Глава девятая. Архиепископ Филарет 1819–1821

Catechism (katechesis) translated from Greek - teaching, instruction. A person is most often not ready to accept Christian teaching if he immediately starts with the Gospel. This requires preparation in the form of reading a catechism containing the main provisions of Christian doctrine. They are often presented in the form of questions and answers. The Catechism contains answers to the most common theological questions and basic theological education before baptism. Before starting to write his catechism, Filaret compiled and published “Tables of readings from the Holy Scriptures, church and civil press, intended for educational purposes.” They outlined what should be read from the Holy Scriptures on each day of the year. It looks like this: On the Holy Resurrection of Christ at the liturgy Acts 1, 1–8. Ev. In. 1, 1–17. On the same day at Vespers Ev. In. 20.19–25. Monday Acts. 1, 12–17, 21–26. Ev. In. 1, 18–28. Tuesday Acts 2, 14–21. Ev. OK. 24, 12–35. Wednesday Acts. 2, 22–36. Ev. In. 1, 35–51. Thursday Acts 2, 38–43. Ev. In. 3.1–15. Acts stains. 3, 1–8. Phil. 2, 5–11. Ev. In. 2, 12–22. Saturday Acts 3, 11–16. Ev. In. 3, 22–33. Sunday at Matins Ev. Matt. 28, 16–20. At the Liturgy of Acts. 5, 12–20. Ev. In. 20, 19–31. Monday Acts. 3, 19–26. Ev. In. 2, 1–11. Tuesday Acts 4, 1–10. Ev. In. 3, 16–21. Wednesday Acts. 4, 13–22. Ev. In. 5, 17–24. Thursday. Acts 4, 23–31. Ev. In. 5, 24–30. Friday Acts 5, 1–11. Ev. In. 5, 30 – 6, 2. Saturday Acts 5, 21–33. Ev. In. 6, 14–27. Week 3, about the Myrrh-Bearers Sunday at Matins Ev. Mk. 16, 9–20. On the liturgy Acts 6, 1–7. Ev. Mk. 15, 43 – 16, 8. Monday Acts. 6, 8 – 7, 5, 47–60. Ev. In. 4, 46–54. Tuesday Acts 8, 5–17. Ev. In. 6, 27–33. Wednesday Acts. 8, 18–25. Ev. In. 6, 35–39. Thursday Acts 8, 26–39. Ev. In. 6, 40–44. Friday Acts 8, 40 – 9, 19. Ev. In. 6, 48–54. Saturday Acts 9, 20–31. Ev. In. 15, 17 – 16, 2. And so on - for each week of the yearly circle. Abbreviations here: “Acts.” - “Acts of the Apostles”, “Ev. In." - “Gospel of John”, “Ev. Matt." - “Gospel of Matthew”, “Ev. Mk." – “Gospel of Mark”, “Phil.” - “The Epistle of the Apostle Philip,” etc., as is customary to abbreviate the names of the Gospel texts. Nowadays these tables are attached for every day in the annually published Orthodox church calendar. On March 15, 1819, Filaret entered the second highest step of the church hierarchical ladder - he was elevated to the rank of archbishop and received under his jurisdiction the Tver diocese, one of the oldest in Rus' - it was established shortly after the elevation of the Tver prince Yaroslav Yaroslavovich to the grand-ducal throne in the 13th century. Yaroslav was buried in 1271 by the first bishop of Tver, the Monk Simeon of Polotsk. Tver bishops enjoyed enormous influence not only in Tver; they were called upon to serve as arbitrators during princely disputes. Filaret (Drozdov) turned out to be the forty-ninth Tver bishop after the Monk Simeon. Among his predecessors are the compiler of the Pechersk Patericon, Saint Arseny, the wonderworker of Kazan, Saint Barsanuphius, the fighter against the schism and the founder of the Theophylact (Lopatinsky) theological school in Tver. Thirty-five years before Filaret, the Tver department was headed by his patron and mentor of his youth, Metropolitan Platon (Levshin). Filaret replaced Archbishop Seraphim (Glagolevsky) in this post, who, alas, would soon become his opponent. From now on, his life stretched between St. Petersburg and Tver. He spent most of his time in the northern capital, but he also had to constantly travel for a long time to the subordinate Tver. He was able to carry out a large tour of his diocese only in May-August 1820. Before this, finishing things at the academy and working at the Synod took up a lot of time. Consecrating the Cathedral Church of the Nativity of Christ in the Tver Nativity Monastery, he preached a sermon on the need for parishioners to understand the meaning of their presence in churches: “The point is that everyone carefully and impartially examines himself, whether he sees in the spirit and whether he feels, as he should, in the church of God the presence of the glory of God. As an epigraph to his sermon, he took the words from the book of the prophet Ezekiel: “The glory of the Lord is in the church, along the path of the gates of those looking to the east. And he took my spirit, and brought me into the inner court: and behold, the house of the Lord was full of glory. And he stood, and behold a voice from the church, saying to me, “Son of man, have you seen the place of My throne, and the place of the sole of My feet, where My name shall dwell among the house of Israel forever?” (Ezek.43:4-7). – But what shall we say for those whose spiritual eyes are either completely blinded by unbelief, or damaged and darkened by distraction and negligence? Was it a coincidence that the preacher brought up such a topic? He had probably already seen how, after the surge of faith caused by the disaster of 1812, now, eight years later, churches began to empty again. Another ten years will pass, and other churches, especially in the capitals, will be empty even on great holidays. Let's remember Gogol's story "The Nose". It is no coincidence that Nikolai Vasilyevich immediately indicated that the action takes place on March 25, that is, on one of the twelfth holidays of the Orthodox Church - Annunciation. Major Kovalev ends up in one of the main St. Petersburg churches - the Kazan Cathedral. It happens in the morning, which means that a festive service is taking place in the church. There should be so many people that you can’t squeeze through. People still go to confession here. Here they have already confessed and are ready to partake of Holy Communion. But: “There were few worshipers inside the church; they all stood only at the entrance to the door,” writes Gogol. And at the entrance to the church, when there are not many people in the church, those who just came in usually stand to light a candle, linger for a while, and then run on about their business. This is why the preacher calls out to the congregation: - Looking at the sacred splendor of the visible church, let us think about the incomparable inner glory that mysteriously dwells in it; and if our spirit is not enlightened by Divine vision, if our heart is not enlivened by a heavenly sensation, then in order to heal our soul, we will use every effort to preserve ourselves from the sins that darken it and plunge it into spiritual insensibility. Around the same summer, Filaret delivered a very remarkable sermon about clothing, or more precisely, about how much attention people have recently paid to who is wearing what. – Excess in food and drink at its very beginning is a source of infirmities and diseases; and in its continuation it can turn into slow suicide. Likewise, the harm of vain worries about clothing extends from the body to the soul: this is no longer a small thing! There are people for whom these concerns constitute no small part of their daily exercises and steal a great part of the time that is absolutely needed to acquire eternity; this is by no means a small thing! In the history of fashion in Rus', 1820 can be considered a special year. After the wars with Napoleon, it became fashionable for a long time to wear dresses reminiscent of ancient Russian designs. The waist disappeared, women wore loose-fitting clothes. And so in 1820, Talia appeared and entered the battle for its rights. Everyone seemed to have gone crazy - the wives demanded from their husbands more and more new dresses, which were ordered from abroad, and if there was not enough money, they bought patterns from which the serf girls tirelessly sewed newfangled dresses. There were real battles between those who defended Russianness in clothing and those who succumbed to the temptations of fashion. That is why Filaret paid special attention to the topic of clothing. An unsurpassed master of words, he copes excellently with this topic, striking listeners with unexpected comparisons. He compares the desire to show off in new and new clothes with illness and slavery: - What does this pride mean, with which someone who wears expensive clothes barely deigns to look at poverty covered in sackcloth or half-naked, - this insatiability with which some increase this inconstancy from day to day, with which they so often change their attire? – Isn’t this something similar to what would happen if a sick person decided to be vain about the multitude of his scabs and the beauty of his duties; or if a slave, forced to wear shackles, wanted to have them in great number and wrought with a variety of art?.. Why is it unpleasant for us if it is not for us that the silk worm spins, it is not for us that the earth gives birth to gold, and the sea - pearl? Why such childish whims?.. Why else do we often wish that our clothing exceeds not only the requirements of necessity, but also the decency of our condition? Why are we sometimes not happy with OUR jewelry simply because it was not stolen from our most distant brothers? From clothes the preacher moves on to jewelry: “I don’t know what can give gold the same weight on the scales of a reasonable person as on the scales of a merchant, if this is not the weight of the troubles with which it burdens the human race.” What is called the best water in the stones, are they not the tears of unfortunate victims who are buried alive, deeper than the dead, in the dark belly of the mountains to extract from there these precious trifles? At the same time, he does not proclaim that “everyone must reject all splendor and put on rags”: - There is a type and degree of splendor and even splendor in attire, which does not indicate partiality, but decency, not vanity, but wealth, not vanity, but duty. But care without end, PLENTY without measure, waste without purpose, daily changes of attire only because there are people who have the baseness to engage in inventions of this kind, and that there are too many who have the slavish baseness to imitate these childhood inventions - incredible recklessness!.. It is better to lose a thousand decorations than to present to the Almighty the slightest stain in the soul and conscience. And he ends his word with a wonderful reminder of that main garment that every true Christian must put on: - The Elitsy were baptized into Christ, and put on Christ. Archbishop Philaret delivered an even more striking sermon that same year on the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord: – A high sight on Mount Tabor. A truly spectacle, worthy of being seen with admiration, as the apostles saw, and remembered with triumph, as we remember now. It is not in vain that those who witnessed the great phenomena at Sinai and Horeb, it is not in vain that Moses and Elijah appear on Tabor. They will see more here than there. At Sinai and Horeb, the power and glory of God was revealed to people through the forces of visible nature: on Tabor, not only the Divinity appears to people, but humanity also appears in Divine glory. Moses trembled at Sinai, Elijah complained at Horeb: in the apostles at Tabor joy shines through the horror: it is good for us to be here. The Transfiguration Cathedral in Tver was the main church of the city; it housed the tomb of all the Tver princes. Accordingly, the Transfiguration was a church holiday here. That is why, foreseeing his imminent transfer to another diocese, Archbishop Filaret wanted to be especially remembered by the people of Tver for his sermon. He, following the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, spoke about faith in the power of prayer, and that the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor itself took place during the strong prayer of the apostles. He tried to prove that strong and effective prayer is not, as some believe, only a gift of the elect: – There is no person whose prayer could not become strong if he firmly and sincerely desires it, with faith and trust in God; and there is no thing in which prayer cannot become real, unless the object of prayer is contrary to the wisdom and goodness of God and the goodness of the one praying... Pray, Christian, with strong prayer, with all the strength of your soul, diligent and persistent prayer, good and pure prayer, and if you do not find this in yourself, pray for the prayer itself, and through prayer you will first acquire true prayer and real, then this will conquer everything with you, and will acquire everything for you, will lead you to Tabor, or will Tabor open in you; He will bring down heaven into your soul, and he will lift up your soul into heaven. Amen. In the same sermon, Filaret could have reminded listeners of what happened on May 12, 1820 in Tsarskoe Selo, when the Znamensky Palace burned there, the fire was about to spread to neighboring buildings. They brought out the miraculous icon of the Mother of God “The Sign,” and, standing in front of it, Emperor Alexander Pavlovich loudly exclaimed: - Mother of God! Save my house! The sincere prayer that flowed from the sovereign’s lips had a miraculous effect. The flame of that prayer extinguished the flame of the fire - the wind, like a tamed horse, turned in the opposite direction, and the firefighters were able to quickly put out the fire. On August 24, 1820, Filaret was returning from Tver to St. Petersburg and on the road he wrote the poem “Evening Song of a Traveler.” In it he expressed the same Preobrazhensky feelings - the dream of the flight of the soul to the Tabor light: Appear, desired Light, To my soul in the evening shade Don't let him wander alone! But the heart waits in stone, ...Yes, yes, in truth and holiness And through the darkness I see Your light; On September 26, 1820, Archbishop Philaret was transferred from the Tver see to the Yaroslavl see. And his place in Tver was taken by none other than Simeon (Krylov-Platonov), the same one who twelve years ago tonsured Philaret into monasticism. Before that, he was Bishop of Tula and Belevsky, and then Archbishop of Chernigov and Nizhyn. The Yaroslavl-Rostov diocese is the oldest in Russian lands. In 991, a year before the establishment of the episcopal see in Veliky Novgorod, preachers of the Orthodox faith reached the Rostov land, inhabited by pagans, and established an episcopal see here. In the Yaroslavl and Rostov diocese, Saint Leonty of Rostov, holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky, Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, Saint Demetrius of Rostov, and holy righteous warrior Theodore Ushakov labored. In 1314, the miraculous icon of the Tolga Mother of God was revealed here, and a monastery was founded on the site of the apparition. In 1437, the Goden Cross was miraculously found on Rostov land, which later became famous for its many miracles. With the blessing of the Venerable Irinarch the Recluse and under the leadership of Minin and Pozharsky, the militia gathered here, the government worked, and coins were minted. In 1788, the department of the ruling bishop was transferred from Rostov the Great to Yaroslavl, where a theological seminary had been operating since 1747. Archbishop Filaret became the sixty-eighth bishop of the Yaroslavl and Rostov diocese. His predecessor Anthony (Znamensky) became seriously ill and in the summer submitted a request for retirement. It is noteworthy that Drozdov at the local see should have been called Philaret the second, since the first Philaret, Archbishop of Rostov and Yaroslavl, was none other than the father of the first tsar from the Romanov family, Mikhail. - Christians! Strive to be truly Christlike, cleave to Christ with all your heart through adherence to the teaching and life revealed in the Gospel, and through diligent communion of the Divine sacraments that he left to his Church, Philaret appealed in his greeting message to the Yaroslavl flock. The state of affairs in the diocese was deplorable. This is eloquently evidenced by the words of Philaret from his letter to the abbot of the Tolga monastery, Gabriel (Rozanov), dated April 22, 1821: “If you, brother, are sick from one monastery and seminary, then I should have died long ago from the entire Yaroslavl diocese.” But he was not destined to remain the ruler of Yaroslavl for long, even less than that of Tver, a little more than nine months. And ahead of him was Moscow.