Biography
In March 1956, in the village of Palatka, in the Magadan region, a future priest was born. The boy was given the name Andrei at birth. His parents were righteous Christians. It is interesting that Andrei Vladimirovich Lorgus came from a family of clergy.
His great-grandfather served in the local church before the revolution. During Stalin's repressions he was killed. He was shot in 1937. Little is known about Andrei's childhood. He, like all children, went to school. However, he was distinguished by the fact that from an early age he had a sincere love for the Lord. This is what his parents taught him.
Archpriest Andrey Lorgus
Despite all the obstacles and the family’s past, Andrei was able to enter Moscow State University and, of course, successfully graduate in 1982. Andrei Lorgus begins work in his own direction, but does not forget about God. He enters the theological seminary, and then graduates in 1992. Thus began his spiritual journey.
About Us
I was born on March 25, 1956 in the village. Tent of the Magadan region. My father, Lorgus Vadim Andreevich, already deceased, was a geologist, so I was born to him in Kolyma, where he then worked. Our family lived then in Khasyn, a village that still exists today. But Palatka, where I was born, was a transit camp with a hospital, the only one on the route. That’s why mother, Victoria Markovna Lorgus, was taken there. Now the Tent is gone. Soon we all returned to Moscow.
I entered school No. 155 in 1963, and then transferred to school No. 69 (No. 69, special English), and graduated from school in 1973 in Chukotka, at the Otrozhny mine, Magadan region. Where I myself worked (from the age of 16), my father and mother. I worked as a mechanic at a mine, a bulldozer operator, and a prospector in a gold mining artel.
Returning to Moscow in 1974, he worked at the Pravda printing house, as a laboratory assistant in a medical laboratory at the 1st MMI named after. Sechenov, a loader in a bakery.
Already while studying at Moscow State University, he continued to work as a loader in the commercial port of Anadyr to earn money for his family. I got married in 1977, before entering Moscow State University. My wife Galina. Masha was born to us in 1978, and Seryozha in 1985.
In 1977 he entered Moscow State University at the Faculty of Psychology, and graduated in 1982, Department of Engineering. From 1982 to 1988 he worked as a watchman, janitor, reader and altar boy at the Church of the Sign near the Rizhsky railway station. In 1987 he entered the Moscow Theological Seminary. In 1988, he was ordained to the rank of deacon and assigned to serve at the St. Nicholas-Kuznetsky Church in Moscow. In 1991, he was fired for staff reasons. Graduated from Moscow Theological Seminary in 1991. From 1989 to 1993 he worked in the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1993 (December 6, 1993) he was ordained to the priesthood and appointed to serve in the Ilyinsky Church in Obydensky Lane in Moscow, as well as the rector of the house church of Tryphon the Martyr at Psychoneurological Boarding School No. 30, as well as the rector of the Church of the Sovereign Icon under construction in Chertanovo. He was released from his final obedience a year later in 1994. In 1999, he was released from service at the Elijah-Obydensky Church and transferred as a supernumerary priest to the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. Since 1996, he resumed his teaching and scientific activities; he began teaching Orthodox anthropology at the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian. Since 1999, he has also taught Christian anthropology at Moscow State University, at the Faculty of Philosophy. In 2002, he was appointed dean of the St. John the Theologian Faculty of Psychology. The faculty was created from scratch and became one of the best in the RPU. It was the first department in the country dedicated to Christian psychology. On December 27, 2005, by a resolution of the Holy Synod, I was sent to the disposal of Archbishop Feofan of Berlin and Germany for appointment as rector of the parish of Blessed. Xenia, Rostock and the parish of the Great Martyr. Demetrius of Thessalonica, Schwerin. By resolution of the Holy Synod of October 6, 2006, he was released from the post of clergy of the Berlin and German Diocese for family reasons and placed at the disposal of His Holiness the Patriarch. According to the decree of His Holiness the Patriarch No. 8543 of December 28, 2006, he was appointed full-time priest of the Church of St. Nicholas of Myra (the “Life-Giving Source” of the icon of the Mother of God) in Novy Vagankovo, on the Three Mountains of Moscow.” I serve here to this day.
In 2010, the Institute of Christian Psychology opened, where I am the director. The founders of the Institute, besides me, are O.M. Krasnikova, V.V. Semenov, I.V. Kireev.
Spiritual path
A year passed, and Andrei Lorgus was ordained to the high rank of priest. He became an archpriest. His place of work was the Church of Elijah the Ordinary. However, the priest did not work there for long. Soon he was transferred to the Church of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God as rector.
Father Andrei continued his ministry in other churches. According to current data, he changed three more churches. At the moment, the priest works in the Church of St. Nicholas on Three Mountains, which is located in Moscow. He is popular with parishioners. Lorgus successfully combined his two educations. For his flock, he became a real confessor who would always listen, help and support.
Institute of Orthodox Psychology
A new and good thing was that Andrei Lorgus founded the Institute of Orthodox Psychology in 2009. This was the first educational institution of this type in Russia. In this place, anyone could receive additional education, and not always spiritual education. The priest himself has the post of rector there; he regularly gives lectures about Christianity and its connection with ordinary human life.
Interesting! The archpriest received several honorary awards for his service. Andrei Vladimirovich himself has appeared on television more than once. In addition, the priest provides online counseling. He says this is not just his job, but his service.
Confession is a risk zone for a pastor
Willingness to serve people is a readiness for the personality of the priest to meet the personality of the penitent. Everything begins with such a meeting - relationships, trust, spiritual path, spiritual guidance. But at the heart of it all is the special relationship of the priest to the person. This is the attitude of a teacher, father, friend, judge and defender at the same time. But priestly service is not limited to this, there is the main thing - and it is mysterious and inspired. To become the one who stands for the Church and God for a person, it is necessary to absorb into the soul and consciousness everything that has been accumulated by the spiritual experience of the fathers and traditions. However, the modern practice of life support (a term replacing “psychotherapy”) can also provide considerable assistance in this regard.
Shadow of healthy doubt
First of all, not everything that is said in confession can be taken on faith. People may not always be adequate. It is important to set yourself the task of separating what is relevant to confession from what is subject to doubt. But the priest cannot always quickly understand and sort out what is and what is not related to confession, what is reliable and what is not, but the priest always needs a shadow of healthy doubt. Not at all out of a presumption of mistrust of the penitent, but out of healthy caution. The task is to ask again, to make sure: we are talking about sin or we are talking about doubt, we are talking about some kind of dubious identification of a plan, an act, a thought. And this requires, of course, an attentive attitude towards the repentant. When this question comes from experience, then it is much easier, but it is very difficult for a novice priest to separate one from the other. That is, here healthy doubt is truly necessary.
It must be said that the questions themselves and the auxiliary conversation at confession are necessary in order to clarify, clarify whether it is a sin or not a sin, we are talking about an act that has been committed or not.
Without details
During confession, the priest may hear circumstances under which the sin was committed that may shock him. Therefore, it is necessary to ask the penitent to avoid details unless they are relevant to the specific qualification of the sin. First of all, this concerns the topic of carnal sins. There are physiological details that may or may not qualify as sin. The main criterion in such qualification is what is subject to a person’s control and what is not.
For example, a young man who suffers from mental illness says: “I try never to cough at work, but when I think about it, I immediately have the urge to cough. And I have to run out of the temple into the street to clear my throat, breathe, calm down, and then come back.” This is a purely psychosomatic phenomenon, and it does not have any sinful composition. This is not a sin, although a person may think so.
Another example is that a woman suffers from the fact that she often loudly passes air from her stomach. She also experiences psychosomatic nervous tension; she tries not to think about it during work in order to avoid an unpleasant moment. When she feels air pushing up her esophagus, she tries to fight it. The fight fails, the woman loses patience, begins to panic, the condition worsens, and she runs out of the temple. She believes that this is a sin and is very tormented by it. And I believe that in this case, the priest, again avoiding details, should always reassure the person and figure out whether this is a sin.
Sin is only something that a person knew about and could have avoided, but did not do so. And then there is a certain arbitrariness in this, a certain inattention to oneself. But when understanding this, you need to be very delicate. And only if there is a feeling that there is enough love, calmness and a benevolent attitude towards a person to clarify this, you can dive into these details. If not, it's best to avoid it.
Hysteria interferes with repentance
Often a priest encounters tears and hysterics during confession, which may turn out to be just defense mechanisms. In what cases are tears not repentance for sin, but a neurotic reaction? First of all, when a person habitually uses the victim model for himself in relationships with people, in our case in relationships with a priest. The victim model is a personal position in which a person perceives himself in advance as unhappy, offended, punished by someone, and believes that he is the victim of some kind of conspiracy or intrigue. Of course, more often these are women, but not only. Men also resort to this unconscious pattern of behavior. Victims have a lot of secondary benefits, as psychologists say. There is less demand on the victim, she is punished less, and the victim is treated with more compassion. Therefore, tears in this position can be a defense mechanism from the fear of punishment, from the fear of disrespect or contempt, but not tears of repentance.
If a priest perceives tears as a signal to console and justify a person, then he thereby moves the person away from confession and prevents him from focusing on repentance. If tears are a defense mechanism, then the best position of the priest is to exclude any spiritual participation in these tears. It is very important. Hysterics, of course, rarely happen in confession, but nevertheless, people prone to hysterical behavior can demonstrate such behavior. Hysteria can begin with sobbing, frequent sighs, rolling eyes, wringing hands, scratching them, and be accompanied by intermittent speech, memory loss, fainting, dizziness, and nausea. We need to understand the reason for this hysteria. A healthy hysteria always has some very important emotional reason. Either this is some kind of shock or panic. If this is a habitual hysterical behavior in confession for a person, then we can say that this is also in the nature of a defense mechanism. In this case, the best pragmatic position of the priest is to avoid emotional issues and try to move the penitent, push him to a drier presentation of events, without going into details.
These details are just what get in the way. If the penitent begins to shake himself emotionally, you can even go so far as to pause confession and say: “Please stand aside for now, wait, and then I will call you.” It will be enough to let two or three people through so that the confessor calms down, and the hysteria does not develop into its full clinical manifestation and subsides. Then you can continue the confession from the next point. In other words, it is easier to stop a hysteria than to calm it down later. And most importantly: hysteria does not push a person to repentance, does not give him a repentant mood, but, on the contrary, interferes.
Cynicism is one of the signs of priest burnout
When a person repents of serious sins - abortion, adultery, drunkenness, drug addiction, then maximum love is required from the priest at that moment. Love not in the sense that one must love the confessor as a friend, as a wife, as children, as a mother, but love in the form of unconditional benevolence and unconditional acceptance of the repentant person. If there is no such mood at this moment, then it is better for the priest to avoid confession in this state. And if there is no such possibility, then limit yourself to an almost formal attitude towards the fulfillment of your liturgical duty. Yes, this is an extreme case, but I think that for a priest such a formal performance of duty is possible if it is otherwise impossible to fulfill this duty. But a formal performance of the service is better than a cynical one.
Cynicism is one of those states that a priest should certainly avoid. Cynicism is already contempt, this is already pride before the confessor. This is truly an internal, heartfelt sin of the priest, which is disgusting to the Lord. Very often, cynicism is an element of the general syndrome that we call burnout. A “burnt out” priest is prone to cynicism, and because of this he lacks love, sympathy, compassion, empathy, co-presence here and now with a person. All those qualities that underlie priestly ministry.
Double liability for fear
It is very important to understand that during confession a person is at risk, that is, he removes all defense mechanisms and becomes, as it were, “undressed.” And indeed, a repentant person removes layer by layer of external guises, masks, social roles, so that his conscience, his true conscience, the one that evaluates sins and non-sins, can realize its voice and the person repents. At this moment, a person is very susceptible to affect, panic, a feeling of failure, and traumatization. Therefore, the words of a priest sometimes, even if spoken with love, can traumatize a person. For example, if a priest tells a penitent about the norm of penance and the attitude of the Church to his act, which lie at the basis of penitential practice, that is, those very strict canonical rules regarding grave sins. Or the priest can express condemnation of an act in an uncompromising and, therefore, partly harsh form, to which a person is not accustomed - due to his upbringing, due to his, perhaps, initial neophyte state in the Church. Since at this moment a person cannot defend himself and there is no one else to support him, the words of the priest and the situation of confession itself can be a very serious injury and trauma. Yes, if this happens, it is not necessarily the fault of the priest, but the fault of the priest will be if he did not worry about some kind of safety zone for the penitent in advance. Liturgical responsibility does not include the concept of a person’s safety in worship, including in confession, but conscience can also be helped by the priest thinking about how it feels now for a person standing here, in front of the cross and the Gospel, to feel at trial - his own trial , the court of the listening priest and, finally, the Court of the Lord.
Yes, repentance is a very difficult experience. But it’s not worth adding another mental wound to this if there is no urgent need for it. What could be the need for this? It can only happen if a person refuses to accept sin for sin, persists in this, and perhaps the priest feels that the penitent does not want to admit the sin he has committed and all its gravity. I know that some priests, feeling unrepentant stubbornness and stubbornness, petrified insensibility, proceed to intimidate a person. And they achieve quite a lot of success in this, because they certainly have experience in this. It is enough to simply bring together the words of the Gospel and the canons of the Church, arrange them in a certain scheme, and this can frighten anyone. I saw how government officials get scared during confession, how the police get scared, how bandits get scared, how notorious alcoholics and debauchees get scared if only the priest unfolds his repentant sermon in front of them. Yes, sometimes a threatening sermon is important, but the responsibility for this fear must be special and double. And we, priests, will be responsible before the Lord for this.
Credit of trust
It is important to understand that the penitent has a certain trust in the priest. This trust appears to be a precondition with which a person comes. That is, a person comes to you, he chose you. Maybe it was a coincidence, he thinks, maybe he chose from several priests he had observed for some time. Anyway, he approached you. Before this, he prepared, listened to his conscience, maybe argued with it for a long time, thought about it, maybe he was disingenuous, and maybe he deeply repented in a moment of sincerity. One way or another, having come and begun confession before Christ in your presence, the penitent has done a lot of work, which includes the fact that he is here and now standing before you. This is his credit of trust, but this credit is not endless. Therefore, a person will not always tolerate mistakes, indifference, cynicism, misunderstanding or even a reluctance to understand. This credit can be used in one confession. But it is important to remember that this trust is a real internal resource of the person with whom he comes to the priest.
Prohibited questions
One of the most difficult topics in confession is the topic of carnal sins: infidelity, affairs outside of marriage, etc. It requires special delicacy. It is very important to understand that the temptation for the priest here is great. The priest is a man, and therefore any confession of women on this topic is always a super-tense meeting. It is very important to remember that a woman coming to confession is a woman coming to a man, and what she would never want to tell anyone, she tells the priest. In order for this confession to be a confession before God, it is important for the priest to become the guardian of his own heart in order to prevent temptation from the woman’s sincerity.
What are the priest's temptations here? The very first and most superficial thing is curiosity. Delve into the details of the sins of a woman, girl, girl or child. The best position of the priest here is a clear boundary, which should be immediately defined, without allowing either himself or the repentant woman to get into details. If a woman says: “I repent of having committed some carnal excesses,” that is enough. If it's cheating on your husband, then it's cheating on your husband. How, when, with whom, how much are prohibited questions. It is quite possible that a young priest, a young man, will be tempted to ask one of these questions. Perhaps at this moment it will seem to him that this is very important, but this is the wrong way. The priest must not only be extremely careful, but also hold his tongue and accept confession, and not understand what is happening to the woman. And it's none of his business.
If a man is confessing, then in this case, of course, the temptation is fundamentally different and much less. But you need to understand that a man’s stories also need to be treated with special caution. For many men, stories about their sins can be bravado, a desire to show how highly a man places himself in this sense. Even if he repents, he can tell with some inner contentment that he is a ladies' man and a Casanova. What is required here, perhaps, is more clarity, rigor, and dryness—without additional questioning. Yes, of course, men are more careful, strict and, as a rule, taciturn in confession. Women can also be taciturn, because they are very ashamed to tell a male priest about their sins, but there are some neurotic states when a woman strives for this verbosity and wants to tell details. This must be stopped right away and said that there is no place for details and any other clarifications here. Only repentance and prayer.
Cross Confessions
There are several other temptations that a young priest may encounter. These are joint confessions or cross confessions, when husband and wife, man and woman come to the same priest, try to agree on the topic of their confession with each other and check how well the priest matches their plan, whether they managed to draw the priest into this conversation. This must be resisted in every possible way and such situations must be avoided. Confidentiality concerns not only the priest, it also concerns those confessing, therefore there can be no transition of events from one to another. The priest cannot tell the husband anything about his wife’s confession, and the wife nothing about her husband’s confession. This situation should not be allowed, even if this couple is not yet in a marital relationship.
The imposition of penances on carnal themes is entirely on the conscience of the priest. In today's situation, when a huge number of young couples live with each other, changing partners without any kind of marriage contract, registration or wedding, the conscience of the priest is constantly challenged.
However, one should be aware that the moral norms of Christianity, reflected including in the church canons, are enduring, despite the many violators.
ZhMP
