V. Rozanov. Near the church walls. [Review]

I can confidently recommend to readers of B.V. a new book by V.V. Rozanov. The author wants Christian rays, which now seem to be closed by church walls, to come out of this fence and illuminate what is located near the church walls, so that these walls move apart, the service of the Christian church becomes open, so that the cherubic service rushes through the meadows and forests. “Near the Church Walls” is a collection of various articles previously published in various periodicals. It begins with the article Religion - like light and joy, and not by chance. The first volume contains articles that touch upon the area of ​​white religious rays, while the dark rays are left for the second volume, for the “monastic book.” I therefore recommend to readers of B.V. a new book by V.V. Rozanov, because its content and tone, although true to the general direction of his latest writings, are limited to publicly accessible spheres, taken on a popular scale, without the sharpness and specificity with which the too individual begins. Although the book contains a lot of criticism, it does not so much destroy as it creates. Joyful and creative. “We need freedom for God. And without God there is no longer any need for freedom, nor is slavery scary. Then it doesn’t matter... A There is no need for it to be “all the same.” What is needed is not the end of the (Christian) religion, not the ruin of the church, but a light, heavenly religion, a Church rising to the heavens.” The tone, moderately constructive rather than radically destructive, permeates the entire book from beginning to end. Here's how, for example. The author responds to a rationalist and sectarian on the issue of church ritual. “How can you, my friend, not wag (not hesitate)? Of course, I feel sorry for you: but Russia is not a stranger to me, but, although in many ways bitter, but in general the mother who gave birth to me. Here you will certainly be of two minds. I will say briefly and maybe something instructive. People who save themselves by “not smoking tobacco” and pious conversations about a quiet and sweet way of life are not only religiously, but even literary uninteresting to me! I just consider them German Pietists... They read the Gospel, but don’t go to church, and are afraid, neglect to go: this, you see, is too rude and uneducated for them. But here, an inveterate anti-Byzantine, I will say objectively, coldly and even indifferently: that in the church there are certain depths and heights and beauty of penetration that are not at all in the gospel - not in its entirety, not even in the beginning. Does this surprise you? Yes, in the wondrous labors of a thousand years of reflection and creation, the Church has in some ways risen above the gospel: and this is the line of eternal misunderstanding of Protestants, and together with the enthusiastic and sensitive faith of many Russians, that “Orthodoxy is the end, beyond which there is nowhere to go.” Note: Orthodoxy, not the Gospel... Why do all the people, when singing the Cherubim, fall on their faces, without orders, without the example of a priest or deacon, out of their tenderness, and when singing the Lord's Prayer, the only one contained in the Gospel, although the deacon sets an example to kneel and bow, only very few follow him? Cherubic is wonderfully mystical, incomprehensible: but the soul of religion is in mystery, in concealment, “in the cloud.” And it is in the Cherubim that the heavenly mystery of the religious soul is expressed, looking into the sky and seeing something special there. On the contrary, in the Lord’s Prayer everything is clear and rational; she arranges the earth, listing its needs, but the throne of the Lord, like the cherubim, is not visible in it. This is what the people felt and fell to the ground; and during the second prayer, earthly, rational, he remained on his feet. What will the “non-tobacco smokers” say to this? By not going to church, they deprived themselves of the Cherubic song, which is absolutely impossible to replace by reading a single page of the Gospel, due to the lack of equality and similarity of mood, because the Cherubic is new, different, created for the first time. And amazingly, it was created not even by a holy saint, but by some Greek emperor. Thus, the Holy Spirit breathed into him - and centuries and peoples were touched. – What does the Gospel say about death and burial? The only thing: “leave the dead to bury the dead.” Nothing more. Who, if not the Church, invented, and, moreover, invented again, on its own initiative, and not on the basis of the Gospel, the two-night reading of the Psalter over the deceased, the washing of his body, as if anointing him and preparing him for the transition into something pure; - and finally - funeral chants, marvelous in depth and sound, which no person can hear indifferently. Did this develop from the words: “leave the dead to bury the dead”? Of course not, of course, with a silent bypass of these words. Is this good? and is this new and bold sprout, a new and independent impulse of the soul of church teachers, John of Damascus and others, appropriate?! Of course - beneficent, great, holy. Having caught the sharp and aching pain of the living around the deceased, they fanned them with wonderful words, until the final one: “come and give the last kiss”! This is what the tasteless shtunda, people without taste and wit, without reflection, will never understand. Or let's take labor, work. “Give your wealth to the poor and take up your cross and go,” “look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap.” But a poor man in the earthly vale has to reap and sow. Well, has the Church turned away from this too? I don’t know if there is a prayer for sowing grain; I'm sorry if not; but in case of drought, there is... Is this a bad thing? Of course - great! “They will not worship on this mountain, nor in the temple in Jerusalem, but in every place, in spirit and in truth.” But are we really going to condemn the church for dotting the earth and countries and people’s lives with churches? and shall we not even rejoice that we made them golden-domed, with gilded altars, with incense smoke, holy water, with myrrh and fragrant incense? God, how poor life would be without them, how wild! Flat, like a road not lined with trees, and boring, like a short fable about a white bull, repeating the same thing from line to line! The Church, the churches, the Cherubim, and the incense, and the feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, and the day of the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity, and the Entry into the Church - there is not even a line about the latter in the Gospel - with their different and dissimilar features, and the beggarly existence of our people has nevertheless formed into a certain, albeit still weak and pale, pattern! And not just for the “salvation of the soul,” which can be achieved at home, but also for beauty and splendor, some man with a knapsack goes thousands of miles to the Pechersk Lavra, to the Trinity Lavra, which is certainly rich, shining, multi-domed, even if perhaps luxurious and drowning in architectural, singing and liturgical beauty! And how much this man would have been killed if he, a beggar, after a thousand miles of fatigue, having been reminded of the words about worship “in spirit and truth,” had been shown a bunch of gentlemen who did not smoke tobacco, reading the Gospel in a secluded room, with the sentence: “Here, sit down and listen to the wise men.” But don’t we read in the same Gospel, in the “Revelation” of John the Theologian, about the Heavenly Jerusalem descending to earth, i.e. about the last crown of religious life on earth, that it descends in the brilliance of precious stones, even with a list of rocks: “and emerald”, “and emerald”, “and yakhont”, “jasper”, “azure”, and with walls of pure gold? Luxury... We squandered it for insignificant earthly affairs, for gross personal egoism; meanwhile, of course, the people's use of wealth is always church, church and festive! And I would not complain about this, but also, like the Beloved Bride, I would clean up religion with incense, and paints, and flowers, and trees (gardens) around churches, and stones, and metals, and paintings, and architecture, and singing. This is what it would mean to work for the people: to open to their eyes, after it has been revealed to their ears, another mystical “Cherubic song”, lost in domes and spokes in the firmament of heaven.... The Gospel is sinless. But it clearly does not embrace the entire circle of our existence; and the Church is a movement towards replenishment, towards addition, towards completion, according to the word of the Savior: “I am the vine and you are the branches,” that is, grow, live, multiply in word and mind. What does the Gospel say about birth? Only one line: “When a woman gives birth, she suffers sorrow, and when she has given birth, she forgets her sorrow, for a new man has come into the world.” There is no preparation here for the wonderful rite of the sacrament of baptism, with lit candles, burning incense, a new baptismal shirt for the baby and a golden cross and a pink belt. How good everything is! “Grow and grow,” said Christ: and it is already a matter of our heart and thinking and religious inspiration - how, where, how long to “grow.” Poor Protestants, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Doukhobors, Tolstoyans do not understand this, imagining a full circle of 360 degrees in the 4 Gospels, when this is clearly just a begun arc: and the Church beautifully and faithfully led this arc further, adding degree to degree over the centuries. The task of history would be too simple: don’t smoke and read the Gospel. Such creation, and not at all Doukhobor-like belittlement, must be desired and expected in the future.”... I cited this long excerpt because in this way it is more likely to give an idea of ​​the tone of the book, of its direction - on the contrary, the articles in the collection under review somehow defy presentation. What is more important in them is not what, but how: in the latter it is the talent of the author and the sincerity of his pen. It must be said, however, that the articles are very diverse in content: they concern missionary work, schools, Catholicism, Old Believers, Old Catholicism, teaching the law of God in schools, freedom of conscience, and many books, writers, and public figures. You might be interested in: