"There are people who are easy to love"

Archpriest Alexei Uminsky - about Yuri Rost

There is such an amazing person in the world, Yuri Mikhailovich growth. And his very presence in my life makes her arranged, warm, reliable.

A person in life rarely has many friends, and growth has a lot of friends. And he is enough for everyone. The same.

Every person with whom he is friends, he is a peer. When he is with me, he is my peer. When he is with George Danelia, he is a peer. Yura is my son's friend. And this is completely surprising: Vanya is 26 years old.

He is equal and, one might say, congenial (the beautiful word that Ostap Bender taught me) to every person with whom he is friends.

And this creates an amazing atmosphere of unity, true, deep intimacy.

I don’t know where he got this tact, openness, friendliness. And some kind of humility, the inner Yurin's humility before every person with whom he begins to be friends. Because he really falls in love with this person. Because there is something in this person that one cannot but notice, and this friendship-love fills the whole space. Many people look at friendship consumerly, but he does not expect anything from anyone, does not demand, does not collect tribute, on the contrary, he is ready to give himself to everyone and does it with joy. I think there are few Christians on earth who are ready to share so generously. And this amazing talent, given by God - to be a friend, to be able to be friends - surpasses many of his other talents, which everyone knows about ...

Of course, I consider him my parishioner. Sometimes I look at how, coming to the temple for great holidays, for Christmas, Easter, he tries to turn into a “right parishioner”, tries to correspond. I see how he is preparing for this for a long time, approaches with the words "I could not come to you!" - Our conversation always begins with this.

There is something completely childish in this, such gospel childhood, because children are not obliged to behave well ...

His Christianity fully corresponds to him. He cannot be the right Christian, as not a single Christian can be "right."

And the story about the Easter egg must find out the story of the Easter egg. One of the Easter, four years ago, Yura comes to the temple, and in his eyes such a cunning trick. It can be seen that I want to shit, because it cannot live without this in principle. But in the church, on the one hand, it is somehow not very hooligan, and on the other hand, it is clear that it is not terrible. And so he comes up to me and says:

“Can you sanctify me on Easter?”

- Can! - I say.

“But you see,” he says, “such a thing is a difficult egg ...

- What does a difficult egg mean? In what sense? Well, come on your egg!

And then he takes out a huge cobblestone (as it turned out later, a relic brought from Mongolia) and says:

- Here - the egg of the dinosaur. Can I sanctify?

I hesitated somewhat, before that I had not met such a practice. Nevertheless, I thought, thought, opened a trembel where there is a sanction rite, and I say: “Yur, you know, it is not written here what eggs are needed and you can sanctify-chicken, pigeons ... And if it is not written, it means, you can!”

And we drew “XV” on this egg, since the dinosaurs in a sense are our ancestors, and the egg is consecrated because it is a symbol of future life, the embryo of eternity, the “life of the future century”.

This is the main Christian dogma about the resurrection of Christ, that we are all resurrected, that we will all hatch out of the earth's shell again, break through, split this shell of death and revive! And we sang with Yura "Christ is risen from the dead!" And sprinkled the dinosaur’s egg ...

... growth also does not fit into any formula, like happiness. And what a blessing that he is near. It is easy to love him. What can you say? There are people who are easy to love ...