can only be understood in this way: if we take all their actions and divide them into free and forced, then the part of free actions is a measure of their freedom.
2) This phrase is incomprehensible: “Among these two paths a person stands, that is, righteousness and sin, and whichever he wants, he enters and follows it. The path he followed, and those leading him along it, either Angels and people about God, or demons and evil people, bring him to the very end of the path and against his will.” Choice is an act that involves specific time and circumstances. How and when does a person make his one-time and irrevocable choice? In addition, this is fundamentally at odds (in my vision, of course) with church teaching about the need for repentance, etc.

Andrey, thank you very much, very good questions, but the topic is extremely complex and we probably still put our own meanings into some words. It is also important for me, if not to find, then at least to get closer to the truth. And questions like yours couldn’t come at a better time. I will also allow myself to respond to your points - it’s more convenient. 1.) It is not freedom that allows for measure (again I prescribe: we are created in the image of God, that is, in man there is (unfortunate word) reason and free will, that is, our will must be the same as His Will - absolutely free and always good), but the acquisition of it (freedom) can have a certain degree in the conditions of earthly existence. After all, we live in a world of hierarchy: good, better, even better, etc. If we, as God’s creations, after the Fall, could through our actions (spiritual life) restore these scattered connections of the soul ourselves, then we would hardly be needed save at such a price! After all, we are talking not only about the philosophical concept of “freedom”, no, this is one of the fundamental concepts in Christianity, to which we can reduce many concepts: love, virtue, prayer, sobriety, etc. But as long as there are consequences of sin, it means that there are obstacles to good will, that is, a certain degree (relativity) of the acquisition of freedom by us (people) in the conditions of “worldly attraction”. That is, to the extent that we manage to see these obstacles - alienation from the Source of the fullness of being, to this extent we thirst for the Creator and ask for His all-good Will. And then we gain freedom. In general, I think (my private opinion) that the Kingdom of God is the path of man in endless improvement (likening) to God. And the fact that this is very difficult, so the Lord said:... The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away... Therefore, I would not divide actions that are free and forced, as a synonym for free and unfree. As you probably understood, this mechanistic division does not relate to the definition of freedom as an integral mechanism of “good desire - good action.” It is precisely freedom here for us that lies in the constant compulsion that we can overcome the earthly gravity of sin and restore the unity of the soul in heavenly hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. The second question concerns the Providence of God. I will quote the words of St. Gregory the Theologian about what would happen if we acted according to our “free will”: “We must believe that there is a Providence that contains everything and connects everything in the world, for for those beings for whom the Creator is necessary, the Creator is also necessary. Provider; otherwise the world, carried by chance like a ship in a whirlwind, would have to collapse, crumble and return to its original chaos and disorder. "
,, Oh, I wrote a mess, the temperature still makes itself felt. Andrey, I’m wondering, if you, of course, understood my crooked thoughts, is there a conflict between my presentation of this concept and your judgments about freedom? I’ll answer the second question later, if you’re interested. We literally have an epidemic in the Tula region. The virus is terrible, one day it knocks you down and Temp. about 39. Don't get sick!

Olga, I wish you a speedy recovery!

Olga, thank you for good wishes. And don't get sick!
Having thought about all of the above once again, I am ready to agree that at least two meanings of the word “freedom” can be distinguished.

Olga, thank you for your good wishes. And don't get sick!
Having thought about all of the above once again, I am ready to agree that at least two meanings of the word “freedom” can be distinguished.
1) Freedom is synonymous with spontaneity. The link “will (desire) – will (action)” is similar to the link “cause – action”. The identity of desire and action = absolute freedom. Identity of cause and action = spontaneity (freedom). Here, in essence, I don’t see any differences between us. The conflict, in my opinion, lies in the fact that I understand this very connection “will (desire) - will (action)” not as parts of some previously whole in consciousness, but as the main way of ordering data in internal experience. If we want to understand something, we need to look for reasons. Moreover, the type of reason is not important - it is natural laws or Providence. But in nature there is no good and evil (and in the world contained by Providence, everything is good), therefore, if there is no spontaneity, then there is no place for either sin or virtue. That is why the question of free will has always been extremely important and has been the subject of debate among different philosophical schools. However, sin and virtue are real, as conscience fully testifies to. Therefore, it is necessary to posit free will, not as the goal of activity, but as already actually existing and manifested in every action subject to moral evaluation. Coercion (unfreedom) is the conditioning of an action or thought by something external to it, considered as its cause. Usually this external something is called affect. Therefore, compulsion does not consist in the need to overcome difficulties, but in the conditioning of the will. In my opinion, Theodoret in the quotation I quoted has in mind precisely this type of freedom. More precisely, he warns against incorrect conclusions from faith in Divine Providence to the unfree will of man and, therefore, his insanity (in the literal sense).
2) “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” But a slave does not remain in the house forever, a son remains forever. Therefore, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (Gospel of John 8:34-36). We are talking here about redemption, in which every believer participates. This meaning completely coincides with your presentation, except that it does not imply, at least explicitly, that one of the consequences of the Fall is the destruction of the freedom that once existed, i.e., the identity of desire and action. I am inclined to think that this idea came into theology from ancient Greek philosophy.
As far as I understand, freedom (1) and freedom (2) are not mutually exclusive, so it is quite possible to accept them simultaneously. You just need to understand what exactly is at stake in this particular case.
However, neither freedom (1) nor freedom (2) can be understood as a one-time act, the consequence of which is salvation or death. On the contrary, they both involve constant activity. Therefore, I will be happy to read your thoughts about the quote: “Among these two paths a person stands, that is, righteousness and sin, and whichever he wants, he enters and follows it. The path he followed, and those leading him along it, either Angels and people about God, or demons and evil people, bring him to the very end of the path and against his will.”

Andrew, as they write St. fathers, man, in his current state, is more willing to sin than to righteousness. If God wants us to be free even in sinful existence, then our freedom is a spiritual category, and not bodily or mental, etc. It is the spiritual component (which we least of all feel and realize) that allows a person to connect with God and create good will. And everyday - “will (desire) – will (action)” with objective or even moral choices, is the fact that we have will. But this does not mean that it is absolute. So, there is freedom, and there is the possibility of its implementation: for good or for sin. At the beginning I wrote that life in God contributes to the realization of good freedom (one) to the extent that the likeness of God is acquired.

In the Moscow studio of our TV channel - a candidate philosophical sciences, teacher of the Department of Theology of the Moscow Theological Academy, Hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev).

Our guest is a teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy, candidate of philosophical sciences, rector of the church in honor of the holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky in the village of Buzlanovo, Krasnogorsk district, hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev).

Father Simeon, thank you for being a guest again in our Moscow studio. Today we will try to answer those questions about faith that are often asked by both our TV viewers and many people who are interested in, and sometimes criticize, our Orthodox faith.

Everything is according to the commandment of the Apostle, who said: “Give an answer to everyone who asks about your faith with meekness and trust.”

First question: “In Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” Berlioz says the following phrase to the poet Ivan Bezdomny: “There is not a single Eastern religion in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin would not give birth to a god. So the Christians, without inventing anything new, invented their own Jesus, who in fact was never alive.” Let us also remember the Egyptian Osiris, the gracious god and son of heaven and earth, the Phoenician Fammuz, Marduk, the lesser-known god Vitzliputzli, who was revered by the Aztecs. And what to answer to this? Is this really true?

Gasparov’s wonderful book “Entertaining Greece” contains a story about King Kodra. The Peloponnesian Dorians captured Attica, besieged Athens, the Delphic oracle uttered a prophecy: “You will take Athens if you do not touch the Athenian king.” King Codrus, who was then at the head of Athens, having learned about this, decided on a cunning move: he dressed himself in the rags of a simple peasant, went out of the city gates and began collecting brushwood. When the soldiers approached him and asked him something, he waved them off with a sickle, caused them to become furious - and was killed on the spot. When the Dorians learned that they had not followed the oracle's instructions, they lifted the siege and left Attica.

This plot is very closely reminiscent gospel story about the Heavenly King, Who took on the image of a simple man, allowed Himself to be killed on Golgotha, and thereby saved all His people from great destruction.

There was a British cultural scientist, James Fraser, who collected a huge volume of various beliefs, including little-known tribes and peoples, and called it “The Golden Bough.” It is this book that Bulgakov’s Berlioz refers to when speaking about the Phoenician god Tammuz, Marduk, Witzliputzli, and so on. And the argument that opponents of the Orthodox faith use is called Fraser's argument. He says that the Christian plot is a simple plagiarism, and indeed, there is more early myths, telling about rising and dying gods. The same myth about Prometheus, who accepted suffering for the sake of people, and so on.

Fraser's argument easily turns against our accusers. For example, in physics there is the Boyle-Marriott law - these are two different scientists, two physicists who discovered the law independently of each other. There are examples in geometry where one geometer proved the same theorem several months later than another geometer, but this does not mean that he stole from the first proof. On the contrary, if two people in different points lands discover the same law, rather, it is an argument in favor of the truth of this law if, without agreement, they come to the same decision.

In humanities and theology there is even such a criterion of truth - the agreement of the sages, or the agreement of the fathers: when people different eras, different cultures in a situation that excludes borrowing say the same things. Therefore, it is rather evidence of the truth of what they say. And it's the same here.

The opposite situation would be strange if, before Christ, outstanding thinkers, poets, and inspired people had not said a word about the central plot world history: The Nativity of Christ, His death and resurrection. It would be strange if the central event of human history did not echo both in later eras and in earlier ones.

There was such an apologist, Justin the Philosopher, Justin Martyr, who even called such people “Christians before Christ.” For example, Heraclitus of Ephesus, whom the holy Apostle Evangelist John the Theologian almost quotes in his Gospel (fourth). People like Heraclitus, brought up in a pagan cultural environment, formulated specific Christian truths long before the Savior came to the world. It is clear that this was inaccurate, that they did not get to the very essence. It was as if they were speculating, as if through a dark glass, about the future central event of world history. But there were such people.

Justin the Philosopher, an apologist of the first centuries, believes that this phenomenon of “Christians before Christ,” which would later be called “Fraser’s argument,” testifies precisely in our favor. It would be strange if only a narrow group of people, who at first were generally considered one of the many Jewish sects, knew about the central event of human history - Christ and His coming.

In addition, only at first glance, “Mercedes” and “Zaporozhets” are the same car. It would seem that there are four wheels, a steering wheel, an engine, but it’s all in the details. And anyone who takes the time to look at the details will see that these are two completely different cars. In much the same way, the plots of pre-Christian cultures, reminiscent of the Gospel narrative, correlate with the Gospel itself - a harmonious, complete and perfect concept of Divine economy. It differs from earlier similar stories in the same way that a modern car differs from Henry Ford's first car.

You said that Justin the Philosopher calls such people “Christians before Christ.” Before the birth of Christ, only the people of Israel had the truth, and the entire Bible is built on the narrative of the life of Israel. What about those people who lived in the same era, but on other continents, in other countries? Have they heard anything about this?

The Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian speaks about it this way: “There is the true Light, enlightening and illuminating every person coming into the world.” Based on this, Justin the Philosopher creates his concept of Christianity before Christ. He says that the Old Testament prophets actually prepared the Jewish people for the coming of the Savior. A similar function in pagan peoples was performed by sages and philosophers, at least those whom he calls by this name - “Christians before Christ.” In China it is Confucius, in Greece Heraclitus, Socrates, the central figure of Greek philosophy, Plato and many others. They can be compared to the Old Testament prophets, who prepared their people for the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles.

The preaching of those apostles who went to preach to the pagans was successful in a significant number of cases. Yes, indeed, in the Athenian Areopagus many laughed at the apostle and said: we will listen to you at another time. But many believed, many, brought up on ancient Greek philosophy, on those very “Christians before Christ,” heard something familiar, familiar, something to which their teachers led them, but to which they never reached.

The next question: “Why did God condemn Adam to death for such a small offense: he did not listen, took and ate the apple? Was this really the reason for condemning Adam and Eve and the entire subsequent human race to death?

A small clarification: in the original Hebrew Old Testament it is not said that it was exactly an apple, but simply a certain fruit. And the fruit of which tree is unclear.

Just this question can illustrate the difference between understanding the gospel story and similar stories in paganism.

Why does a person die at all? Holy Scripture says this: the penalty for sin is death. What then Mother of God? After all, She did not commit a personal sin. Why did her own Son put her to death?

The second bewilderment that arises here and continues this question, about which people often ask: “In what sense do you celebrate the victory of Christ over death?” After all, after the resurrection of Christ, people did not stop dying, just as they died before, and so they die after. And indeed, it looks like some kind of paradox when a priest on Easter - and people die on Easter too - pronounces the Easter word of John Chrysostom: “Death, where is your sting? Hell, where is your victory? - and next to it, in the next aisle, there is a coffin with a deceased person, who will be buried in the morning. So this is where the sting of death is, this is where his victory is. In this sense, the priest’s question looks somewhat comical...

Indeed, if the Lord conquered death, then why did it remain? Why not abolish it altogether?

- Although all prayers say about this: “and abolish death.”

Yes, “he trampled down death by death,” “he abolished him who had the power of death,” that is, the devil, and so on.

In what sense are we talking about victory over death? There was such a holy father, a great teacher of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nyssa. He has an amazing image - the image of a jug. Sometimes, when talking about death, it is called “the jug of Gregory of Nyssa.” He says: imagine a large beautiful jug, expensive, painted, the owner’s favorite thing. And the envious man, the owner’s enemy, sneaked into the house at night while everyone was sleeping and poured molten lead into this jug. The lead had frozen by morning, and there was no way to pick it out - the jug was damaged. What to do? The owner, not wanting to part with the jug, picks it up and breaks it on a stone. The pieces scatter, the lead blank separates, and the owner, being versed in the meager craft, carefully collects these pieces, coats them with clay, joins them, fires them again, paints them and restores the jug to its pristine purity.

This jug, says Gregory of Nyssa, is the soul of a person. Towards the sensual side human soul evil was mixed in, and so subtly that it was impossible to even make some kind of demarcation, separating evil from the soul.

The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea became famous as a master of aporia. “Poros” means “exit” in Greek, “a” is a negative particle. Aporia is a kind of hopeless situation for the mind. For example, there was such an aporia “Heap”. If I throw one grain after another onto the table, at some point I will discover that I am throwing the grains not just on the table, but in a pile. How many grains form a heap? It's impossible to say. From the same series is the aporia “Bald”. At what point does a person become bald? How much hair should fall out? They fall out all the time, but this is not critical, and at some point a bald spot forms. How many hairs are lost to be considered bald? It is also impossible to draw a line and say that so many hairs have fallen out - not yet a bald spot, but one extra - and a bald spot is already forming. It’s the same with the human soul: it is impossible to draw a demarcation line where our virtues, the gifts of God, our talents end and their opposite begins.

After all, even popular wisdom says that our shortcomings are a continuation of our advantages and nothing more. Let's say, if a person is a monk, strict in his faith, strict with himself, if he loves the law, canons, rules, he becomes somehow dry and boring. May become proud. This is a person with whom it is impossible to communicate. And, on the contrary, those of us who love people, are hospitable to strangers, as a rule, suffer from a lack of elementary monastic discipline.

In our Moscow Theological Academy there is a museum, which, in fact, originates from the collection of personal belongings of Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky). They have an interesting staff. Patriarch Alexy (Simansky) was a very responsible, meticulous person, one of those people who do everything conscientiously, do not leave things halfway and go into all the details. That is, he had no negligence at all, he did every job from the heart and brought it to perfection - such a perfectionist. In particular, this was reflected by the bad quality of his character: he constantly asked his subdeacons: “What time is it?” - even during worship. And when he finally tortured them, they chipped in and gave him a staff, in the knob of which there was a hidden watch from either the “Glory” or “Flight” company, so that the patriarch could look right during the service and get an answer to his question, not tormenting his assistants.

Dostoevsky has one of his favorite ideas: there is more than one motive for any human action, even an insignificant one. It is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of why a person did this. It is always a whole bunch of motives, and the most interesting thing is that holy motives are intertwined, even inseparably fused with some selfish, selfish thoughts. In The Idiot, for example, there is an episode when Prince Myshkin talks with Lieutenant Keller. Lieutenant Keller is a raider, a duelist, a drunkard, a womanizer, like Lieutenant Rzhevsky from the joke. Initially, he stands in opposition to Prince Myshkin, but at some point life brings them together, they sit in the country, talk - and become close friends. Keller confesses to Prince Myshkin. After all, the fact is that our sins, even some kind of condemnation of our neighbor, place a very serious psychological barrier between people and between man and God. Therefore, when a person confesses, he breaks these psychological barriers, first of all for himself, and acquires a friend in the face of God or in the person of his neighbor. And so Keller, with a pure soul, reveals almost everything and repents to Prince Myshkin of all the intrigues when he plotted against the prince. And they both rejoice, both laugh at each other in inspiration and joy. A warm, friendly feeling arose between them.

This is one of Dostoevsky’s favorite ideas: even the most holy deed is motivated by a whole bouquet, when under the flowers there is always some kind of snake - some nasty, selfish, vulgar, lustful thought.

Or another character in the novel - Totsky. How did he meet Nastasya Filippovna? He was driving through St. Petersburg in the evening and saw a burning apartment building. Calling the police chief, I found out what kind of house was on fire. It turned out that there was a girl of 12-13 years old, Nastasya Filippovna, and this tenement house was all that was left of her father. She is of noble birth, but an orphan. The house gave her some means of living, and now it burned down, she was left not only without means of living, but also without a home. Totsky decides to take her in - a noble act. She lives with him for a year or two, and then he corrupts her and makes her his concubine. Where was that line when he first looked at her with lust? Nobody can tell.

Evil was so subtly mixed with the sensual side of the human soul that the person was overcome by passions. Like, for example, a person with a stomach ulcer has such severe stomach pain that nothing makes him happy. It is useless to offer him a trip around the world upper class, see the world. Offer him whatever joys you like - he doesn’t need the whole world, he thinks only about his illness, he cannot rejoice. Likewise, a soul struck by evil, like a stomach by an ulcer, cannot be happy. And the Lord does not do anything by halves, He creates perfect things. And having decided to create man, He decided to create him happy. That's why He breaks the jug...

Another analogy can be given: He kills the evil in a person along with the person himself. Of course, I'm not a doctor, but as far as I can tell, this is how cancer is treated with chemotherapy. Chemistry kills human cells: both sick and healthy, and the hope of doctors is that healthy cells will turn out to be a little more viable, a little more resilient than sick ones. You can kill by killing diseased cells, saving a few healthy ones, and then the person will be rehabilitated and return to life without evil. Here God guides each of us, infected with this cancer of the soul, the tumor of evil, through death as through a filter. He “breaks” us, destroys us along with our evil in the hope that the good in a person’s soul will be stronger and from it it will be possible to restore a person to pristine purity.

Therefore, everyone must go through death. Even the Mother of God, Who did not commit a personal sin, was still infected with original sin, this evil that was mixed with the sensual side of the human soul, and therefore, like the owner’s favorite jug, She too had to be broken. Holy Scripture knows the names of those who were caught up alive into heaven, but tradition clearly says about them that in last times they, too, will have to go through this filter of death in order to cut off all evil from themselves.

- How to get rid of death? Is there any remedy for it?

This is a question asked by people of every religion. Religion is essentially the answer to this question, an answer that is meaningful to one degree or another. Christianity is unique in this sense because it tells the story of how the Word became flesh. No other religion says that God Himself became man for our salvation.

Here you can theology and explain God’s plan for our salvation in different ways, but personally, I am closer to the tradition of the Eastern fathers, who do not use the scientific apparatus of theology, but resort to metaphors and artistic images to explain mysterious things. My favorite comparison is Christ, who is likened to a doctor. An ancient, medieval doctor is not the same therapist or surgeon that we see today in our clinics and hospitals.

Imagine a young doctor coming to a plague-ridden city: people are dying like flies, they don’t have time to bury each other. And this doctor comes and experiences some kind of insight in his laboratory: it seems to him that he understands the cause of the disease and knows how to heal it - he invents a medicine. The problem is that he cannot try it on other patients: there is a principle of “do no harm,” do not aggravate the patient’s suffering. And very often ancient doctors - how they differ from many modern ones - tested the medicine not on patients, but on themselves.

But how can you test a medicine if the doctor himself is healthy? You need to get infected. And so this doctor voluntarily, without having any compulsion to do so, goes and infects himself with his patient’s disease: he smears himself with his secretions or puts on clothes soaked in the patient’s sweat; in later times, he transfusions himself with his blood. Having become infected, the doctor shares with his patients all the hardships and sorrows of the disease: fever, aches, insomnia, a sad, difficult state of mind that accompanies serious illnesses, fever, vomiting and so on. And when the disease reaches its final stage, he returns to his laboratory and takes his powders.

Very often these doctors died. If their calculation turned out to be incorrect, they shared the fate of their patients to the end - they died. Anyone interested in the history of medicine can find a lot of examples, right up to our time.

But it happened that the doctor’s calculation turned out to be correct - he recovered on his own, and his blood already became a medicine: it contained the necessary antibodies against the deadly virus. Then he took sick blood from patients, and returned his own to them and healed them of this disease.

Why is this image so accurate? Because it shows the essence of the Incarnation. In January we celebrate Christmas. Indeed, it is a joy for patients that someone took care of them, someone infected themselves fatal disease, that is, the person is serious, and not just saying a couple of comforting nonsense after the dying person. The man himself shared my fate with me, the sick one. It's joyful.

But, probably, for God this was a very serious test, because the Lord is absolute and, as the Absolute, has no need for anything. All pain arises from need, and within Him is everything that could be needed, even theoretically. And so He reveals Himself in the mystery of the Incarnation, reveals Himself to suffering and death. He experiences the same as all of us, flesh-bearing people, cold, hunger, thirst, pain from blows from a whip. He experiences disappointment in people, betrayal loved one, His student. In the end, He dies painfully, horribly on the cross. Cicero writes that this is the most painful execution that the sick human imagination has invented: a man on a cross dies of suffocation. And so God dies, His tortured body remains in the tomb for three days.

But in this person there is also a Divine principle that cannot die. During these three days, like leaven thrown into dough, it heals and transforms everything human - beaten, painful, mortal. And Christ rises. Thus, having conquered death in Himself, in His being, He, giving us His flesh and blood, which already contains the cure for death, heals every person.

So simple artistic image The doctor very well, in my opinion, conveys the dogmatic meaning of the Gospel: what God did and how He did it for the salvation of man.

People who like to criticize our Church often ask: “What are you doing in church, why do you need it? Why does the priest hold a whole “event” (that’s what they call the liturgy, the Eucharist), drinking wine and eating bread himself and giving them to others?”

It's really interest Ask. Christ was resurrected because in Him there was a Divine, immortal principle that cannot die. And it not only resurrected man, but also transformed human nature, bringing it to perfection. Please note: in the Gospel, the people who first meet Jesus for some reason stubbornly do not recognize Him. Maria thinks it is the gardener. Luke and Cleopas on the road to Emmaus also cannot recognize Him, only then they understand that it was the Lord. “Didn’t our heart burn within us when this unknown traveler explained to us the verbs of Scripture?” The mysterious phrase of Mary is also thrown: “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father.” This is a completely incomprehensible, mysterious thing. It’s like we opened the door to some laboratory, where, in principle, we don’t understand anything and it’s better not to enter there at all, the processes taking place there are too complex.

Christ was resurrected because He is the God-man. I can be sincerely happy for Him, but what do I care? After all, I’m just a human being, I don’t have this Divine leaven in me, I don’t have an immortal principle. What will resurrect and transform my soul and bring it to perfection after my death? And here the most interesting thing begins - the Lord confirms the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Communion.

Remember the famous fresco by Leonardo da Vinci, which depicts Last Supper(not only her, of course)? When they bring ordinary bread and pure grape wine to Christ, He blesses, breaks it, distributes it to His disciples and says: “Come, eat, this is My Body, which was broken for you for the remission of sins.” He blesses the cup, gives everyone a sip and says: “Drink from it, all of you, this is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.” And he further commands: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Since then, for two thousand years, the Church, in fact, exists for the sake of this main goal. So that every person who comes into the world - no matter how far he is geographically and temporally from the Last Supper, in which the apostles took part - can be a participant.

Every day in Moscow, in all forty-forty Moscow churches, a liturgy is celebrated, in the same way the priest places ordinary bread, ordinary grape wine on the altar, and the essence of the prayers he performs is very simple: “Lord, as then, two thousand years ago, you came, blessed and turned this bread and this wine into Your Body and Blood, do the same with this bread and this wine for the sake of those who were not lazy, came this morning to the Liturgy, in order to inherit Your resurrection and Your Divine energies, transforming, healing and inspiring people." And at some point it happens though physical properties bread and wine are preserved.

Here, by the way, many are perplexed: in what sense do we say that bread and wine become the bread and blood of Christ? In figurative? No. In the very present. This is not a metaphor. But the Body is flesh, meat, and the Blood is blood, not wine. How to combine these two things? Once upon a time this may have been difficult, but now, in the age of computer literacy, we can find a computer image that allows us to understand this. The fact is that we habitually think that if a thing is immaterial, then it is ineffective. Although this is not true.

This can be easily shown using the example of a computer program - this is not a material thing, but it has a very real effect in the material world. For example, my computer caught some kind of virus that blocks all programs, and I cannot work normally on this computer. What should I do? I buy an empty plastic disk, go to the laboratory on Leningradka, and say: “Kaspersky, help me.” He takes this disk from me, inserts it into the computer, does something with it and returns it. Have the physical properties of this disk changed? No. It remained round and plastic as it was. Weight, color, all physical properties, all chemical composition - everything is the same. But it's now more than a piece of plastic. This is of great value to me, because the program is recorded on it. I insert this disk into my computer, the program works and has a very real effect - the computer now works normally. This analogy can be used to understand (as far as possible) what happens during the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

The physical properties of bread and wine are preserved, but the metaphysical (scary, maybe I’ll say a word), informational properties change. This piece really becomes a material carrier Divine energies, that “program” that heals our human nature and makes it capable of resurrecting on the third day after death.

Therefore, death is only a preparatory stage for resurrection. It is the resurrection, the Flesh and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that makes a person perfect, devoid of all evil. A person who can live happily in eternity. That is why the Lord says: “I am the door of the sheep, and there is no other door.” Therefore, He utters harsh words: “Whoever does not eat My Flesh and drink My Blood will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The example of Lazarus shows that the Lord can resurrect a person by His power, but woe to that person, for he was resurrected again in his illnesses, sores and his evil; resurrected unrefined, untransformed, unable to enjoy life in perfect joy.

This philosophical understanding of the Gospel plot within the framework of Christian tradition, patristic thought shows us that the Gospel story about God, who became Man, died and rose again, is not at all the same as pagan stories about gods dying and resurrecting or being born from an immaculate virgin.

Thanks for the wonderful answer. There is one more question: what is the reason for faith or unbelief? We have been talking beautifully for almost fifty minutes about our dogmas, truths, and there are many scientists, theologians and other public people who speak correctly and beautifully about faith, but why is it not always possible to convince non-believers?

The fact is that the real reason for belief or disbelief lies outside the intellectual plane. There is such a thing - the Adam complex. The first atheistic reflex was experienced by Adam who sinned. Remember what Adam and Eve did immediately after breaking the commandment about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

“And Adam heard the voice of God walking through paradise during the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve hid from God among the trees of paradise.” Do you understand that this is absurd? How can you hide from the All-Seeing Eye behind some bushes? It’s the drunks in the yard who, when they see a police car, can hide behind the bushes. They succeed. But here the situation is completely different.

Obviously, if we reject the completely empty hypothesis that sin temporarily damaged Adam’s mind, we have to admit that Adam did not so much try to hide himself from God as to hide God from himself. They know about it family psychologists: if one of the spouses commits treason, the person he deceived becomes unpleasant to him first. We most of all hate, abhor and turn away not from those who have done evil to us, but from those to whom we have done evil. And vice versa, we love most of all not those who saved us from death, but those whom we managed to save from death or do something similar.

The Lord also speaks about this: “That is why you hate the light, because your deeds are evil. If your deeds were good, you would strive for the light.” The psalmist king David speaks about this: “A fool says in his heart: “There is no God.” Why? Because he was corrupted and disgusted in iniquities. And we ourselves know that when we do some “small” things, then everything connected with the Church and God becomes heavy and unpleasant for our hearts; and, on the contrary, as soon as you perform even a small feat, you joyfully fly towards the light.

Thank you very much interesting conversation, listened to you in fascination. First of all, I would like to note for our TV viewers that Father Simeon is restoring a church in the village of Buzlanovo, Krasnogorsk region, and, like any undertaking, this requires help not only with words, but also with deeds. On your screens you see details that you can use to help this temple under construction. You can find them on the Internet and in a group on the social network “VKontakte”, which is called: Hieromonk Simeon Mazaev.

Let's remember the words of the apostle that faith without works is dead. We all like to go to the beautiful churches that decorate our cities, we like to watch an interesting TV channel, but we often don’t even think about it (we have such a slight naivety, which probably comes from Adam, the earth gave him everything for free, the Lord gave him everything without any labor), that both our TV channel and our temple are created by the labors of many people, and therefore, of course, require funds. I urge you to provide assistance, not only prayerful, but also material, to our TV channel and - whoever wishes - to the Alexander Nevsky Church in the village of Buzlanovo, Krasnogorsk district. And God bless you all!

Presenter Sergey Platonov
Recorded by Ksenia Sosnovskaya

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Candidate of Philosophy, teacher at the Moscow Theological Academy, Hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev), wrote his book for students of theological schools - those few people among our contemporaries who are prescribed by church canons to marry only once. This circumstance forces a person to take a responsible approach to marriage, and to the choice of that only girlfriend in life with whom he has to go through the path of life. In order for this choice to be possible and the marriage to take place, the young man, first of all, needs to take himself seriously. Is it possible to learn masculinity? What is male attractiveness based on? Why are women willing to forgive men so much? These are just a few of the questions that the author examines in the book "Male Philosophy. Being a Real Man." The new millennium increasingly requires physical labor from men; professional soldiers are increasingly involved in wars, and not all young people go to serve in the army. But this does not mean that masculinity has become less in demand today. On the contrary, recognizing the crisis of masculinity that has occurred on the European territory of the planet, women, perhaps, need real men more than ever before. That is why we hope that this book will be of interest not only to future clergy, but also to everyone who would like to comprehend the secrets of courage. After all, it is impossible to learn or teach courage without doing certain philosophical and human work on yourself.
Recommended for publication by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.

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How “the smartest young man in the world” became disillusioned with the subjects of the smartest faculty, why is human destiny a protected channel of communication with God, and monasticism is love? Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, teacher at the Moscow Theological Academy and publicist Hieromonk Simeon (Mazaev) talks about this in an interview with our publication.

Reveal the truth to me

Father Simeon, you have had an interesting path from philosophy (alma mater - Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University) to monasticism...

Many have followed this path, and among my church-going friends there are many university graduates. Sometimes we joke among ourselves that Moscow State University has given the Church more priests and monks than some seminaries. Until my third year, I was an unbeliever, I even made fun of religious people. And so, you see, I laughed enough (the guest smiles)... The Lord humbled me. And then I conducted an experiment. The study of religion itself is fascinating, and during my studies I studied this subject with interest, with an external, cultural interest. It was impossible to escape the thought: we are scientists, and scientists must test everything in practice. Including the existence of God. I decided that every day for a week I would briefly pray, “Lord, if You exist, reveal the Truth to me.” Well, a week is enough for the Almighty Creator to answer my question!

However, a negative result is also a result. In this case, I will have the right to say that there is no God, because I cried out and did not hear an answer. But the Lord deprived me of this right. I saw what is called in our language the Providence of God - a series of amazing coincidences. You have to be the most die-hard atheist to accept them as an ordinary coincidence.

The Lord speaks to man in the language of fate and strange coincidences. This is an extremely secure “communication channel”. The fact is that some visions, signs, voices in the head can be the result of a mental disorder or one’s own emotional pumping. In the pagan world there are many religious practices where people stimulate their own imagination and see something like hallucinations. Voices, visions, signs - can be, as patristic asceticism teaches, charm. Such unusual impressions are most often the result of the intervention of other forces, which the Lord only allows. And the only truly secure “communication channel” is the destinies of the world and human destinies, because no one has power over them, only God Himself. Thus, when I saw a series of startling coincidences, it became impossible to remain in the same position.

As for monasticism, it is love. Like a young man who definitely decided to get married, not just go to the movies with a girl, walk with her under the moon, sing songs with a guitar. He looks at this girl and feels annoyed that their existence is divided: she went to the dacha with her mother and father, and he went to the sea with his parents. So the sea is not a joy for him, the young man is mentally with his girlfriend. At some point, the separation of their existence becomes unbearable. It's the same with monasticism. One day I saw the monks Sretensky Monastery They left the church after the Liturgy, the rite of Panagia was performed, they proceeded with chants to the refectory. I admired the beauty of monasticism... And then the feeling I spoke about above began to develop. No matter what I did, I was mentally among the brethren, realizing that I wanted to be one of them, to share my work and life with them. Until the bishop's scissors touched my head, until I spent 40 nights in the altar according to tradition, this feeling did not disappear. Now I am calm and happy, as much as possible in my entire life.

I wanted real wisdom

- Well, what about philosophy, which you loved to study? After all, it was she who became the subject of the initial choice.

To be honest, I was motivated by completely ridiculous motives. While studying at school in Pyatigorsk, for some reason I thought that I was the smartest in the world, as many young men at the age of 16-17 probably think. Where should the “smartest young man in the world” go if not to the smartest department of the smartest university? It's funny, but that's how it was. Then I was completely disappointed: what I heard at Moscow State University was not at all what I had dreamed of. At the university, philosophy is taught as a science, and the meticulous scientific approach was not close to me. I wanted real wisdom. I found it rather in the field of theology, where there are much more interesting subjects to consider, which can really ignite, inspire.

The main topic of the lectures in Arkhangelsk is “What is the essence of Christianity?” Can I summarize it briefly for the impatient?

I remembered a literary joke. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, when asked to briefly explain the main idea of “War and Peace,” said: “To do this, you will have to retell the entire novel.” And when asked to comment on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein simply whistled. It’s difficult to say briefly, but I can explain why exactly this idea arose. If there was an opportunity to give a series of lectures, I would structure them differently, but since there is only one speech in front of an audience, I want to talk about the most important thing - what the Gospel is about, what is the essence of our faith. Such an example. People come to baptize a child, I ask: “Why come to us? Why not to the synagogue, not to the mosque? They answer: “Well, we are Russians.” I explain that Russians are not necessarily Orthodox and vice versa. How does Orthodoxy differ from Judaism and Islam? People don't know. At a certain moment of the Sacrament, the godfather must read the Creed, but he does not understand what he is reading. This is theological terminology that is difficult to understand. This means that it is important to talk about what is special about Christianity, about how “the Word became flesh”, in the language of everyday examples, images close to modern man.

A lot of questions immediately arise: why “The Word became flesh”? Why did God become incarnate? A person needs to be shown the idea, the whole picture. We have to choose other words and images, not philosophical, but ordinary, everyday ones, so that people understand what we, for example, do during the Liturgy. I often hear the question: “How do you eat the Body and Blood of God, who is the Spirit? You can honor God, show submission to Him, pray to Him, but why eat Him?” Another question from this series: “What do you celebrate on Easter”? In the Easter sermon of John Chrysostom there are the following lines: “Death, where is your sting? Hell, where is your victory? But yesterday you held a funeral service for a person... Christ conquered “death by death,” but people did not stop dying after Him. And there are a lot of questions, both from our critics and from people who cannot understand what we teach and what we talk about. There is no clarity in our minds. This is how my text appeared - an exposition of faith not in the language of dogma and high philosophy of theology, but in the language of understandable images.

Sermon in modern world

Why is Christianity a true religion and what can be said to atheists and those people who believe that God is in their souls?

Several religions can be compared. I will tell you that philosophically the most consistent and thoughtful, the most perfect is Christianity. It is difficult to come up with a more tragic and sublime plot than in the Gospel. For example, what did Muhammad, the founder of Islam, do? It seems to me that he was a straightforward, truth-loving man, but simple and unlearned. This psychotype is characterized by a peculiarity: he does not like complexity, and where he sees it, he suspects deception. Those questions that we talked about above and which were not understood by Muhammad, he simply threw out of his teaching. In my opinion, Islam is a stripped-down, primitive Christianity.

What can you answer to those who claim that God is in the soul? Such a statement is a kind of marker that shows that a person is not familiar with the practice of religious life. Let's say on Mount Athos there are hermit monks living on the mountain, in crevices, rocks. They have God in their souls, that’s for sure. However, they periodically leave their crevices and go to the monastery to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ and participate in conciliar prayer. Why is this so, why is this necessary? The practice of religious life shows: if congregational prayer stops, if a person does not participate in it, then soon his personal, secret, cell prayer ends, and all communication with God ceases. If the name of Christ leaves the lips, then it very soon leaves the mind and heart. This is shown by the practice of spiritual life. If you don’t go to church, then you’ll abandon your cell prayer rule. For some reason this is exactly the case.

Humans are social creatures, and there is no escape from this. Religion is not a personal, but still a public matter, therefore, if religious practice disappears from the public sphere, then soon a person comes to complete inaction in religious terms. To the question “Are you a believer?” he will answer “yes,” but in fact the spiritual life in him has frozen.

Preaching in the modern world. What should it be like to touch the hearts and minds of people immersed in their own world?

It is important not what to say, but at what moment to say it. Pushkin has a wonderful epigram: “There is no grace for you in anything; There is a discord with your happiness: you are beautiful at the wrong time, and you are smart at the wrong time.” The most important thing is not to construct some brilliant word, decorating it according to the rules of rhetoric and oratory, it is important to find right moment. There is a time in every person's life for truth. It's useless as art. This is if phrases express a thought from Oscar Wilde's aesthetic theory, "art is completely useless." The truth is useless. It is impossible to find a utilitarian use for it. She is inspiring in herself, beautiful in herself.

But the time comes when a person is ready to listen to interesting things, new theories, talk about the truth, and this, as a rule, is the time of studenthood. First of all, you need to go to this environment, to universities, to interest them in what you yourself are passionate about. There is no need for special words, it takes time - student life, high school, when a person strives to understand life, and not just obediently, like a first-grader, does his homework, but reflects and tries to find the truth.

- Then what should middle-aged people do, how can they find time and where can they hear words about the truth?

In this sense, the Church is wise. It gives the priest many reasons to come to the person. For example, the consecration of an apartment. What will change if you consecrate the apartment? Apparently nothing, but this is a very good reason to come to a person’s house and pray with him. An unchurched person, coming to church, will feel, like any living creature in a new place, a little “nailed down.” Even if you bring a cat into a new apartment, it will feel insecure at first. And so each of us, coming to a new place, feels awkward. But at home a person is relaxed, he is the master there. Let’s say the priest has blessed the apartment, and over tea we can talk about the most important thing - what the Gospel tells about. Or the blessing of a car. On a consecrated car, of course, the wheels will not spin faster, but this is a very good reason for the priest to talk to the person personally about important things.

I am faced with the fact that people do not really know what rituals are for. I come to the apartment, the owner says: “You know, I had a llama, I cleaned it here, but I feel that he couldn’t cope. Maybe you can do it...” People resort to the help of the Church, often without realizing what it involves. They may not be religious, not churchgoers, but they will come to baptize the child, because “well, how could it be otherwise, this is our national tradition.” It’s stupid... but the priest can use this as an excuse to talk about God.

An ambush for those who do not seek Christ

- In your opinion, why do people cool down towards the Church?

First of all, they are disappointed. Not because the Church is bad, but because they were obviously fascinated by it and were looking for anything there, just not Christ. Some were looking for a national idea, others were looking for spiritual elders.

Everything in the Church is transitory, except Christ. Once upon a time there lived apostles who healed, resurrected, and performed miracles, but their time has passed. Then the ascetics appeared. It is difficult to believe that a person is capable of withstanding such labors and exploits as those demonstrated, for example, by Saints Anthony the Great and Simeon the Stylite, but their time has passed. The time of the elders has come. Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur) predicted (however, perhaps these words were attributed to him): “We are the last, no one is following us anymore,” that is, the times of old age are also passing. Perhaps the time will come for people with the gift of reasoning, but it will also end. Thus, if a person is looking for something other than Christ in the Church, sooner or later he will be disappointed.

The second point is disappointment in myself: here, I have been in the Church for 20 years and have not become one iota better, the same sins and passions, which means the Sacraments do not work, the Church does not work. The fact is that it should not work the way you thought, because in your spiritual life you have set obviously unattainable goals. My dear person, if you yourself, through willpower, exercise, and practice, could overcome the passions in yourself, then Christ would not have to be incarnated, suffer, be crucified, die, or be resurrected. If a person could overcome passions by his own effort of will, the Gospel would be different, Sacred history would be different. If you can do it yourself, why should Christ help you? Therefore, there is no need to set yourself unattainable goals and be disappointed that you have not achieved them.

In spiritual life, the task is not to conquer passions, but to prevent them from completely biting us. It's like the Zapashny brothers train tigers. But, obedient and trained, they do not cease to be tigers. They are still fierce, powerful, scary creatures. Trainers do not change their nature, but to some extent subjugate them - they put them on a pedestal. The task of a Christian is not to get rid of passions in himself, but to “put them on a pedestal”, not to give them free rein; we cannot do more.

If a person could overcome passions, God would not need to subject him to a painful and terrible operation - death and resurrection. The Lord resurrects through Himself, passes through Himself, as through a door near which He Himself stands as a guard: everything good that is in a person passes through, but evil cannot seep through.

At the end of the conversation we return to where we started. Confusion in the head regarding one's own faith, the lack of a clear understanding of what is written in the Gospel and of Christianity itself leads to the fact that a person makes cruel mistakes in his spiritual life. Here’s the trick: setting yourself a goal that is obviously impossible to achieve, naturally, you won’t achieve it and you will become disillusioned with the Church.

Interviewed by Lyudmila Selivanova

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