Two years of the ministry of Patriarch Kirill

On February 1, he has been performed two years since the intronization of Patriarch Kirill, who was elected to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Local Council on January 27, 2009. During these two years, church life in Russia has been incomparably more intense than in many decades of its historical past.

Already in the first year it became clear that in the history of the church a new era of unprecedented missionary activity, requiring a special organization and attentiveness to all pressing issues from the church community itself. It is hardly necessary to prove the vital need for this activation: in addition to the fact that missionary expansion is included in the main tasks of Christianity itself, today it becomes the key to the elementary survival of Orthodoxy and its competitiveness in relation to other religious and ideological systems. There are no guarantees that the people of Russia and other countries of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate will remain committed to Orthodoxy, the more that for many it remains a completely unknown faith, not familiar to their fathers, or even their grandfathers.

It would be a criminal naivety from the zealots of Orthodoxy to hope that modern people themselves, in accordance with some special genetic predisposition or psychological characteristics, will come to church and remain there, and will not pass by and prefer other “charms” of the modern world. Therefore, the Russian Church in Russia and all over the world has no other way, except for an independent access to people and the patient Christian education of all possible social groups and individual personalities. All the activities of Patriarch Kirill are directly related precisely with such a sober and honest understanding of the objective realities of the Church and its necessary historical tasks, which inevitably causes irritation, on the one hand, on external opponents of the strengthening of Russian Orthodoxy, and on the other, those churchmen who are accustomed to do not do and hope for a chance.

Already in the first year of his presentation, Patriarch Kirill initiated a number of unique projects necessary to strengthen the positions of the church in modern society. If you do not list the renewal of the former and the establishment of new synodal departments, then it is enough to recall the unique body of the Cathedral Directorate, which was created on July 27, 2009 - the intersocultural presence, a kind, church parliament and the Public Chamber at the same time, with the only difference being that it consists of all church leadership, starting from the patriarch itself.

Members of the inters -collection presence, among which there are many ordinary laity, monks, deacons and priests, together with the priesthood form documents of general church significance, which then accepts the bishop's cathedral or the Holy Synod, which gives the church organization significant dynamics and carries out the feedback mechanism with the church people, unprecedented throughout Russian history, and maybe not only Russian. The creation of this new church body itself is already a colossal historical breakthrough of the Russian Church, the significance of which has yet to be evaluated.

The amazing mobility of Patriarch Kirill deserves special attention, who, over the two years of his high -prospecting ministry, managed to preach in almost all the main, nodal points of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, which, recall, surpasses the borders of the Soviet Union, not counting the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. Not many church officials are accustomed to such a pace and rhythms of the patriarchal management, but they are required by our time itself, which will not wait for special conditions and exceptional provisions in order to complete what it was necessary to do yesterday.

If you try to summarize the conceptual line of Patriarch Kirill, then it can be formulated as an active Christianization of modern culture as a whole, where the Church does not act as a passive observer, from time to time to endure its harsh assessment, but an interested participant in the civilizational process , quit his own challenge to world history.

Patriarch Kirill, in particular, said this in his programmatic article “ The Russian Church and European Culture”: “ The entire missionary experience of the Russian Church and the wealth of Russian Christian culture as a living heritage of this experience testify that not the inculture of Christianity, but the Christianization of culture - this is the purpose of the Christian mission in relation to culture. Culture cannot be used tactically: culture itself should become a bearer of Christ's gospel. Walking through the Holy Fathers, actualizing their attitude to society and culture, we retain the hope of strengthening the Christian measurement in social relations and in modern culture. The dream of a new patrician synthesis, expressed at one time Archpriest George Florovsky, is a dream of re -& shy; Christianization of anesthetic European culture ”(“ Expert ”, No. 4 (690), 2010).

Having surveying the events of the second year of the highly prospecting of Patriarch Kirill, one cannot but say about such key achievements of the Church as, firstly , the experiment on the introduction of the foundations of Orthodox culture in the secondary school (so far at the level of several regions); Secondly , the introduction of the posts of regimental priests, otherwise called the chaplains in the Russian armies; Thirdly, the long-awaited adoption of the Law “On the transfer of religious property to religious property, which is in state or municipal property”.

The meaning of each of these achievements is difficult to overestimate, they can be called those “three whales”, on which the necessary symphony of the church and the state is based, which is not yet indifferent to its value grounds. It is also impossible to forget the feasible participation of the church in extinguishing the monstrous fires that covered Russian forests in the summer of 2011, and the help of burners, when the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social Service under the leadership of the outstanding ascetic of our time, Bishop of Orekhovo-Zuevsky Panteleimon (Shatova), raised large funds to the victims of these fires and provided them with huge moral support.

If we talk about various achievements of intra -church life, then here it is necessary to note the institution of a permanent general church court, which, finally, will resolve periodically arising conflicts within dioceses and parishes. Now you can definitely state - Patriarch Kirill practically established the mechanism of a general church organization that meets the requirements of our time. Now the professional and moral level of those specific personalities that the Patriarch entrusted the life of the Church in his areas will be determined. After all, we must not forget that coming to the nearest temple, any person sees there not Patriarch Kirill, but another clergyman and, in his image and likeness, judges our entire multimillion -dollar church.