Законоучительство о. Иоанна

In 1857 Fr. John was offered a teaching position at the Kronstadt City School (from 1862 and at the gymnasium). He accepted the offer with joy, and this is understandable. Where, if not in school, can a priest with great success accomplish his task of “transforming selfish souls into all-sorrowful ones.” Here, among the children, Fr. John should have felt especially welcome and close to his childishly pure soul in the world. We saw how Fr. John loves flowers. It has long been an observation that whoever loves flowers also loves children. This observation is hardly accidental. Love for flowers, true love, caring, touching, tender, almost prayerful, speaks of a heart with a highly developed attraction to the pure, untouched, innocent. Children in a family are the same as white lilies of the valley in nature. These are the remnants of a primeval paradise, the last traces of lost innocence, the pure and beautiful among the dirty and often ugly. But flowers are only a symbol of beauty. A child's soul is God's living beauty. How could Fr. John doesn't like children?! To school o. John, in his own words, entered as a worker into the nursery of souls. We spontaneously began the chapter by comparing the love of children with the love of flowers. This is Fr.'s own comparison. John. “How pleasant it is for a gardener or houseplant lover to see that their plants are growing well, turning green and producing flowers or fruits and rewarding their labors. How they then redouble their zeal in courting them. And they change the soil under them every year, if they are indoor plants, and water them carefully and on time, and tear off dry twigs or yellowed leaves so that they do not take up space on the plant’s stem, and do not disfigure it with themselves, and do not draw its juices into themselves in vain. But it’s nice to look at these plants! Some flowers, for example, the oleander, the rose - our Russian and Chinese - you can’t look at enough of them and say: You, our Creator, are marvelous, not only in man, in Your image and likeness, but also in soulless plants, and in tree flowers. However, why should we talk so much about plants and flowers? They are still wood, hay, no matter how good they are. But you, children, are our plants, or better yet, God’s priceless ones. You are our flowers. What is said about them must also be applied to you.” And how lovingly the “helikeeper” raised in Christ took care of his flowers of Christ. To educate souls - such was the task that the new teacher of the law set himself. His views on teaching at this time were quite definite. He stated more than once that the task of each teacher is to give his students a certain, non-disappearing, solid foundation on which he himself will subsequently build a solid edifice of a reasonable understanding of life. It is not the quantity, but the strength of what is learned that is important. O. John outlines where and how, by what means this strength is acquired. This means is to assimilate knowledge with the soul, to merge it with all its previous spiritual content so that knowledge dissolves and enters as a new, permanent element of the spirit - to teach only what can be assimilated, processed by the soul, mind and heart, and not by memory. “The human soul is simple by nature,” he writes; and she easily assimilates everything simple, turns it into her life and essence, and pushes everything intricately woven away from herself, as alien to her nature, as useless rubbish. We all learned. What remains in our soul from all the sciences? What is indelibly etched into your heart and memory? Aren't the truths taught with childish simplicity? Wasn’t everything that was taught artificially and lifelessly turned out to be rubbish? Isn't time wasted on lessons that are too wise? Yes, each of us has experienced this ourselves. This means that everyone should be all the more clearly convinced of the need for simple teaching, especially for small children... The strength lies not in teaching a lot, but in teaching a little, but what is essential for the student in his situation.” This view already guarantees that the new teacher's lessons will be pedagogically sound. But oh. John was not just a teacher; he was well aware of the difference between a teacher of the law and a teacher. Everything that is needed from a teacher is needed by a teacher of the law, but here a large, essential appendage is needed, much is needed that a teacher cannot do without. “The law of God is not the subject of teaching” - this is the main position of Fr. John. I do not know a teacher of the law who would be to the same extent as Fr. John, learned the holy rule given in the wonderful book “Learning and Teacher.” “You teach children the Law of God!.. Most of all, beware of making the Gospel a textbook; it's a sin. This means: in a child, to devalue a book for a person, which should be for him a treasure and a guide for his whole life. It must be terrible for the conscience to break the word of life into soulless pieces and turn them into painful questions for children. Starting to give speeches about the Gospel words to children and eliciting answers from them - this requires a soul that is sensitive to the sensations of the child’s soul, but when they get down to business with only the mechanics of program questions and put numerical marks for answering questions that are sometimes awkward and incomprehensible to the child, causing excitement and tears - the examiners take a sin on their souls, and one can say about them: they do not know what they are doing with the child’s soul. “There is some kind of hypocritical seduction in school affairs, when the Law of God and the inculcation of the principles of morality combined with it constitute only one of the subjects of the curriculum. As if there is nothing more to desire and demand for a moral purpose than to have the cash of one or another digital mark for answers in a subject called the Law of God. There is a teacher of the law at school, there is a program, there is a score, an indicator of knowledge - e sempre bene. The results of such a training exercise are truly monstrous. There are textbooks that indicate point by point what is required to save a person’s soul, and the examiner deducts a point for someone who cannot remember all the points... Where is the reason here? Where is the morality? Where, finally, and above all, is the faith about which we hypocritically care?” And oh. John teaches the Law of God, the Gospel law, and not texts, although he values ​​the original Gospel text most of all; In his lessons, he studies the history of the Kingdom of God on earth, and not the history of the kings of Israel. He is called upon to enlighten the heart and is most concerned that the truth of the Gospel be assimilated into the hearts of the disciples. “When educating youth, what should we strive for most? About gaining him the enlightened desires of his heart. Don’t you notice that our heart is the first agent in our life, and in almost all our knowledge, the vision of known truths (ideas) with the heart precedes mental knowledge. This happens with knowledge: the heart sees at once, inseparably, instantly; then this single act of vision of the heart is transferred to the mind, and in the mind it is decomposed into parts, sections appear: previous, subsequent; the vision of the heart in the mind receives its analysis. The idea belongs to the heart, not the mind - the inner man, not the outer. Therefore, it is a very important matter to have an enlightened search of the heart in all knowledge, but especially in the knowledge of the truths of faith and the rules of morality.” True, the priest also asked lessons, but he never attached importance to asking. Points and lessons fade into the background. His lesson goes like this. "ABOUT. John, we read from one former student, Fr. John, in his lessons he usually asked first those who themselves declared their desire to answer the lesson, and one had to see with what zeal and expressiveness these “vowed” tried to answer him. For such answers, the priest gave the highest score: “five plus,” and sometimes you felt completely satisfied and, as it were, spiritually transformed, having earned this mark, which accompanied the priest’s gracious word: “Thank you, good child!” Then he asked the others, but only for 2-3-5 minutes. The second half was devoted to explanation - retelling the Gospel, reading Holy Scripture and the lives of saints, or explaining the catechism. He talked about what he lived. The gospel is the living covenant of Christ. Children cannot help but listen with holy attention to the words of Christ. Their soul is still too close, too akin to the “heavenly sounds” to be cold towards them. If children may not listen to the “Law of God,” it is only because it is taught in the same way as any subject, that is, with slight, restrained boredom or with cold conscientiousness. This kind of teaching “kills the Gospel”, makes students see the words of this book as “words to be learned”, and under these conditions, of course, the work is lost. Father John could not read like that. He conveyed the words of Christ. precisely as the testament of the teacher-God. His voice, his face - everything spoke of how dear, how holy, how necessary these covenants are for life, and the children listened and “formed words in their hearts.” U o. John was not incapable; his conversations were remembered forever and were almost equally strong and weak. There were those who did not immediately know how to convey the content of the conversations about. John, but there were none who did not accept this content into their souls. All the priest’s attention was directed not so much at making him remember, but at captivating the souls of children into obedience to the Christian precepts, filling them with those holy images with which his soul was full. This is what he tried to achieve by reading Scripture and the Bible. These readings, one student tells Fr. John, we were so interested and occupied that we usually asked for these books to take home with us. And oh. John always brought with him many separate lives in reserve, which were immediately snapped up. The boy carefully hid such a book in his backpack, and in the evening, having learned his lessons, he gathered his family and read it aloud to them. - Father! I read the life of St. Martyrs Paraskeva, says a day or two later, boy, give me another book now! And they took it and read it not out of fear, but out of love for the priest and for what he taught. And as they read, they changed things, and their souls really took shape according to the model of people strong in spirit and faith. “I,” writes the same witness, “are deeply convinced that many of the students contributed their good religiosity, instilled in them in the lessons of Fr. John, even home and undoubtedly had to influence their younger ones, at least their brothers or sisters. I personally, for example, could testify that my aunt, a Lutheran by birth, completely independently even from me, listening only constantly to my stories about the priest, his lessons and conversations, noticeably became more and more religious, and my little sisters and brother were subsequently raised by her completely differently than I was, seven or eight years ago: she taught them to pray at a very early age, constantly telling them about God and the need to fear Him.” . All the more impactful, of course, were the conversations about. John on the disciples themselves. His sermons and edifications, marked precisely by the sincerity of tone, some special cordiality, his direct spiritual unity with his listeners, “with his remarkably expressive, clear and alien to any dryness of reading, sank deeply into the souls of children and touched the same way as now they touch crowds of people attracted to the venerable priest by the desire to receive a blessing, edification or teaching from him.” Of course, the students took advantage of Fr. John and sometimes skimped: they did not teach lessons, but this suffered little. Everything was learned during the actual lessons; In addition, everyone prepared for the exam, and during the year, omissions were not frequent. “Father almost never - we read everything from the same V-na - did not give us bad grades, and even having a “three” according to the Law of God was considered a great shame and disgrace among us; nevertheless, those who did not know his lesson were afraid or, rather, somehow ashamed of him, despite the fact that not a single teacher could “get off” so easily, under the pretext of yesterday’s or today’s illness, and in general we have never heard of any disciplinary sanctions carried out on his initiative. Kronstadt Gymnasium, where Fr. John was a teacher of the law for 25 years. But, I repeat, they were afraid of him in this case, and they tried to leave the lesson somehow rather than tell him straight to his face about their “good reasons” for not knowing the given lesson. One of my comrades at the final exam, thanks to various random obstacles to proper preparation, answered very poorly on his tickets; O. John nevertheless insisted that he be given a “four”, in view of his diligence and success during the gymnasium course. However, several years have already passed, and even now my comrade would hardly dare to appear before the eyes of his good defender; at least until his departure from Kronstadt, he avoided meeting with the priest, finding that he “positively dishonored the latter in front of all those present with his bad answer and did not justify his trust.” Of course, not everything always went smoothly. There were sins and failures in the children's lives. Father John watched these falls and came to help when it was needed. “I,” writes the already mentioned student, “entered the first grade of the gymnasium in 1887. Father John taught the Law of God in all eight grades. Thus, I immediately found myself from home to school under his religious influence. It should be noted that at home, due to the special conditions of my upbringing, I grew up before entering the gymnasium with almost no understanding of the elementary foundations of the Orthodox faith: I did not go to church, I never read prayers, although I knew them while preparing for the entrance exam to the gymnasium, and finally I did not have the simplest childhood fear of the name of God. And so, one incident in a lesson with Fr. John in the first grade immediately directed my childhood head towards knowledge, although still vague, of the name of God and the fear of Him. As I remember now, the priest comes into our class; We (up to 50 boys), as usual, approached his hand one after another and, having received a blessing from him, then stood up for prayer, after which the lesson began. As always, the priest first asked the lesson from some of those students who themselves volunteered to answer; then he began to call himself not according to the class magazine. The priest went straight to a famous student and asked his lesson. He finally approached my neighbor. When the latter began to answer, Fr. John, standing next to him at the desk, found himself with his back almost completely turned to me. Taking advantage of this, I engaged in chatter with my second neighbor and, then, carried away, committed a grossly indecent and immoral prank, although in truth I was poorly aware of what I was doing. At this time I hear the priest’s voice: “Come here, And... Understanding, very vaguely, however, the meaning of my prank, I am neither alive nor dead, get up from my seat and follow the priest past all the desks to the pulpit. Here he began to ask me in a quiet, gentle voice what I was doing and who taught me. I said that the street boys taught me this. Then the priest, looking at me with his long, inquisitive gaze, until tears finally involuntarily appeared in my eyes, asked me something like this: - Aren’t you afraid of God?.. Aren’t you afraid that He will punish you for your pranks in the lessons of His law?.. Look, don’t play pranks anymore, otherwise He sees everything. I looked stubbornly down, remained silent, and finally began to sob, asking the priest for forgiveness. At this time the bell rang and the lesson had to end. Everyone stood up for prayer, and the priest ordered me to read first the Lord’s Prayer and the “Holy Trinity”, and then “We thank You, the Creator - (usually read by the person on duty in the classroom). After the prayer, he stroked me on the head and, telling me once again never to be naughty again, blessed me and left the class, surrounded by all my comrades, who again approached him for a blessing.” “This incident,” the witness concludes, immediately made me (and maybe not just me) a boy who began to believe in God with a child’s mind and soul and fear His name. In general, I remember many examples of how, through short, usually, often sharp, abrupt, but always sincere edification, Fr. John knew how to touch the most living chord in a spiritually undeveloped and often already spoiled young organism and heal the latter, healing one or another moral wound in it.” Apparently, the priest said what anyone in his place would have said, but this ordinary incident was remembered forever and more than remembered. What is it that brings about moral change here? Such a revolution was made by the voice of Fr. John; the pity that rang in his voice was reflected in his eyes and was transmitted to the children along with this affectionate touch of the “father’s” hand. There were cases when Fr. John was even harsh: “In the fifth grade we had a certain M., a young man of about 16, extremely lazy and spoiled. We studied the catechism. During one of the lessons, dedicated, regarding the first member of the Creed, to the definition of God as Spirit, suddenly in the middle of the lesson M. gets up from his seat and sharply declares to the priest that he refuses to recognize this definition. There was deathly silence in the class. - Atheist! Fanatic! - Fr. suddenly snapped. John, piercing M. with his sharp and persistent gaze: “Aren’t you afraid that the Lord will deprive you of your tongue for your foolishness?” Who gave birth to you? “Father and mother,” M answered in a dull voice. - And who produced the light itself? Who created everything visible and invisible? “Pray, children,” the priest then addressed the whole class, “pray with all zeal and faith!” At the end of the lesson, M. was called to the priest in the teachers' room. We don’t know what he and M. talked about from sight, but M. came out excited and forever new.” Who dares to condemn Fr. John in these minutes? They were so rare and, dare we think, so necessary. Father John, who looked deep into the soul with his own eyes, saw what was needed psychologically in the child at that moment. The protest was decisive and even angry, at one time, telling the boy how the road was for Fr. John the truth for which he stood and how confident he was in the truth of his truth. This impulse was supposed to cause revival, uplift, attention, although it did not yet predetermine its outcome. The other one, not Fr. For John, he would even have caused a bad outcome, because, of course, anger does not heal. U o. For John, he caused only a good crisis. The minutes following the impulse, when Fr. John so lovingly talks soul to soul with the guilty, like a confessor and a father - they showed the participant from what source the anger came, and moved the moved soul towards God and His truth. There were cases, of course, when it was difficult to immediately cure the soul with one word, “surgery.” There were more serious patients. O. John knew how to heal them too. There were cases when the council of the gymnasium made a resolution to dismiss some intolerant student. Then Fr. John begged to give the “excluded slave” to his bail. They gave it away, and you had to see with what anxious attention Fr. John for the soul entrusted to him. He watched him like a sick plant, watched every unhealthy movement and nursed him back to health. For the most part, of course, the disease turned out to be not serious enough. It was either childish perseverance, which did not want to break before an order, a shout, a threat, and easily bowed before a request, a gentle reproach, a prayer. There were, of course, cases of actual damage, from nature, from the bad influence of the environment, parents. There was more work here, but affection, which for these children is the same as the sun for a plant, forgiveness, enlightened the soul, which had not yet been completely broken, and saved it. After a few months, the former “intolerant student” became different, new. Fr. helped a lot. Confession to John. Here he talked with the child's soul at the moments when the child's soul was closest to God, at the moments of ascent, when a person sincerely desires to be freed from all dirt; O. At this time, John could observe where the danger was to the very roots of the soul and treated them, using the full power of his influence and prayer. As a result, he became a truly spiritual father to his children. And once connections were established in the gymnasium, they spread beyond its boundaries: the students of Fr. John studied with him outside of class. They loved his service. “I remember,” writes I-in, “with what readiness we visited especially the Duma church, and the church in the “House of Diligence,” where he served more often than in the cathedral; Often, however, some of us, going to the gymnasium in the morning, went into the cathedral, where Fr. After Matins, John prayed for those who came to him for advice or help, and we ourselves then witnessed how deep faith in the saving power of the priest’s prayers before the Lord not only lifted these people spiritually, but also healed their physical suffering. Of course, the example of the extraordinary, holy life of the teacher of the law had an even greater effect on the children. “We had quite a few government boarders from other cities who, due to lack of funds, had to stay away from their relatives, within the walls of the gymnasium, even on major holidays. These poor people were usually helped out by the same priest, supplying them for the journey to their relatives and back. And which of us did not know the never-fading hand of the priest, which in his lifetime wiped away many tears for various poor and orphans?! Not yet having large funds at his disposal - in the first years of my stay at the gymnasium - he shared the last with all the poor people in Kronstadt; often deceived in people, he, apparently, had never lost faith in them, but on the contrary, in us, in his disciples, he lit a bright lamp of this very faith, showing us daily by his own example the duty and feasible opportunity of every Christian to follow the Gospel commandment to love one’s neighbor. Often, during a lesson, one of us asked the priest to tell us about who he visits in St. Petersburg, why they always invite him there, and the priest’s stories, accompanied by simple edifications about the necessity and power of prayer, not only interested us keenly, but deeply touched us, leaving good marks on our worldview. Every day we could observe a crowd of people in need of blessing, teaching, advice or help from our priest; he was called before our eyes both to the lordly mansion and to the wretched shack of the poor, and we were always keenly touched by this mutual relationship between the good shepherd and his flock, for whom he remains to this day the same mentor and spiritual father as he has always been for us.” How much his children loved him was shown by the day when Fr. John had to say goodbye to school. The school was crying; This is how they cry when saying goodbye to their dying father. Fr. also cried. John, but the all-Russian cause no longer allowed him to devote himself to the “small”, albeit great, task of educating future “people”. The authorities said goodbye to Fr. John with the following speech, which was a correct assessment of his works and his significance for the gymnasium. “Your word,” said the director, “your example has always been a life-giving light for us, which with such power awakened moral life and aroused impulses towards spiritual improvement. Strong spiritual ties have formed between you and the gymnasium.” This speech, however, was only a repetition of the address of the fathers and mothers raised by Fr. John to children, presented on the day of the 25th anniversary of teaching. We think that this address will be the best conclusion to the chapter on the teaching of law. John, as a brief and sincere description of this teaching. “Highly venerable and respected shepherd and mentor John Ilyich! This marks 25 years of your new, particularly important service to the state and society, and in particular to us, fathers and mothers, in our children, whom you, as a teacher of the law at the Kronstadt classical gymnasium, guided on the path of spiritual enlightenment. You didn’t teach the children dry scholasticism, you didn’t set out dead formulas—texts and sayings—for them, you didn’t demand from them lessons memorized only by memory; but on bright, receptive souls you sowed the seeds of the eternal and life-giving word of God. Many children have passed through your holy school. Many of your students stand at various degrees and titles in the service of the Tsar and the Fatherland; many of them are still growing up and preparing to enter the public field - and all of them, inspired by you and your holy communication with them, remember your love, instructions, your lessons - and all, blessing you, reverently remember those unforgettable hours that they spent with you. You yourself, without noticing it, with your fiery love for God and endless mercy for your brothers - people, lit the torch of true knowledge of God with your living word in your disciples; and with his holy example and mercy he filled their young hearts with the fear of God, faith, hope in God and love for Him and their brothers. Not by the measure only of talent and captivating speech, as a professor in the department, not by the measure of constant success in passing exams - we are talking about your scientific activity - but by those visible fruits of Christian life, morality, civic virtues, family relationships, which appeared in your students in numerous examples. May our gratitude, fathers and mothers, be like a peaceful prayer to God for you, may He pour out on you from His All-Holy Throne as much spiritual joy as you have given us consolation in our children, in their good behavior and successes.” We and our readers will add “Amen” to this address.