He wanted to return Christ to church

By the Day of Memory of Father Alexander Me

Father Alexander relied on churching through culture. He saw a special mission of the humanitarian-formed part of society in the case of New Gospelization. What the boundless scope of world culture opens in his books, lectures, and sermons!

Mandelstam believed that it is easier for Russia to put on and feed than to teach Pushkin to read. The same can be said about the father of Alexander Mene. I need an animal culture , *GUM *a mustache layer of humanitarian culture, which will grow seeds sown by him. In the meantime, there is no such layer, individual bushes are breaking through, like a pinch of greens in the cracked asphalt.

And yet: the circulation of all his books in Russian and foreign languages ​​over 20 years was about 8.5 million. Large circulations were in the early 90s, over the years they decrease, but this is caused by general economic reasons and the increasing popularity of electronic publications. Interest in the menu does not fall, but does not increase, maybe because it is blocked from above. Its demand cannot be traced, how it is impossible to find out the number of Orthodox believers in our country. A conscientious counting gives no more than 3 percent of the number of people who consider themselves Orthodox. Father Georgy Chistyakov spoke about 1 percent.

In Germany, for example, this percentage is visible to the naked eye: the believer is obliged to pay a tithing that is deducted from his salary. He who pays, he considers the church established by God on Earth, his house, is not indifferent to its needs. Calculation of believers there is simple. We often have a tithing with 10 rubles. And what is the faith of man if he does not participate in the life of the church? True, he has a dual view of the church ... He goes to the temple, where of the three priests only one deserves trust. He confesses carefully, he will never refuse the request - in a word, a real priest. And others are mercenaries. Demanders. In addition, ignorant. What is they to pay for, such a parishioner thinks .... And in its own way.

Given the very conditional percentage of churchy parishioners, we can say that the country is total unbelieving.

And yet: about 80,000-100,000 copies of books by Alexander Alexander are now published in a year. You can buy them ... in Syktyvkar, Kazan, occasionally in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, in Tver. The capillaries by which they diverge are weak and small, moreover, they are clogged with sclerotic plaques of the so -called "spirit -bearing" literature. In the book of the chief of Alexei Pluzhnikov (Publishing House of the Danilovsky Monastery), there are quite a few colorful examples of modern pagan Orthodoxy, from which it is clear how archangels and saints confidently crowd sorcerers and Kikimors.

In 2005-2006, the six -volume of Father Alexander (the history of world religions) issued the commercial publishing house Eksmo. And, perhaps, it worked well for this. They packed two volumes in one cover, throwing illustrations and bibliography, which the author attached paramount importance. Books went around Russia with a circulation for sure that it was announced. We went shopping books, which is important, because they are not sold at the parishes, with rare exceptions. In Moscow - only in two temples. It is possible that the smaller will eventually reach the mass reader, bypassing the candle boxes.

After perestroika, our church headed for restoration. What was destroyed by the 17th year rose. The ruins were restored on the old foundation, which was already dilapidated then. In the success of the revolution, no matter how bitter it is to be aware, the church played a role. The people, nourished, did not know the gospel, did not hear the word of God and explanatory preaching in view of the impending disaster. Therefore, it was easy to register him with a Marxist ideology, which is also treacherous.

Father Alexander was free from archaic charms. No wonder in his parish work began on new translations of scripture and liturgical texts. Freedom, granted to the Almighty, was the main content of his life and pastoral preaching. And therefore he remained a bone in the throat of the Holy Priest, subordinate to the State Security Committee.

Andropov, then the head of the KGB, noted his extraordinary behavior back in 1974, in a special report to the government about the machinations of the Vatican. And since that time, the committees of the eyes did not lower the eyes of him. He was inconvenient for them, an extra headache. They could not pin him to him, slipped through his fingers. How so, the whole church is in their fist, the whole team, and this one and a few more seduced are pulled to the side. The same situation today. Mensyans are confused under their feet. The split is gaining strength ... And they are here with their ecumenical spirit ...

The course for restoration was discarded by our Orthodoxy, as Father Alexander Borisov correctly remarks, 200 years ago, by the beginning of the 19th century, when a biblical society appeared, preoccupied with the same: a religious education of the people. Let us recall the sad fate of Archimandrite Makariya Glukharev (1792 - 1847) - an Orthodox ascetic, missionary, and translator of the Bible. He was exiled to the monastery for his, as they would say now, “renovation” views. Nevertheless, he was not killed, but exiled ... He believed that "the Slavic language became dead, no one says and writes to us on it." Glukharev dared in a letter to the sovereign to connect the public disasters "with the sin of those who moved the Bible from the people." “Is the Word of God in the vestments of the Slavic letter,” he wrote, “ceases to be the word of God in the robe of the Russian dialect?” The church-Slavic language of worship and today is an obstacle to most converted.

The orientation to condo Orthodoxy has been rooted in our time thanks to nostalgic sentiments and fear of the previous church reforms. By the way, they rushed long before the Bolshevik coup and were formulated at the Local Council in 1917-1918. Reforms, as you know, the new government prevented. The church, after the blood -blooded reprisal over it, became a historical reserve, which became even more handy to look after the church Synod. The filtered hierarchs served the faith and truth of the godless power on their cleared dioceses. Over the 20 post -communist years, the church remained the same closed citadel, controlled by the same state levers. Of course, such an obedient “religion” is included in Klinch with the one that Father Alexander professed. The deterrence system and dosed strangulation work to this day.

Father Pavel Adelheim, recently killed by crazy believers, openly rebelled against her. His sermon, boldly directed against the Holy Priest, suffocating the parish life, was hated not only by the ruling bishop. Father Paul, like Father Alexander, created a community, a family of believers, active and enlightened, for whom the word of Christ was above the instructions of the bishop. Both of them tried to return Christ to the church independent of Caesar and his servants. Satan prevented this, as the killer of Father Paul admitted, allegedly Satan inspired him to kill the priest, the enemy of the Church. I would only like to know in which rank or Sanya was his temptor?

... New temples are being built, spiritual schools are opened, the number of clergymen increases. But the church does this as if for himself. The people do not feel the needs of this. The temples are half empty, and some are completely deserted - especially rural ones.

The people are preoccupied with the economic side of life, survival - in a country entangled in corruption and legal lawlessness. The whole XX century, the Russian population lived in poverty and lawlessness. Now something dawn ahead, similar to a European model, and people want to match her with all their might: to live well-to have an apartment, a car, a cottage. No, it is good to “have”, but often over the acquisition of the property membrane, the existential core dries, the nucleus disappears, the human shell becomes a hollow. The need to "have" absorbs the divine essence of "be."

Father Alexander foresaw this situation. The church, prone to conservatism, is fueled by xenophobic and nationalist moods. He predicted terrorism as the tactics of future religious and interethnic wars. He spoke about Russian fascism, born before his eyes, he said without abysses that he was supported by "many church figures." But such a monster as Orthodox Stalinism, he probably could not imagine.

A man of culture, he relied on culture. The word of God sprouts in the soil of a cultural ethnic group. This was understood by Akhmatova, who once noticed that Russia was baptized, but not enlightened. In perestroika years, Father Alexander organized the Cultural Renaissance society. Not spiritual, note, but cultural. Society was very difficult to establish. The executive committee lost documents, washed the founders in instances. Under the auspices of society, a smaller lectures, most of which were devoted to the history of religions, philosophy, Russian and world literature. He said that the Church Fathers drew the attention of neophytes to ancient Greek literature, finding in it, pagan, a lot of useful worldviews for the Christian worldview. Aesthetic feeling ennobles a Christian. In order not to resemble those Christian barbarians who burned the Alexandrian library, destroying the ancient culture, chopping off the phalluses and breasts of marble sculptures.

Father Alexander relied on churching through culture. He saw a special mission of the humanitarian-formed part of society in the case of New Gospelization. What the boundless scope of world culture opens in his books, lectures, and sermons! Without representing this picture, it is difficult to understand the meaning of human history.