Archimandrite Raphael Karelin biography. Great prayer books and intercessors of our land

By blessing His Holiness Patriarch Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II

From the publisher

What is an Orthodox Christian, by what signs can one be recognized in this passion-ridden world? Where is the line today between him and the pagan, who knows only one law - the law of satisfying his diverse needs; Where is the dividing line between a believer in Christ and an unbeliever, indifferent to everything that is inaccessible to his sensory perception?

“Christians,” says St. Macarius the Great, “have their own world, their own way of life, and their mind, and their word, and their activity; the way of life, and the mind, and the word, and the activity of the people of this world are different. Some are Christians, others are peace lovers; there is a great distance between the two" 1
Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations. M. 1998. P. 40.

And this “distance”, the “otherness” that the monk speaks about, is in the way of thoughts and feelings. And the area of ​​their manifestation is the attitude towards what surrounds us in this temporary life, expressed in specific, visible actions and deeds. The whole life of a “peace lover” is determined by a number of rules, the essence of which is to help him achieve certain goals that he sets for himself, often at any cost. The life of a Christian is determined by his faith in God, in future reward, and the only law for him is the law of the commandments of Christ, which themselves are eternal life(John 12:50). And here it is, the way of life of a Christian - the evangelical one, the one to which Christ Himself calls humanity.

Throughout its two-thousand-year existence, the Christian Church experienced different times, her position in the world was also different. The first centuries of the history of the Church on earth are characterized primarily by the fact that between those who became the “new creation”, who had put off the “old man” and the pagan world, which, “smoldering in its deceitful lusts”, did not want to know the persecuted and tormented “Galileans”, there was a rigid border . At that time, every Christian could end his life with martyrdom at any moment, and therefore he was constantly preparing to appear before God, striving to be in holy life and piety(2 Pet. 3, 11); and the very spirit of life of the first Christians showed that they by no means had there is constant hail here, but they will only demand future(Heb. 13, 14). That pagan world, in the midst of which they lived and whose lusts they themselves had once indulged in, was disgusting to them; there could be no agreement between them and the atheism and violent depravity that reigned in this world. That is why those with whom they had just yesterday “amused themselves” with his “joys” were surprised. Therefore, amazed by the holiness and purity of their new existence, their perseverance and courage in the face of persecution and torture, these people themselves increasingly turned from fierce wolves into sheep of the flock of Christ.

But then a completely different period began in the life of the Church: Christianity, until recently persecuted, turned into the state religion of the most powerful empire.

The world, although it has changed, has not been completely reborn. And love for him, which, according to the word of Scripture, there is enmity against God(James 4:4), and remained in the hearts of the majority of people living in it. And the Christians who were rejected by him before and who themselves did not accept his “paganism” became at the same time part of him. Thus, in the heart of the world itself, a struggle began - between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Antichrist; Christianity sought to transform the world, sanctify, bring it to Christ, and the world sought to ground, “secularize” Christianity, transform it from a Divine institution into a kind of social and state institution that had its own moral standards, which, however, did not have to be observed. And how difficult this struggle can be concluded from the fact that more than once over the centuries the question has been heard in the Church of Christ: wasn’t it easier when the fires were burning and the swords of the Roman soldiers were shining, when the predators rushed into the arena and the spectators froze in the stands, anticipating bloody massacre of the followers of the crucified Christ?

And our time is probably even more difficult; The struggle itself is even more intricate, even more intricate - especially in present-day Russia, on all the lands connected with it by a common past, a common history. Behind us are persecutions, in their cruelty not inferior to the persecutions of the era of Decius and Diocletian. Then - decades of “anti-religious propaganda”, when the state with its entire apparatus waged a purposeful, “scientifically” organized fight against religion. And the present itself - now that the opportunity has arisen to evaluate it soberly - no longer seems at all idyllic, full of hopes for the “flourishing” of spirituality and the long-awaited “national repentance.”

What have we seen over the past few years? – Temples were opened, ancient monasteries were restored, the property taken from it was returned to the Church - with difficulty and in small doses. And at the same time, without encountering obstacles or difficulties, what is called in Scripture rapidly and uncontrollably entered our lives the mystery of lawlessness in action(2 Thess. 2:7): theft on an unprecedented scale, endless political intrigue, cynicism and cruelty, a merciless struggle for a place in the sun between both the “strong” and the “weak” of this world, military conflicts and the massive loss of life encountered (already!) indifference of society, horrific immorality and depravity - this is the reality that surrounds us today. And this is the background against which the Church is being reborn...

By the grace of God, many today (although their flow in Lately thinned out) turn to Christ, repentance and correction of life become a pressing need for people. But it is difficult, very difficult in our time for a person who has just decided to live a new – Christian – life. He comes from an environment in which militant unbelief or “willful oblivion” of God reigned; he enters the Church from a semi-pagan world - and remains in its very midst. And how can he understand, how can he feel in his heart that now for him “there is a different world, a different meal, different clothes, different pleasure, different communication, a different way of thinking” 2
Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations. P. 57.

When is he still completely in captivity of the old world, under the power of its customs, habits, passions? Everything seems so “familiar” - and what I'm ashamed to say(Eph. 5:12), and what to talk about is simply scary. A man came to the Church, his heart is drawn to his Creator God, but it has not yet awakened from sleep, it is still lukewarm, and he does not yet realize that the whole life of a Christian is a struggle, that his path is along a thin thread stretched over an abyss, where temptations left and right and danger everywhere. But without this understanding there is no salvation, no true life in Christ. Therefore, it is necessary to know, to understand what it is, “the spirit of this age,” and at the same time to determine your place in this world, to understand whether you are really with Christ, or whether only your lips confess Him, and your heart is far away, given into power dead interests and affairs (Matt. 15:8).

But our “sleep” is strong and deep, and that’s why we constantly need someone to “awaken” us, point out the dangers around us, warn us, talk about them, teach us to avoid them. And at the same time, it reminded us of the bright and unfading truth of Christ, of the indescribable joy of life with Him; that we, people, were created by God only for Him and only in Him do we find the fullness of existence and happiness, and therefore it does not suit us to hopelessly drown in the joys and sorrows of the earth.

This book by Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin) is such a sobering reminder, sometimes bitter. Perhaps what he reads about in it will seem scary to someone, but this is the background of our life, the reality that surrounds us, in which we exist - and at the same time we do not see it. And the author does not talk about it in order to terrify his reader, to awe him; it only makes it possible to consider, find out what it is, and correctly evaluate it. Fear and despair are feelings that are unacceptable and inappropriate in the life of a Christian. Yes, indeed, our time is the time when the Savior’s bitterest prophecies come true: faith fades (Luke 18:8), love grows cold (Matthew 24:12). But as before, the light of Christ enlightens every person coming into the world, as before, the Church of Christ stands on earth, invincible to the gates of hell until the last day of this world, and in it is the Lord Himself, merciful and saving, loving the righteous and correcting sinners. And that is why, along with the formidable word of reproof, Fr. Raphael and the meek call to eternal life, to the Heavenly Kingdom open to us - a call that the human heart hears and responds to.

Part I

Human - mysterious creature…

Man is a mysterious creature. It's a combination of opposites. He is both great and insignificant; he has inner freedom and in this sense is the shadow of the Divine on earth - and at the same time entangled, like a thin web, by his passions, habits that have become his nature, the powerful demands of the proud and godless world, the demonic power of sin, which deprive him of his will, make him medium dark forces and desires. A man struggles helplessly in this web.

The earth in the ocean of space is a speck of dust. On the surface of this speck of dust crawl strange creatures. They are in constant restlessness, excitement and struggle with each other. And at the same time, these one-day creatures, lost in the corner of the universe, feel that they have a great mission, that they are the rulers of this huge world. Life on earth is represented in various forms, and all the animals are happy with their existence, only one person is not satisfied with anything. He is always yearning for something, for some loss. He feels the falsity of his life, although he does not know another; Only a king who has lost his kingdom can grieve like this. Someone born in prison does not know freedom, and therefore cannot yearn for it.

Life on earth has its own cruel laws, man is conditioned by them. In this respect, he is an object of this world, he is influenced by the environment and under the influence external forces. And at the same time he feels internally free; he feels responsible for his actions in the face of the highest Truth. And here is a paradox: if a person is free as a supreme supermundane being, then why is he given over to the power of physical and other laws? Why does he live in the destructive stream of time and the sword of Damocles of death hangs over him? And if he is a creature similar to other creatures, then where does he get a moral sense and conscience? Where does the feeling of your former greatness and some tragic loss come from?

A person lives simultaneously in two worlds: external and internal. His body is similar to the body of other animals, only perhaps weaker and more fragile than that of animals, but man has something that distinguishes him from all creatures, which makes his life not only cosmic, but also supracosmic. His spiritual essence is not measured in terms of time and space. In terms of its material structure, man is a phenomenon of the cosmos. It is determined by thousands of cause-and-effect relationships: a spark that flew from the bowels of the earth and went out in the darkness of the cosmic night. But his spirit has other dimensions, it is supramundane and therefore greater than the cosmos itself. Usually a person is called a microcosm; this concept was passed down from ancient philosophers. But in fact, the human soul is a macrocosm that is larger than all the universes taken together.

There is a phenomenon called pain. A living organism hurts dead body doesn't feel pain. And at the same time, pain is a life-saving signal that the body is in danger. A person’s disappointment in this world and mental pain indicate that a person is moral and at the same time that his life, aimed only at the external, is false. The experience of all history has proven that a person can find happiness only in God, only in God does his true life begin. Here on earth there is no happiness, here is the life of a worm feeding on dust.

St. Augustine wrote that only “the abyss of the Divine can fill the abyss of the human heart.” This abyss of the human heart is greater than all outer space, deeper than the black pits of the universe, greater than all cosmic creations taken together, greater than the very principle of being and non-being. The abyss of the human heart is God-likeness, therefore the ephemeral worm crawling on the earth - a grain of sand in the cosmos, in its spiritual aspect is the ruler of the entire universe and a particle of the world that lies beyond its borders.

A person simultaneously feels like a free master of his existence and a slave being sold on the slave market of this world. He feels that freedom is the highest value, but rarely understands what freedom is. You cannot be free in the outside world, where time and death reign - this is an illusion. Most of humanity has strived and strives for such freedom, but only receives disappointment and bitterness from even greater losses. What is considered freedom - external freedom - turns into passions and rivalry, that is, into a new type of slavery, only turned inside out. True freedom is independence from external things. The highest manifestation of freedom is prayer as an appeal to the Divine.

The absolute life of the Divine is the highest, true and only freedom, and only through inclusion in it can a person’s life become free, the rest is an illusion and a mirage.

King and prophet David said: Only in God does my soul rest(Ps. 61:2). He owned the kingdom, was loved by the people, won brilliant victories over his enemies, but only in God did he find peace of heart and spaciousness of inner freedom. Evil does not just rape a person, it deceives a person, putting on the mask of “good”. One of Satan's deceptions is to distract man from God through false good; close it inner world, leave him to live in the external. The words are often repeated in church: servant of God. These words annoy many modern people, they even shock them. Meanwhile, they contain enormous potential for freedom. A slave belongs to only one master, who bought him from a slave trader. To be a servant of God means to stop being a slave to people, to stop feeling dependent on people, to throw off these invisible chains; accept good from man as good from God, accomplished through man, and be grateful to God, and accept evil from man as punishment from God, carried out through man for our salvation, therefore also thank God. In everything we see the good will of God being done to us, and look at people as tools and means for embodying the will of God and realizing Divine providence for us. Therefore, one should equally neither become attached to people to the point of a slave, nor have enmity towards them. The words servant of God mean that we should not have anyone as slaves and not demand anything from a person, even the one closest to us. The rule of not being either a master or a slave opens a way for a person to his own soul, pulls him out of the cycle of the world. Accepting everything from people as from God, we ourselves must do for a person as we would for Christ the Savior, who invisibly abides in him, and therefore do not expect gratitude from anyone. If we expect gratitude from a person, then we make him dependent on ourselves, and our goodness turns into enslavement. If we always remembered that everything we do for a person is accepted by God, then all our actions would take on a mystical meaning, metaphysical depth.

The first condition on the path to spiritual freedom is to surrender yourself and your loved ones to God in a moment of danger. The second is to have the correct scale of values: do not confuse the secondary with the primary. We often waste time, ours and others', on unnecessary or empty things. But even a good deed becomes a sin if, for the sake of it, the most important thing is forgotten and not fulfilled - as if a sentry left his post and went to work the field. The main thing in a person’s life is the acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit. This light will not only illuminate our lives and our souls, but will become a source of life for others. That's why the Bible says: The will of God is your sanctification(1 Thess. 4:3). The greatest benefactor for a person is the one who opened this light to him, who awakened his spirit. Compared to this, worldly virtues are steps lower. We often replace grace with a surrogate, a fake: affection, tenderness, excessive attention; we joke and entertain a person, thinking by this to show our love for him. But if we remained in prayer, then grace, even without our words, would comfort our neighbor. Therefore, asceticism in ancient times was perceived not as individual salvation of a person, but as the highest form of good for all humanity, and monasticism - the acquisition of the Holy Spirit - was understood not as egocentrism or a disdainful attitude towards the world, but as a sacrifice for people. That's why highest form good, the highest feat, moreover, the most difficult and intense, is entering with prayer into one’s inner world, awakening the heart and turning the spirit to God through the words of prayer. Prayer is the resuscitation of the human heart, the transition from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life. Prayer involves work and pain, especially at the beginning. But when a patient awakens from oblivion or fainting, he feels pain. Without pain there is no return to life. To live means to awaken the heart, to make it feel, think and speak. Among the Holy Fathers, the word “heart” often serves as a synonym for soul. A person lives as much as his heart is involved in life.

About the Church and Schism

Question. What is the Church?

Answer. The most profound, significant and, we would say, comprehensive definition was given by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians: The Church is the Body of Christ the Savior, the Head who fills all in all(Eph. 1:22).

Question. What does this definition mean? What properties of the Church does it speak about?

Answer. The Church is a living organism. This is the grace of God, which embraces all rational creatures who are in grace through obedience, submission and devotion to it. The Church is eternal and divine, like the action of the eternal Divine energies, like light pouring from the depths of the Trinitarian Deity. And at the same time, the Church was created, since it embraces the creations of God, created in time. The purpose of the Church is to realize unity between the Creator and His creation, to elevate the world from its limited and conditional existence into the freedom and fullness of Divine life, into the participation of Divine perfections.

The Church is the Body of Christ, therefore, it is one both in the earthly and in the cosmic dimensions. In the Psalter, the cosmos is compared to a robe - the clothing of the Divine, and in the New Testament the Church is called the mystical Body of Christ the Savior. The Holy Fathers say that the Lord created the Universe for the sake of the Church.

So, the first property is the uniqueness of the Church.

Second, the Church is world-wide and universal. The Earthly Church is organically united with the Heavenly Church. Through the Church, the duality (dyad) of spirit and matter is overcome, and the cosmos is spiritualized in its future transformation. The Church is the Body of the Head, the One who embraces everything. Consequently, the path to the Heavenly Church lies only through the earthly one, or rather, these are two aspects of one Church. The Church is a living organism, and a living organism cannot be created artificially. It is impossible to create a living cell artificially in a laboratory from the chemical elements of the cell, and it is also impossible to create a new Church artificially on the basis of dogmas, canons, rituals and the totality of what we know about the Church. All these will be dead theoretical constructs, mannequins and dolls, devoid of life. Christian church is not the creation of human intellect or even religious genius, but immortal life given by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

The incorruptible Head has an incorruptible Body, therefore the Church is not subject to death or birth. She is one and the same, and in Divine grace she is identical to herself!

The Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews compares the Church with the Heavenly Jerusalem, where angels and the souls of the righteous dwell together.

Question. What other definitions of the Church are found in the New Testament?

Answer. The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians says that the Church is the “Bride of Christ.” The image of the Church-Bride is the main content of the Old Testament book “Song of Songs,” which ancient exegetes compared with the holy of holies of the Old Testament temple.

Question. What does this symbol mean?

Answer. Eternal, complete, unchanging, unshakable love of the Divine for His Church.

The Bride is the only love of her heavenly Bridegroom. She is a joint heir of His greatness and glory. According to the Hieromartyr Cyprian, only the Church is promised the kingdom eternal light, eternal communion with God. The Song of Songs says: You are beautiful, my beloved, and there is no spot on you(Song. 4, 7). Beautiful is the grace of God that dwells in the Church; souls in which grace is infused become beautiful and angel-like. The bride is the only one. Those “others” who want to steal her name are only pathetic harlots; she is the beloved. A person can change his love, but the love of God is stronger than hell and death - it is unchangeable. There is no stain or blemish in the Church, since the Church is, first of all, an invisible force that transforms the world. Sunlight, illuminating the earth, remains pure, even if its rays fall into swamps and cesspools.

There are mysterious words in the Song of Songs: Place me like a seal on your heart, like a ring on your hand.(Song. 8, 6). The seal is a sign of indelible love. The Church is always in the memory of God, in the light of His truth. When we say: it is close to the heart, we mean the closest spiritual unity, one soul is, as it were, reflected in another. The royal seal cannot be erased, cannot be destroyed, distorted or replaced. The Church is one. Another church is already a counterfeit seal, it is a crime against the “Bride of Christ”, it is a lie against the promise of Divine love.

Elder Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin) is an outstanding Orthodox writer of our time. He has written a huge number of books and articles devoted to both the most pressing and pressing, as well as the inevitably eternal and “obligatory” questions of the existence of our Orthodox Church.

His deep, subtle writings are written about the path of the Christian, about the bitter fall of the proud and the fearless search for truth on the threshold of the Apocalypse, about the ability to die and the art of living, about the expected and the transitory, about the wholesome walking on the waters for the faithful (see: Matt. 14:29). and strict books.

His surprisingly precise and wise thoughts are dedicated to the human soul, tormented in the world below and seeking the city above, the certain severity of which, and even a certain moral maximalism, only gives the reader confidence that in our evil times they are not being cunning and not They just don’t lie, but they tell him the cruelest, most searing truth.

The enormous ascetic and life experience of Father Archimandrite, his broadest erudition, an amazing sense of tact, the ability, despite all the obvious rigorism, to both hear and understand the interlocutor - were fully revealed on his own website on the Internet: www.karelin-r.ru.

The creation of this page was truly, as they say now, a fateful decision: in order to “hear” the word of the elder, full of compassion, love and spiritual reasoning, it is now enough to visit the site, openly ask Father Raphael even the most “sore” question and immediately receive the desired consolation or sought-after advice.

And the author’s interlocutor is our entire Orthodox people in full meaning of this word: people of different sexes and ages, different social classes and nationalities, different levels life and professional experience, church membership, education and even literacy.

When compiling “question-answering” books by Father Archimandrite, the publishers found it possible to arrange the question-answers by topic.

The selection of topics turned out to be extremely rich: the inquisitive reader will learn with interest a lot of new things about Christian theology and interpretation of Holy Scripture, about patristic teaching and spiritual literature, about monasticism and the priesthood, about the Jesus Prayer and fasting, about Confession and the rites of the Church, about sins and repentance, about heresies and impurity, about infidels and superstitions, about love and family life, about the gift and upbringing of children and much more. In the text of the book presented to the reader, the publishers added a number of new and interesting topics - “chapters”: about hymnography and philosophy, about remembrance and almsgiving, about goodness and beauty, about the fear of God and forgiveness, about teaching and rest...

Sometimes there is some “parallelism”, that is, the seeming “already-read-like” questions, we hope, will not confuse the pious reader, since the art of interpretation of Elder Raphael is so great that even the most insignificant and chronically “inconveniently annoying” repeated question allows the author to find and new words to illuminate, and a new twist in solving the problem.

Quotes from patristic, spiritual and secular literature, as a rule, are given in the edition of Internet visitors and Father Archimandrite.

The publishers hope that the new unique collection of “wise answers from experience” will be in great demand by all those sincerely seeking the salvation of the soul and spiritual healing.

Vladimir Kryukov

Reflecting on what has happened, is happening and is about to happen on our planet, I increasingly wonder with surprise (horror) about the Creator’s plan: why is there so much blood - real (and not the paint that is in thrillers, the latter pale before reality)?

God's plan is to create a god-like being in the person of man. Godlikeness requires a free choice between good and evil. Without free will, the concepts of good and evil disappear altogether; One thing remains - necessity. No matter how accurate the mechanism is, you cannot call it good. Freedom is not illusory, but real, and contains the danger of choosing evil. But without this danger, that is, without inner freedom, a person would not be a person, but an object. The growing evil on earth begins with people's abuse of their free will. But knowing all the negatives modern life, one must be horrified not by God’s plan, but by the terrible, demonic power of sin. However, thanks to the free will of a person, no force can force him to commit a sin unless the person himself internally expresses his consent. Each of us can be convinced of own experience that the Lord gives us the opportunity to do good, but we rarely take advantage of this opportunity; that the Lord, through our conscience, warns us from sin, but we rarely listen to its voice. God’s plan is to give man eternal joy and participation in Divine perfections, but man chooses the dirt of sin and asks why there is so much misfortune on earth. Would you like to lose free will and the possibility of moral choice, that is, stop being a person and turn into a biomechanism, a clockwork machine, a computer with a program inserted into it? I think no. Such a prospect would seem like a nightmare from a science fiction novel. It is not God’s plan that is to blame for the misfortunes and suffering of the world, but the demonized man who opposes this plan. God knew about the future of humanity, but out of His love He created the world to give the opportunity to be saved for those who sincerely want salvation. Most people chose the alternative: to fulfill the will of the demon through sin and passion. If God had listened to you and not created the world, then you yourself would not have existed - a person seeking and questioning, trying to find out the truth. What would you choose: existence, even on blood-drenched ground, or non-existence - this absolute emptiness, where there is no evil, no good, and no yourself? Hell is not an inevitable prospect. Hell is for those who have burned their conscience and loved sin; in other words, those who already have hell in their souls go to hell.

You once wrote: “In the life of Saint Gregory, Archbishop of Rome, an incident is described when he begged with his prayer the release of the soul of Emperor Trajan - the famous persecutor of Christians - from eternal torment, but this does not mean that Trajan entered the Heavenly Kingdom: to be in heaven, you must have heaven in your soul.” Where is this place (free from eternal torment) located - in heaven or hell?

Time is the period when change is possible. There will be no change in eternity, but eternity is not static, the inner essence of man will be revealed there. Therefore, in eternity, salvation from a hellish state is impossible. Further. Some theologians represented hell schematically, in the form of circles nested within each other. In the center of these circles is the most terrible place of torment, called “tartarus”. The closer to the periphery, the degree of torment weakens; in the outer circle there is no torment, but there is no grace of God there either. In this circle are virtuous pagans, unbaptized infants and those who, not knowing the true God, tried to live according to the law of conscience and do good. The soul of Emperor Trajan, through the prayers of Saint Gregory, was freed from eternal torment and remains on the periphery of hell. In the ancient version of the life of Gregory, Archbishop of Rome, in Georgian, one of the earliest surviving to our time, it is said that when Gregory Dvoeslov prayed to God, an Angel prayed with him, and after Gregory prayed to Trajan , – The angel left him and no longer prayed with him. The Lord appeared to him and said that He would fulfill his prayer, but that he would not dare to repeat this again. Thus, the prayer of St. Gregory was an extraordinary event, as if an exception. Modernists seized on this incident to argue that pagans or non-Orthodox people in general go to heaven regardless of their faith. In the life of Saint Macarius the Great it is written that when he prayed for the whole world, the pagans in hell felt some kind of consolation, and when Macarius asked what kind, he was given the answer: “There is deep darkness in hell, and during Macarius’ prayers pagans see each other's faces."

Archimandrite Raphael (in the world Ruslan Nikolaevich Karelin) is a clergyman of the Georgian Orthodox Church, archimandrite, spiritual writer, publicist, critic of church modernism and ecumenism.

Born in Tbilisi, in the family of an engineer and a teacher.

Immediately after receiving secondary and higher education, he left secular life and chose monasticism.

Monasticism and rank

By his own admission, he was always especially interested in truth, truth, and many children's games were boring. When his mother took him to the circus as a child, inverted mirrors as an image of lies and buffoonery made him not smile, but sad. Therefore, monastic life was almost a natural path for him.

In 1954 he was tonsured a monk and in the same year ordained a hierodeacon and hieromonk. Soon after his ordination he served in the Church of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious in the village. Ilori near the city of Ochamchira, Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR). During the Ilorian period, about. Raphael for some time, at the request of parishioners, reprimanded the possessed, and the state of passion with the remarkable power of the sick and their hatred of everything in Christianity made him think about a special demonic reality, hostile to the forces of light.

To Sukhumi

Later he served in the Transfiguration Cemetery Church in the suburbs of Sukhumi. During the Sukhumi period, the future archimandrite met the first spiritual father(canonized in 2010) Glinsk elder Archimandrite Seraphim (Romantsov), famous for his special spiritual experience, sensitivity to people and true evangelical love. Saint in a special way He knew how to disguise love and care for people with moderate severity, which is how he warded off unreasonable admirers. St. Seraphim also became famous for the fact that after the closure of the Glinsk hermitage in 1961, where he served for 12 years in Kyrgyzstan, he lived in unceasing prayer and a simple stone served as a seat for him. Father Raphael was also closely acquainted with Metropolitan Zinovy ​​(Mazhuga) of Tetritskaro, canonized in 2010. famous for love to the Jesus Prayer, and managed to combine hectic administrative activities with constant prayer.

Teaching activities

Since 1975, he taught the Slavic language at the Mtskheta Theological Seminary and temporarily acted as an inspector.

In the 1980s, Raphael visited holy places in Russia, monasteries, especially the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Schema-abbot Savva becomes his confessor, whose canonization documents are now being collected. Schema-abbot Savva received a technical education and, after working as an engineer at a factory, entered a monastery, where over time he received the fame of a man who knew true love to people. There are at least several known cases of healing of seriously ill people through his prayers already during his lifetime. During the same years, Father Raphael graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in absentia. Schema-abbot Savva blessed him to write on spiritual topics. Then Father Raphael taught at the Tbilisi Theological Academy at different times the Slavic language, the history of religion, theology and asceticism.

The last place of his priestly service is the Church of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in Tbilisi.

In search of truth

Let’s make a reservation right away: both the confessor and his visitors are not fictitious persons, but real ones. The confessor is Father Raphael himself, the visitors are people with whom he spoke about various aspects of their spiritual life.

Great Christian holidays

The proposed collection presents articles by Archimandrite Raphael on most of the Twelfth Feasts, published at different times in periodicals.

The author's deep knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition and the broad erudition of the author give these articles special interest.

All life in our world is walking on water

The most great love The Lord is His Cross. The cross is the sun of love. The cross and crucifixion are the basis of our faith, this is the basis of our life.

If we do not sacrifice ourselves for others in our Everyday life, then our faith fades, our hope disappears, our love dies.

To be believers, we must always try to sacrifice something for others, help others, bear their crosses.

The challenge of new modernism

The book about. Andrei Kuraev's "Challenge of Ecumenism" seems to us very timely. The problem of ecumenism, artificially entangled in a “Gordian knot,” urgently requires either a deep theological analysis based on dogmatics, canons and patristics - church tradition, or the blow of the “Alexander’s sword” - a way out of this pseudo-Christian organization.

The entire history of the Church from apostolic times to the present day has taken place in the struggle for the purity of the Orthodox faith. Therefore, already in ancient Christian literature we can find a rule about how Orthodox Christians should treat heterodox and other-minded people. Holy Spirit through church councils and the works of St. Fathers revealed to us that the Church, which continues the mission of Christ on earth, is not only the path to salvation, but the only way to it.

Yes, no one will deceive you. Questions and answers

The book continues the series devoted to Archimandrite Raphael’s answers to questions about faith and salvation.

It also includes selected letters from Father Raphael to the philosopher - a modern intellectual who sincerely strives to comprehend Orthodoxy.

"Most dangerous look lies are plausible lies, which, in fact, turn out to be bait for a person to take poison along with the medicine.

Liberalism and Christianity are incompatible.

This “Uniateism” creates a new religion, where there is another Christ, who brought to earth not a sword, but peace with sin and passions.”

Breath of Life

A number of articles included in it have already been published in different years in various collections, but most of them were written recently and have not been published before. Particularly interesting in this regard is the very original interpretation of the message to the seven Churches from the apocalypse, constructed by the author as a revelation of the relationship between God and the human soul.

We sincerely hope that this book will bring considerable spiritual benefit to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Once again about the heretical errors of MDA professor A.I. Osipova

Mr.'s article entitled "The Eucharist and the Priesthood" gives us a feeling of deep concern. There are mistakes that can affect a person’s entire spiritual life, pervert and distort it, deprive a person of communion with God and jeopardize his eternal salvation.

This brochure will cover the following topics:

Is there a difference between the Sacraments of the Church and pagan rites?
Should we be baptized a second time?
Is it possible to call those receiving communion cannibals?
Are the Sacraments magic?
Is Orthodoxy degenerating spiritually?
Are a Pharisee and a monk the same thing?

Icon Glory of the Georgian Orthodox Church

IN late XIX century, a significant event took place in the spiritual life of Georgia:

The famous hagiographer and icon painter Mikhail-Gobron Sabinin wrote, based on ancient Georgian icons, frescoes and miniatures, which he carefully studied during his life, the icon “Glory of the Georgian Catholic Church”, similar to the majestic arch of Georgian hagiography.

Being a deeply religious person, from childhood he visited monasteries and shrines of Georgia, lived for a long time among the monks, was an ascetic in his personal life and in his declining years wrote it as a sacred poem, as a spiritual testament to his descendants, as a hymn Georgian Church this magnificent icon.

Here, in an extremely compressed space, he embodied the spiritual history of Georgia in the images of its saints: martyrs and saints, kings and warriors, bishops and monks.

Execution of the unborn

Everywhere we hear the word "peace", but it is a lie. This is disgusting hypocrisy. This is one of the bestial grimaces of the modern civilized world. There is a war going on around us, incessant and cruel, where there is no truce or ending, where there are no victors and vanquished, but only executioners and their victims. This war has engulfed the whole world, but with particular force are those countries that are proud of their civilization, culture and progress.

This is a war - an inhumane, methodical slaughter, a genocide without precedent or comparison in human history. This is a war of parents against their own children. This is a war where blood flows, where murder is accompanied by torture.

And this massacre, which annually claims many tens of millions of victims with the hypocrisy inherent in modern man, for some reason is not called by its real name - the massacre of the innocent and defenseless, sadism, the legalized right to murder and crime, but is hidden and disguised by the vague and shamelessly hypocritical term abortion, those. "throw it out" as if it were about unnecessary trash, which is thrown out of the house into the trash heap, and not about a living being, not about a child.

How to bring lost joy back to your family

Everywhere we hear the word peace, but this is a lie, this is vile hypocrisy. This is one of the animal faces of the modern civilized world. There is a war going on around us, incessant and cruel, where there is no truce or ending, where there are no victors and vanquished, but only executioners and their victims.

This war has engulfed the whole world, but with particular force are those countries that are proud of their civilization, culture and progress. This war is an inhumane, methodical slaughter, a genocide without precedent or comparison in the history of all mankind. This is a war of parents against their children, this is a war where streams of blood flow, where murder is associated with torture. For some reason, this massacre, which annually claims tens of millions of victims, with the hypocrisy inherent in modern man, is not called by its proper name: “the murder of the innocent and defenseless,” “the sadism of executioners,” “the legalized right to kill.”

It is hidden and disguised by the vague and shamelessly hypocritical term “abortion”, which means “throwing it out”, as if it were a question of unnecessary rubbish that was thrown out of the house into a garbage heap, and not of a living being - a child.

What agreement is there between Christ and... Professor A.I. Osipov?

The past century was a century of great discoveries and inventions. The human mind - this tireless inventor - showed itself especially strikingly in two seemingly different and unrelated areas: in cosmic mechanics and religion.

Technical genius is based on the ability to use factual material from the past, find new possibilities and options in so-called scientific hypotheses, conduct experiments, find patterns between phenomena and put the acquired knowledge into practice.

Here is the area of ​​reason in which he feels like a little king. Research combined with invention made possible in the last century such phenomena that were previously considered science fiction.
This is the area of ​​human intellect, the area of ​​the soul, the area of ​​adaptation to material reality. But the same methods applied to religion produce the opposite results.

Cult and culture in the history of human knowledge

Every system is abstract and conditional. Life in its diversity does not fit into any one concept.
The system requires a generalization of facts, therefore it contains elements of rationalism, even if its content was directed with its weapon against rationalism.

The task and purpose of a certain concept is to capture and reflect the most general patterns and trends. Even the philosophy of intuitionism tries to prove the importance of intuition in logical systems. Even skepticism tries to prove the powerlessness of reason with rational evidence and conclusions.

Mysticism of earthly time

Neither philosophy nor exact sciences could not give a satisfactory explanation or definition of time. Attempts by modern physicists to consider time in a unified field of forces, to find a correspondence between time, space and energy ended in failure.

Other attempts to formulate a definition of time do not stand up to mathematical analysis and are more likely to be fantastic hypotheses than science. We live in time, as in a stream, where everything flows and changes, but what time is remains a mystery to us. Blessed Augustine spoke most deeply and insightfully about time in his immortal book “Confessions”.

However, his brilliant mind as a philosopher and poet turned out to be powerless to get closer to the mystery of time. And he was forced to end his inspired poem about time, as the last chord, with the words: “I know what time is when they don’t ask about it, and when they ask, the more I think, the more perplexed and lost I am.”

Likewise, until we think about time, this question seems clear and understandable to us, but when we think about it, we find ourselves faced with an unknown secret, as if we want to look into a dark abyss where there is no limit or bottom.

The sea of ​​life. Answers to readers' questions

The book of Archimandrite Raphael is very unique in terms of genre for our days: it is a collection of answers to questions from Orthodox visitors to the Internet, in particular to this site.

The author’s interlocutors are truly people in the true sense of the word: people of both sexes, of different ages and life experience, different social classes and nationalities, different levels of church involvement, education and even literacy.

But Father Raphael finds for everyone full of love and spiritual reasoning is a word, and anyone can ask a painful question and receive the sought-after consolation or advice.

The publishers hope that Father Raphael’s wonderful new book will prove extremely useful for Orthodox Christians who sincerely seek the salvation of their souls in the sea of ​​life.

On the stone of faith. Questions and answers

This book is compiled from Father Raphael’s answers to questions about spiritual life asked him at different times by different persons. Most of the material is taken from this site, from the “Questions and Answers” ​​section.

People who sincerely seek the salvation of their souls resort to the advice of an experienced shepherd in various life circumstances.

When starting to read the book, you need to take into account that the answers were given by Father Raphael, taking into account the spiritual age and dispensation of the questioners: sometimes he condescends to the spiritual weakness of a person so that he does not fall into despair, and sometimes he strictly denounces spiritual errors and warns how dangerous trust the fallen human mind.

For those who want answers about. To accept Rafil as a permanent guide in your spiritual life, we recommend, in order to avoid arbitrariness, to coordinate this decision with your confessor or with a priest at confession.

Our calendar

Time is a constant factor in our existence. However, antique and modern philosophy have not provided any satisfactory explanation for this ubiquitous phenomenon. To define means to find characteristic properties. Time has neither nature nor properties, except for one property - irreversibility.

Philosophers who worked on this problem either retreated, admitting their intellectual defeat, or tried to define one unknown by another unknown, fell into tautology, or, at best, replaced the language of philosophical judgments and definitions with the language of poetry: allegories, metaphors and allegories, that is, figurative the language of ancient thinkers.

We find the most profound discussions about time in Plato and St. Augustine. Plato in his famous “Dialogues” pointed out that before the creation of the world time did not exist. The Divine Idea remained in eternity as a model of the cosmos. Time arose along with the universe; it is only a shadow and likeness of eternity. “Time arose along with the sky, so that, having been born at the same time, they would disintegrate at the same time if such a disintegration came for them.”

About the eternal and the transitory

Earthly life is like a dream, and external life is like a passing dream. true life is a way out of a passionate, sinful and limited existence through communion with God, the inclusion of the soul in new life, revealing itself as eternity, and its connection with the light of divine existence. In order to be able to perceive this life, one must die to a false life.

The demon and the world promise man happiness, which turns out to be death.

The Lord promises his disciples sorrows in this world, persecution and death, which turn out to be joy and the beginning of true life.

This collection of articles includes perhaps the best works of the author.

About spiritual work

On February 1, 2004, in the sisterhood in the name of St. Ignatius of Stavrapol at the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles at the Lazarevskoye cemetery in Moscow, a conversation took place with Fr. Raphael.
The conversation touched upon issues that are of interest to modern people seeking salvation and wanting to lead a serious spiritual life.

How can you learn to pay attention in everyday life, while dealing with many urgent matters? What spiritual activity is most fruitful for a monk and a layman in our time? Why does spiritual jealousy cool?

The priest was asked a lot about the structure of monastic life and related issues. modern problems. We bring this conversation to your attention.

About Theosophy

For our contemporaries, paganism is an anthology of myths, fairyland, created by the imagination of an ancient man, religious romance or the world of refined aesthetics and art, which still continues to inspire artists and poets.

But for the holy fathers, Christian apologists and mystics, paganism was a spiritual catastrophe of humanity, the loss of the true God and the worship of demonic forces that manifested themselves under the names and masks of pagan deities. It was a world of black destructive energy, a region of darkness and spiritual madness where the light of the divine Logos did not penetrate.

For Christians, pagan temples were not archaeological museums, with art galleries, with a fair of talismans, but a gloomy dwelling of satanic forces, the presence of spiritual vampires who lived in idols as in their stone bodies, accepting sacrifices and worship from people.

About the language of the Orthodox icon

This small monograph represents one of the attempts to comprehend Orthodox icon, How component traditions and liturgics of the Church. The chapters of a book are separate articles and notes written at different times and connected by a common theme. Therefore, the book could not avoid repetitions, which, however, are options that complement each other.

The author’s task did not include analysis and assessment of the artistic merits of works visual arts; therefore, he did not dwell on their aesthetic and psychological significance, but tried to consider them only from the position of Orthodox iconography.

Violating the canons of icon painting or replacing spiritual experiences with mental, aesthetic, emotional-sensual, etc. or turns the icon into a means of information, i.e. illustrations of the biblical text or, what is even more dangerous, it contributes to false mysticism, deformation and distortion in the contemplation of the spiritual world, in some cases - contacting our subconscious with the demonic sphere (paintings by Vrubel and Dali on religious themes).

Fall of the Proud

Historical events repeat themselves, but not exactly, but in various combinations; philosophical ideas, already expressed and seemingly exhausted in antiquity, return - in new versions - and form new systems, behind which, however, we find the same - repeating - concepts. In this respect, history is like an unwinding spring: each subsequent turn has larger area circle.

The entire history of mankind is, as it were, compressed and projected in the Holy Scriptures. There we can find answers to questions concerning the main ideas of the universe, and precisely because of the enormity of their volume and energy intensity (which can be compared to the density of diamond) these fundamental ideas have a general character. For the Holy Fathers, the light of the Bible is somewhat rarefied, as if refracted through a prism, but at the same time more specific; That's why Orthodox Church does not separate biblical and patristic theology from each other - she reads the Bible through the eyes of the Holy Fathers.

The Christian's Way

Brothers and sisters! God, who once created life, at the end of time will resurrect, raise from dust and corruption all of humanity from the days of Adam to last days. And then the Last Judgment of the Lord will come, the Judgment at which the final fate of each person will be decided - according to what he did while living in his body.

Today, while we are still in this earthly world, every thought, word or deed is seeds that we throw, like into plowed ground, into the depths of our hearts. And in eternity, either beautiful, fragrant flowers or thorny, poisonous plants will grow from these seeds.

This mystery is great. Questions and answers about family life

The book in the series dedicated to Archimandrite Raphael’s answers to questions about faith and salvation touches on the topic of family life: choosing a path, relationships between spouses, raising children, relationships with immediate family.

If a person wants to get married, then he must find a lifelong friend. The word "friend" means "another self." Without spiritual kinship and common interests, a person will not get rid of the feeling of loneliness.

Moreover, it is easier to endure the sadness of loneliness alone with oneself than aggressive loneliness in a family that becomes alien, loneliness from accumulated contradictions.

The Mystery of Salvation

This book has one significant difference from all that have been published before. It consists of two parts.

The first is conversations about spiritual life, about what is revealed to a person on his path to God, what causes joy and sorrow, sometimes makes him stop and peer with pain into his own heart. Here are words filled with amazing power about how to achieve bliss, accessible only to those who consciously condemn themselves to true “spiritual poverty.” Here is the teaching about prayer, which should become for a Christian the main work of his life, its core.

The second part is Father Raphael’s memories of the remarkable ascetics of the bygone 20th century, with whom the Lord, by His mercy, brought him together in this life. Their images are surprisingly bright, somehow piercing, they literally attract the reader’s attention. But again: these people again have to mentally return to the author who writes about them with such love. And of course, much more than before, he himself is revealed in his memories of these ascetics: it becomes clear that as a person, as a monk and priest, and after that as a writer, he was formed precisely thanks to his communication with them.

Legalized lawlessness

The breakdown of the family and the ever-increasing number of abortions are interconnected processes. Recently, many churches have opened, old ones are being restored, new ones are being built, and the number of parishioners in churches is increasing. But at the same time, the abortion statistics curve is not falling.

How can we explain this paradox? After all, the spirituality of a people is usually determined externally by the number of existing churches and the number of people visiting them. These, one might say, are some kind of material guidelines. The dark world of evil did not retreat in the fight against Christianity, and if it did retreat, it was in order to take other strategic positions.

The art of dying, or the art of living

The art of living, says Archimandrite Raphael, lies in the ability... to die. To die is for the world, for the sin that reigns in it, for the passions that have enslaved our hearts. Our eternal fate is decided on earth. It is decided not by God, but by us. The Lord is infinite Wisdom, ineffable Love. Out of His love, He wants to save each of us.

The book of Father Raphael acts like a hand that decisively pulls back the veil of oblivion that covers the inner eyes of a Christian, revealing to him the truth about what is and what will be. Sometimes his assessments are extremely categorical, because very often he writes about what is difficult and unpleasant for a person to remember, about what our wounded conscience tells us.

Christianity and modernism

“We live in difficult times,” says the author of this book, Archimandrite Raphael. And it’s hard to disagree with this. It is difficult because the world around us is experiencing rapid changes; we hear about the “new order” and the general prosperity that is about to reign in it, but we see blatant injustice, shedding blood and the suffering of innocent people.

Difficult - because it has become very difficult to live in this world Orthodox Christian, and not only a Christian, but also any person who has certain moral values ​​and wants to preserve them. The temptations around us have multiplied and are multiplying, turning into the general and, perhaps, predominant background of our lives.

There are so many of them that sometimes it seems as if all modern reality consists of them alone. On the contrary, there are fewer and fewer examples of piety and righteousness; at least, they are so hidden from human eyes that, one might say, they simply do not exist in the world, in public life.

Man is a mysterious creature. It's a combination of opposites. He is both great and insignificant; he has inner freedom and in this sense is the shadow of the Divine on earth - and at the same time entangled, like a thin web, by his passions, habits that have become his nature, the powerful demands of the proud and godless world, the demonic power of sin, which deprive him of his will, make him a medium of dark forces and attractions. A man struggles helplessly in this web.

The earth in the ocean of space is a speck of dust. Strange creatures crawl on the surface of this speck of dust. They are in constant restlessness, excitement and struggle with each other. And at the same time, these one-day creatures, lost in the corner of the universe, feel that they have a great mission, that they are the rulers of this vast world. On earth, life is presented in various forms, and all animals are happy with their existence, only one person is not satisfied with anything.

Archimandrite Rafail (Karelin) was born on December 29, 1931 in Tbilisi in the family of an engineer and a teacher. Immediately after receiving secondary and higher education, he left secular life and chose monasticism.

By his own admission, he was always especially interested in truth, truth, many children's games were boring, and when his mother took him to the circus as a child, inverted mirrors as an image of lies and buffoonery made him not smile, but sad. Therefore, monastic life was almost a natural path for him.

In 1954 he was tonsured a monk and in the same year ordained a hierodeacon and hieromonk. Soon after his ordination he served in the Church of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious in the village. Ilori near the city of Ochamchira, Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR).

Later he served in the Transfiguration Cemetery Church in the suburbs of Sukhumi. During the Sukhumi period, the future archimandrite met his first spiritual father - the Glinsk elder Archimandrite Seraphim (Romantsov), who became famous for his special spiritual experience, sensitivity to people and true evangelical love. The saint in a special way knew how to disguise his love and care for people with moderate severity, which is how he warded off unreasonable admirers. Father Raphael was also closely acquainted with Metropolitan Zinovy ​​(Mazhuga) of Tetracirca, known for his love of the Jesus Prayer and who managed to combine active administrative work with constant prayer.

Since 1975, he taught the Slavic language at the Mtskheta Theological Seminary and temporarily acted as an inspector. The last place of his priestly service was the Church of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in Tbilisi.

In the 1980s, Raphael visited holy places in Russia, monasteries, especially the then open Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Schema-abbot Savva becomes his confessor. During the same years, Father Raphael graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in absentia. Schema-abbot Savva blessed him to write on spiritual topics. Then Father Raphael taught at the Tbilisi Theological Academy at different times the Slavic language, the history of religion, theology and asceticism.

The last place of his priestly service is the Church of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in Tbilisi.

Since 1988, due to poor health (decreased vision), he has been retired and engaged in literary activities.