1. Время святителя Филарета

“The clouds are darkening; a distant roar of thunder is heard... Arise, O Lord, rebuke the waves and kindle the clouds” (23:49). Sometimes you have to witness nostalgia about the past: they say there was a lot of good things or even everything was good. Is this true? - No! Over time, bad things are forgotten and lose their severity against the backdrop of any modern disturbances. Besides, we were once younger and therefore everything was perceived and experienced in a different light. But in fact, any time has its joys and brings its difficulties. What characterizes the years of life’s feat of the Moscow Saint (1782–1867)? - Far from it - not with ease, which he himself eloquently speaks about in a number of letters to various persons - from simple clergy to the Most August Persons. We listen to the word of the Holy Hierarch: “This age is so passionate about disorder and nonsense, and has so forgotten the first principles of common sense and decency, that between the strict jealousy, which it does not think about and cannot bear, and between the lack of jealousy, which is criminal against the truth, it is difficult to navigate the path of patient jealousy” (23:46-47). “We have lived to see some kind of foggy time. Darkness covers the minds. In some you see the unexpected, in others you do not see the expected” (4:597). What we see is sad, “and what is sad again is that those who see do not see” (23:52). The striving movement towards transformation, combined with unlimited freedom of speech and publicity, “has produced so many diverse views on objects that it is difficult to find and separate the best among them and bring disagreement to unity” (23:46). With increasing education, people “turn out to be less circumspect in their actions as in former times,” and less thorough in everything, “small and great” (23:50). Having become bad, the age “easier believes the bad than the good, and especially where the good should be exemplary” (23:47). Therefore, temptation precedes edification and comes before it (8:75). This evil age greedily catches cases of criticism, slander and “the sting of ridicule, even unfounded, sometimes stings, not without harming the success of good enterprises” (23:50). And even from Christian societies people come out saying depraved things. “Reasonless blasphemies are proclaimed as wisdom. Temptation and iniquity open wide avenues for themselves” (23:51). That is why both the evening and morning dawns do not seem bright. “The clouds are darkening; a distant roar of thunder is heard; There are either no lightning rods, or they are broken. The waves are rising: Jesus is sleeping” (23:49). Customs distorted by sin and sinful vanity “are more threatening than external enemies” (23:49). The trouble, and at the same time the danger, is that “we boast a lot and do not repent enough. And time advises us to boast less and pray more” (23:48). “What is this misfortune that everyone talks about abuse and no one can overcome it?” (23:45) - the Saint asks and reflects: “It seems to me that our affairs are not leading to a golden age. Someone says: we need to pray so that the storm does not overtake us, not protected, not having finished and, perhaps, not starting our work, scattered outside and not gathered inside. I hear this, and yet it is dormant. Send me Petrov’s noose to wake me up” (23:49). The picture of the times darkens from the description of church sorrows, which was fulfilled by the wise and courageous Hierarch both in a short letter to the abbot of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, Archimandrite Anthony, and in a lengthy message to Emperor Nicholas I. For the latter, the Moscow Archpastor was subjected to severe reprimand: expelled from the membership of the Holy Synod and almost deprived by order of the Metropolitan Emperor sana. Court figures persuaded the emperor to abandon his command, drawing the monarch's attention to the possible negative consequences. “It was not so difficult for me to come to terms with the sorrows of my relatives,” the saint writes to the Archimandrite, the holy saint, because I saw in some way that the Lord, through sorrows, delivers from great sorrows. Church sorrows are difficult. The waves rise, and silence is not visible behind them. Jonah, self-willedly responsible for the storm, is exposed; but the storm does not want to leave those in the ship alone” (8:7). The letter of St. Philaret to Emperor Nicholas I describing the reasons for the plight of the Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia occupies 31 pages in the book (27:27–57). Its essence can be boiled down to the following: Many people of clergy stand at a high level of moral perfection. If there is some kind of disharmony among him, then the reasons should not be sought in the Church. And the Saint shows how our Church is governed, “for the progress of the machine depends on who controls the machine” (27:29). Bishops are summoned to the Synod by decree of the Monarch on the proposal of the Chief Prosecutor for only one year. In the first half of the year they only have time to take a closer look at the affairs of the Synod, and in the second they are already thinking about how to safely return to their dioceses. The most venerable Metropolitan of St. Petersburg takes office as a member of the Synod, usually in old age, and from some distant diocese, “and therefore cannot soon properly enter into his position.” So, in the very composition of the Synod, the intention to paralyze its power and the correct development of Christian life is already noticeable (27:31). There are many meetings of the Synod unnecessarily; many protocols are drawn up, decisions are written by laymen in the office and come from secretaries and the chief prosecutor. “Can you imagine a more disorderly feeling for an Orthodox Christian: the laity control its destiny, the laity give direction to it, the laity control the Spirit and life of the Church!” (27:32). On both sides of the “hierarchs sit secular people, alien to them in their way of life, in their principles and goals, and often hostile to the hierarchy” (27:33). Actually, the Synod consists of the Chief Prosecutor. He is the head of everyone, the sovereign manager, “in his hands lies all ecclesiastical power over the Holy Church... No one can accuse him of any injustice or self-will” (27:35). All the activities of the synodal officials “are directed not towards the benefit and good of the Church, about the spirit and needs of which they do not have a completely correct understanding, but towards objects that constitute the ordinary element of human life” (27:39). Memories of such activities are obvious - modern. “You just need to remember Count Protasov (Chief Prosecutor - K.S.). It would be too long to count all his actions aimed at the destruction and destruction of the Holy Church in plausible forms” (27:40). The difficult, abnormal position of the highest church administration had a detrimental effect on consistories throughout Russia, on monasteries, and caused bitter consequences on the laity. “Those of them who are not warmed by a feeling of living faith, when looking at the disorder of the Church and the clergy, which sharply catches everyone’s eye, grow colder towards the Holy Church more and more, easily fall into a state of unbelief and mock both the hierarchs and institutions, and everything that is directly Divine in it. Those, on the contrary, who seek consolation in Christian Faith and Piety, become ill when they see the unlawful invasion of the Holy Church by an alien power, or seek ways outside of it to satisfy their spiritual needs and are seduced either into Latinism or Lutheranism, ... then into schism” (22:44-47). The final words of the Saint sound like an alarm bell: “It’s scary to think!.. Scary, but true!” (27:47, 42). Sincere hierarchs cry out to Heaven (27:47). The Moscow Archpastor cries out with them and turns his call to the Monarch: “Sovereign! Protasov became a landowner over the bishops, all the bishops from that time became serf slaves of the chief prosecutor and his retinue. Do justice to the Holy Church... We are your subjects! We were neither criminals nor traitors to the royal power. Sir, the more this shameful yoke that weighs on the clergy takes root, the deeper the disorder will enter into the life of the people. Spare your subjects. Eliminate with your fatherly goodness the sad consequences of existing evil” (27:57). If we add to the above description of the century the expansion of the press - “although in one year you take all the bad things from secular magazines and combine them, then there will be such a stench against which it is difficult to find enough incense to drown it out” (23:53). “How our time is like the last!” - exclaims the Archpastor and prays: “When Baruch was yearning for his fatherland and for himself, the Lord said to him through Jeremiah: “Behold, even I have made the city, I will destroy.” What a terrible decision. Lord, don't ruin me. Smite those who deserve it, but keep Yours in Heaven. Shake the earth so that we awaken, so that we cry out to You, so that You hear our cry of repentance and so that you are not completely angry in Heaven” (23:54, 48-49). In addition to intercession - an appeal to the prudence of the emperor, the Moscow Hierarch gives other advice, indicates other methods of treating the ulcers of the age: “In the age of denunciations and sneaks,” false suspicions must be eliminated (8:66). “It would be careful to hesitate as little as possible about what is worth so as not to turn reconstruction into destruction” (23:46). “Living sacrifices are required, striving for themselves and for others in repentance, prayer and correction” (23:51). The best thing is prayer, and the holy Metropolitan calls: “With prayers let us pray to Him who rebukes the winds and the sea” (8:7). He calls and himself prays: “Lord, rebuke the waves and light up the clouds” (23:49). You might be interested in: