№40 (841) / October 27 '15
Conversations with the priest
In this topic:
Conversations with the priest
Priest Vasily Seliverstov: How to combine work and family
Conversations with the priest
Hieromonk Macarius (Markish): If the “taste for life” is lost...
Hello, today our guest is the rector of the Church in honor of Sophia the Wisdom of God on the Sofia Embankment in Moscow, Archpriest Vladimir Volgin.
Hello, father, bless our TV viewers.
- Hello. God bless.
The topic of today's program is “Confessor and clergy.” Who is a confessor?
– In a sense, I share the terms “spiritual father” and “spiritual father.” This is my personal understanding and maybe I'm wrong.
A confessor is a priest who constantly receives Confession from a given person. People go to church and regularly confess to one priest. They consider him their confessor because they ask him for advice and regularly open their souls to him. This is probably where clergy is limited.
A spiritual father is a kind of secret relationship between a spiritual child and a priest. This relationship is sometimes compared to marriage. We remember how the Apostle Paul speaks about marriage, that husband and wife are one flesh, and this mystery is great. That is, neither mother and son, nor father and daughter or son, but only husband and wife. Only here is a mysterious spiritual union concluded. A similar spiritual union is concluded between a priest whom a Christian chooses to be his spiritual father.
A spiritual father is a person who educates in the spirit of Christian Orthodox piety a person who surrenders himself to his will, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, enters into this relationship. How we were raised by our father and mother every day, and maybe our parents still advise us something from their great deep experience, and we listen to them. Moreover, we must listen to our spiritual father. The spiritual father must convey special experience associated with the narrow path to salvation. The spiritual father nurtures the human soul and nurses it. The spiritual father gives birth to a spiritual child into spiritual life and the spiritual world. This is the secret of the relationship between a spiritual child and a spiritual father.
Of course, when a person elects a spiritual father as his leader, he, first of all, must decide at all costs to do everything that the spiritual father advises him. He should see this obedience as the subject of his spiritual growth.
Let me give you an example from my own life. I very much obeyed my spiritual father, Archimandrite John (Krestyankin), and if I didn’t listen, it was because of my spiritual eclipse, when at some point I became spiritually blind. Moreover, I did not listen once, in what seemed to be the most insignificant matter, but then I realized that I had made a big mistake.
Between 40-45 years old I was very sick, I had very strong stomach pains, and sometimes my body couldn’t even accept liquid food and water. My mother kept asking our confessor for his blessing to do a thorough examination of my body in order to choose the right treatment. For a long time, the priest did not bless, but he was by no means against medicine and treated people who were not treated with great contrition. He said that the sin of refusing treatment is tantamount to the sin of suicide, he called on everyone to get treatment and was treated himself. And suddenly he didn’t bless me to go to the doctors.
I have a guess that the priest, in his insight, knew that as a result of the examination an operation would be proposed, and that the operation could not be allowed.
My mother and I arrived at the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery and expected to meet Father John. I couldn’t find a place for myself: I would like to lie down, but I can’t, I can’t sit, and I squatted in the corner, exhausted. Father John comes, talks to one of the visitors and asks me to run to the Archangel Cathedral, find a monk there, take something from him and bring it. Since I understood that in order to complete the assignment, I would have to make at least four difficult marches - the Archangel Cathedral is located at the top of the bowl in which the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery is located. I understood perfectly well that already on the second march my soul could fly away from my mortal body, but I could not help but fulfill the obedience given by my spiritual father.
I managed to reach the Archangel Cathedral, the soul, as you can see, remained in the body, but I did not find the monk and returned empty-handed. Father John just grinned into his mustache in response to my story. Perhaps some point of no return has been passed. It is surprising that from that moment my illness began to recede.
And after some time, Father John says that I must conduct a thorough examination of the body, and if an operation is required, do not hesitate and agree to carry it out. The examination was done, nothing was found, no surgery was required, and the painful symptoms practically disappeared.
Your obedience served to further your healing. In the Orthodox community there is a saying that obedience is higher than fasting and prayer. Is this true or is there some nuance?
– This saying is based on a correct and deep understanding of obedience. But from a human point of view, as in the example of Father John, who did not bless me for some time to go to the doctor with my pain, this is higher than fasting and prayer. Any obedience to the spiritual father, who knows the will of God, becomes higher than fasting and prayer.
This in no way demeans either fasting or prayer. We remember how in the Gospel, Christ’s disciples could not cast out the demon from the boy and asked Christ why they could not do this. He answered them: because you are of little faith, and this race is driven out by prayer and fasting. So fasting and prayer are the virtues that we should strive to fulfill.
Skill in performing fasts and constancy in them, of course, train a person’s soul so that a person, to some extent, still imperfect, can control his passions. In the worst case scenario, it will not allow you to fall into one passion or another.
Let me give you another example. Once Father John said to me to a venerable clergyman, also exhausted from illness, a celibate priest, not a monk, who had not eaten meat for 30 or 40 years: “You need to drink chicken broth, otherwise you will become so exhausted that you will die.
I saw the reaction of this venerable priest; he did not say anything, but there was a spark of amazement in his eyes. And the priest says: “Don’t be embarrassed.” We recommended one female schematizer to drink chicken broth, and she remained alive. So drink up and don't be embarrassed.
He began to use this broth, began to feel better, gained strength and is now quite stronger physically. This is what obedience means above fasting and prayer. For many decades he did not eat meat, and the priest gave him the blessing to drink broth until he recovered.
Can all issues be discussed with a confessor, for example, issues of personal life?
– The relationship between a spiritual child and a spiritual father should be extremely open, especially now. If Father John (Krestyankin) possessed the spirit of clairvoyance, and I knew many elders who possessed this spirit, then we, the modern generation of priests, are not clairvoyant. Of course, by the movement of God's grace, sometimes we say what pleases God and what hits the target. Sometimes you are even surprised by this. And people think that this priest is so perspicacious.
The Gospel describes the prophecy of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, the Antichrist, who sentenced Christ to death on the cross. He says: it is better for one person to die for the whole people than for the whole people to perish. The Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian writes that he pronounced this prophecy because he was high priest for this year. It would seem that he was a fighter against God, but by the grace of the high priesthood he uttered a prophecy.
So we sometimes pronounce a prophecy without realizing it. If the God-bearing elders, being carriers of the Holy Spirit, knew what they were saying, and the will of God was somehow communicated to them, then we will say and immediately forget. That is, the grace of God, through the grace of the priesthood, also acts through us, only it acts not within us, but through us. It is as if we are in some cases conductors of the will of God.
Because we are not perspicacious, in order to better see and understand a person’s spiritual difficulties, a person must open himself up to us. Like a patient who tells the doctor in detail where and how it hurts, he tries to tell about himself in as much detail as possible so that the doctor can make an objective diagnosis based on them. Likewise, we need to know the soul of a person so that this collaboration will be good and blessed in the life of that spiritual child who wants to succeed in spiritual life.
If, for example, a person at Confession says that he does not know how to pay off his mortgage loan, can the priest answer such a question?
– When a certain young man speaks to Christ about the property that he must divide, Christ answers him: who appointed me to divide someone else’s property? Christ came to teach the Kingdom of God, and not how to take out loans.
When spiritual children come to me with the question of whether it is worth taking out a mortgage loan, I answer that here you need to measure forty times and cut once. Because any loan is associated with interest, and you need to calculate your capabilities, strengths, and force majeure circumstances that may arise.
I remember that I started some business without asking for the blessing of Father John, who was our common spiritual father with my mother. After some time, I asked the question whether I should continue this business, to which he replied: “You yourself decided this, so why ask now?”
I would answer: “You took out a mortgage loan yourself, and didn’t ask me to take it or not to take it.” Why now should I answer what to do, due to the fact that you cannot pay this loan.
Some spiritual children ask to bless a vacation somewhere even though they have already bought tickets. This is such a funny and often repeated story. I sometimes even dissuade people who confuse days and fasts and take tickets during fasting. Christians should lead more focused lives. The elders did not even like it when spiritual children came to them during fasting, believing that the road scatters a person’s attention and spiritual life.
By what criteria to choose a spiritual father?
– Of course, a priest must lead a virtuous life, must strive to fulfill the commandments of God and love the Divine Liturgy, fulfill all the posts blessed by the Holy Orthodox Church.
Be not irritable, be sure to be generous, understand that there is no person without sin. I often turn to the Lord with the following prayer: “Lord, you commanded your disciples to forgive the sins of loved ones up to seventy times a day.” Trusting in Your endless mercy and love, I ask You, Lord, for forgiveness, perhaps for the millionth time, but Your mercy is inexhaustible.
Be merciful towards people as well as towards yourself.
We live in difficult times: on the one hand, we see a reviving Church. When the law on freedom of religion was passed in 1990, no one imagined that the Church would flourish so much. The spiritual land was scorched, over which a skating rink of cynical atheism passed more than once. People were afraid to profess their faith; they propagated that the Church was the lot of illiterate old men and women. And suddenly there was such a flourishing of Orthodoxy. The Church is now filled with people of science, creative intelligentsia, people occupying various positions in the hierarchy of Soviet power. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin considers the state-forming religion of Orthodoxy, and speaks about this publicly. We see children and youth receiving communion. This is an amazing, rapid flowering of Orthodoxy.
Until 1988, there were approximately 46 churches in Moscow, now there are about 1000. Priests now have more than one education: both higher secular and spiritual, they defend both candidate and doctoral dissertations. All this, of course, falls on the religious transformation of Russia.
On the other hand, we are spiritually feeble and weak. I pray for the repose of the 11 visionary elder monks whom I knew. From my point of view, these are holy people, and they are praying for us, who are going through a very difficult path to God here now. The Monk Sirach says: with the monk you will be reverend. And in another place he says: bad customs corrupt the soul of a person, and we live among bad customs. It’s good that priests like me spend the entire time from 6 a.m. to 12 at night only with matters related to the Church; it’s good that we communicate mainly with believers, and there is no free time left at all. Because as soon as there is a backlash, passions appear that incite something not good. We live in such a world, and even the priests who celebrate the Divine Liturgy and constantly partake of the Holy Mysteries feel this.
Thank God that we have such a lamp as the confessor of the Patriarch, Schema-Archimandrite Eli, but this is a different generation of elders. He who searches may not find anyone. Pachomius the Great spoke about the time in which we live in the 4th century. He said that in ancient times, that is, during the first four centuries, Christians not only fulfilled the commandments of God, but also imposed additional labors on themselves. We, says Pachomius the Great, only fulfill the commandments of God, and in recent times - he is already talking about us - Christians will not fulfill the commandments of God, but whoever endures to the end will be saved and receive greater crowns than we who fulfill the commandments of God. The brethren were upset: how could that be? Why is that? Pachomius replied: “If one of us falls now, several strong-willed men will gather around him, who with prayer will raise their brother from the fall.” But in recent times there is nothing like this even for thousands of kilometers.
We live in such difficult times. However, we do not need to be discouraged. In Soviet times, when we became priests, it was difficult to obtain a Bible printed by the Moscow Patriarchate. We bought one copy at a time by special order of the bishop. And now the Holy Scriptures are available to everyone. How many books of the Holy Fathers have been published? It seems to me that such diversity and such circulation of spiritual literature did not exist before the revolution. We are inundated with very good spiritual literature, although, of course, there are books with wrong views that we do not recommend reading.
When Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) spoke about these difficult times, he said: “Do not be embarrassed, dear brothers and sisters, then surround yourself with the holy fathers, read and draw from the holy fathers the experience of spiritual life.”
I do not recommend reading the desert-dwelling ascetics. You can, of course, read it to know, but under no circumstances should you apply it to your own life. We live in the world, we have different problems.
But there are other ascetics who turned, in fact, to the world: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, and Theophan the Recluse, and the Optina elders, and Father John of Kronstadt. From them we can emphasize very important answers to the questions that we pose in connection with our spiritual life and human life in general.
Despite the severity, we have a lifeline in the form of the holy fathers of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Question from a TV viewer from Yekaterinburg: Why in recent times most Orthodox people do not have spiritual fathers. Does a person's salvation depend on whether he has a spiritual father or not?
– The spiritual father conveys the spiritual experience through which he went. When a person advises what he has suffered through his spiritual experience, the power of the word becomes different.
On the other hand, regardless of whether we have a spiritual father or not, we can still be saved. We remember the rich young man who asked Christ how he could be saved. The answer was: fulfill the commandments of God. Those commandments that were given to the prophet Moses at Sinai. If we exactly fulfill God’s commandments, we will be saved.
Can a confessor impose his will on a spiritual child?
– There are such confessors. Perhaps at one time, when I was a young priest, I was zealous and sometimes wanted to impose my will. Then I grew up and realized that I was doing wrong.
After all, the Lord gave man freedom; this is a great gift that we should cherish and appreciate not only in ourselves, but also in another person.
I remember how all the elders, headed by Elder John Krestyankin for me, never imposed their will. They dealt with people's souls very carefully.
From my life I know how delicately Father John (Krestyankin) treated human freedom. But, of course, he never encouraged sin, he burned out sin in a person with his words. I think that when he denounced a person - of course, he did not do this in front of everyone - he was as if at the Last Judgment. But in all other circumstances of life, he always tried to rely on human free will.
Transcript: Yulia Podzolova
You can view or listen to the full version of the conversation on the website of the Soyuz TV channel.
In other rooms:
Job Volgin Vladimir Anatolyevich: vacancies. career, internship. training, practice
There are currently no open positions found. You can look at similar vacancies in other companies
- Installer (RUB 25,000) Education: incomplete secondary
Work experience: no experienceEmployment: n/a
Work schedule: full time
- Realtor-trainee (from RUB 60,000)
Education: secondary vocationalWork experience: no experience
Employment: full time
Work schedule: full time
- General construction foreman, foreman (from 25,000 to 30,000 rubles)
Education: n/aWork experience: 1-3 years
Employment: full time
Work schedule: full time
- Master of general construction works (Svobodny, Amur region) (RUB 70,000)
Education: secondary vocationalWork experience: 3-5 years
Employment: work on a rotational basis
Work schedule: full time
- Floor attendant (RUB 13,000)
Education: n/aWork experience: n/a
Employment: full time
Work schedule: shift schedule
- Sales manager of metal products (from RUB 30,000)
Education: n/aWork experience: 1-3 years
Employment: full time
Work schedule: full time
- Meat deboner (from RUB 1,800) Education: secondary vocational
Work experience: 1-3 yearsEmployment: full time
Work schedule: full time
- Assembly operator at a plant in Zavolzhye, Nizhny Novgorod region (from 30,000 to 32,000 rubles)
Education: n/aWork experience: no experience
Employment: work on a rotational basis
Work schedule: full time
- Hot shop cook (from 32,000 to 35,000 rubles)
Education: n/aWork experience: up to 1 year
Employment: full time
Work schedule: shift schedule
- Cashier in a cafe (from 22,000 to 30,000 rubles)
Education: secondary vocationalWork experience: up to 1 year
Employment: full time
Work schedule: full time
- Merchandiser at the Magnit store (Kyshtym) (from 24,400 to 29,500 rubles)
Education: secondary vocationalWork experience: 1-3 years
Employment: full time
Work schedule: shift schedule
- Plumbing store salesperson (from 12,000 to 30,000 rubles)
Education: n/aWork experience: n/a
Employment: full time
Work schedule: full time
View all vacancies
