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We must, before moving on to the study of traditional questions of pastoral theology, explain the underlying principles which must become the basis of pastoral service, and which must be built upon in complete agreement with the fundamental givens of the Orthodox worldview. The priesthood in and of itself assumes the existence of a certain environment. To be a pastor in the desert and in a hermitage is impossible. The secluded life is a special form of service to God, but there is no place in it for pastoral activity, which crosses into everyday life and the society of people. We must explain, therefore, what attitude a future pastor should have toward this world and towards man. We must determine the relationship of man to the world. A pastor must correctly appraise this world and society, which attracts man to the world and frequently distracts him from God.

The first question that arises before us is: "What is the world?"

We must recognize from the beginning that this term is unclear, and is frequently ambiguous in theological literature. The word "world," in addition to its direct meaning, is used both in theology and in catechism with an understood ascetic meaning. Here we will turn first to this second sense of "world" in its spiritual and moral understanding, and later will discuss the world in its literal sense.

Asceticism understands the word "world" as a certain state of our soul. This "world" is not that which lies outside of a man, but rather is in himself. The Scriptures and all patristic literature teach us the same. The writings of St. John especially clearly express this attitude of the Christian mind: "the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19). "The world knew him (God) not" (John1:10; 17:25). The Apostle Paul adds: the world by wisdom knew not God (1 Cor. 1:21). Moreover, "the world hates God and Christ" (John 7:7; 15:18-19). From this we must conclude: it is not possible to love the world and God (1 John 2:15). Therefore the pessimistic view on this world is understandable: "And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever" (1 John 2:17). The Old Testament phrase comes to the mind: "vanity of vanities; all is vanity" (Eccl. 1:2). Everything passes, everything it is perishable, and all aspirations of the sons of man are only a dream…

If we review pastoral testimonies, then "the world" in their understanding is a total combination of the forces and aspirations around man, hostile to God and to that which is good. The entire world lies in the evil; it is totally poisoned and infected by sin. However, we should not reach any rash conclusion. Only the shell of this world is sinful. The Fathers see evil not in the essence of the world and its nature, but in what surrounds and envelops it. The world by itself is not wicked, but it lies in wickedness.

Here are several fragments of patristic works, written by the strictest Fathers who, it would seem, must be disposed more irreconcilably to the material. Saint Isaac the Syrian writes: "The world is the collective name, which consists of the enumerated passions. The world is the carnal life and flesh philosophy" (words 2 and 85Abba Isaiah the Wanderer teaches: "The world is the space for sin, the arena for affectations; it is the fulfillment of its carnal desires; this is the thought that you will always be in this life. The world is the care about ones body more than ones soul. The world is the concern about that which one day you will leave" (the Philocalia, Vol.1, p.372). St. Mark the Ascetic adds to this: "because of the passions we received the commandment is neither to love the world, nor that what is in it. But not in the sense that we should hate the creations of God in a foolhardy manner; rather, we must cut off occasion for the passions (the Philocalia 1, p.529). Theolipt of Philadelphia expresses that as follows: "I call the world love for the sensual things and for the flesh" (the Philocalia 5, 176).

From the above it is clear that in the language of Orthodox asceticism the "world" indicates not nature, the empirical world, or creations of God, but a certain category of negative spirituality. Creation is not in and of itself suspect. There are many stories about the love of the ascetics for a creature, for nature and beasts. The joyful acceptance of a creature with love and great respect is characteristic of the Orthodox asceticism.

This attitude and the acceptance of the physical world introduce an important amendment to how we use the word "world." "The world" indicates not only the combination of passions and the arena of sin, but first off, God’s creation, and we must remember that this creation is "very good." The physical world is the projection of the other, non-physical plan, according to which the Creator made this cosmos, which surrounds us. The richest Greek language was satisfied by on and the same term "cosmos" for the designation of the "world" and the "beauty." Creation, even the fallen creation, is of Divine origin. Ideas about the world already existed in the God’s plan for the world "before the mountains came to be." This Divine structure of the world, the mapping in it of the other, not empirical, reality gives the richest material for the so-called "symbolic realism" of the Holy fathers, and from there the abundant means for plunging into oneself and into the contemplation of this world. Only a creature of Divine origin is capable of being blessed and changed. If the world were evil in and of itself, then this would indicate that it is the creation of an evil source. But evil, as St. Maximos the Confessor teaches, "is not in the nature of creation, but in its unreasonable and sinful use."

We must draw from Orthodox dogmatic theology completely full and sober conclusions. We must cease to suspect that, what it is not suspect by God, and which God has not disdained. It is not possible to confess the Chalcedon symbol about the incarnation of God dogmatically and at the same time to be a Manichean, a Bogomil, or eunuch in life and in worldview. Orthodoxy conquered the Monophysites dogmatically, but, in the correct words of a western historian, it did not overcome certain "psychological monophysitism." The latter, being the disdain of man and world as the creation of God, very finely and strongly envelops asceticism, liturgy, the way of life and ethics of a Christian. A pastor must first of all understand this and to oppose this psychological monophysitism in every possible way. We must always keep in mind the decisions of the Council of Hague, which condemn immoderate asceticism and false-pious puritanism, which have no place in a sober Orthodox world view. This must become the cosmological foundation of pastoral service.

Several excellent thoughts of the writers and spiritual persons contemporary to us can explain the above. Thus, for instance, the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain ("Humanisme integral," p.p. 113-118) ingeniously distinguishes three large heresies in the view on the world in the history of thought. 1. "Satanocratic," which considers that the world is entirely evil by itself, that it is doomed and immune to the changing light of the Christianity." The entire Reformation easily adheres to this, especially Bartianism, our sectarianism, some branches of the Old Believers, and "netovshchina." 2. The "theocratic" heresy, which considers that the world can become the Reign of God, that this latter can be fulfilled in the limits of this historical epoch. This is the temptation of Byzantium and the same temptation of the Papacy to a considerable extent). 3. The "anthropocentric humanism" of the type of August Comte's philosophy. This is the already reversed picture, since here is present "laization" of the Reign of God. The world is and must be only the field of man’ activity. God must be banished from it. This, in other words, is utopia of the pure humanism.

In confirmation of the said above and different approaches to the "world" and about the danger to judge "the world and what is in it," it is appropriate to give a quotation from the traveler’s diary of one pilgrim of The Holy Mountain, Mt. Athos, from the middle of the past century (Archimandrite Anthony Kapustin). "In the customary complaint of the monks about the world there is something logically unclear. For a monastery of the holy mountain, for example, the world begins behind the isthmus; for the celliots — the monastery is already the world; to a recluse — the cell is the world; for the hermits — the world is everything, behind the wall of their caves. However, what is, therefore, the world? The world is the human society. But human society is a human being himself. However, where one can escape from him?"

One of the best Russian women, abbess Ekaterina (Ephimovskaya), the founder and dean of the Lesninsky monastery (which is in Kholmshchina), who valued and loved literature, life and people, used to repeat: "It is necessary not only to escape from the "world," but also to save the world."

Thinking of the ideological foundations of being a priest, we must answer the second of the presented questions. A pastor must also know what his attitude to man should be.

A pastorologist expects as numerous difficulties in these apologetic prerequisites of pastoral service, as is described in the first question. Here it is much more dangerous than in the first case to yield to the temptation of simplification of the task and to solve it optimistically and primitively.

Anthropology is the science of man; it is the part of the philosophical system and has somehow a biological aftertaste, because science approaches man predominantly from the point of view of the naturalistic, treating him as an aggregate of cells, tissues, nerves and as the complex ball of different physiological processes. "Science," in the words of Nesmelov, "can examine man only as the quarry for sepulchral worms." Therefore, for the philosopher and theologian it is appropriate to raise the question not about the science, but about the mystery of man. Man is more likely a mysterious hieroglyph, which requires attentive, thoughtful and benevolent treatment in each individual case. The Delphian expression "get to know oneself" has an eternal value and application. To base it logically and rationally is frequently impossible. It is very easy to be tangled in human paradoxes, and it is dangerous and naive to make quick judgments about this or that act of a person.

Man belongs to the two worlds and two plans of existence: spiritual and physical. He is not only the simple thing of the physical world, to which he belongs with the body and the entire complex system of physiological processes, which were mentioned. By his spirit and personality he denies this world, he is not subordinated to the obligation and compulsion of its inexorable laws. He feels oppressed within the tight frameworks of determinism, he escapes from them. He protests against these laws of nature by means of his freedom, his personality, and by his thirst for creation. A human is a contradiction between the available content of life and its ideal application. The mystery of man lies in the understanding of this contradiction. The goal, which any person finds in life, cannot be reached easily and optimistically. The achievement of this goal in the world of natural necessity stands before the inevitable acknowledgement of the impossibility to reach this goal.

The ideal, spiritual side of man interests the philosopher, theologian and pastor most of all. All those difficult-to-solve knots, which compose the internal riddle of man, belong to this side. Let us attempt to outline some important of them, at least.

1. Personality. In this field, the Orthodox religion most completely disclosed this unique source, placed in man, who is different from any other persons. Personality was not revealed in the ancient pagan world. Hellenic thought, raised to the apexes of philosophical consciousness, did not even find the name for personality, which aroused the sharp interest in the period of those theological disputes, conducted around the Trinitarian and the Christological dogmas. Orthodoxy proved the Divine origin of the personality. The Trinitarian disputes gave a theological explanation for the human, recognizing the Person, Hypostasis, in God. The Greek language in the creations of its highest philosophical minds — Plato and Plotinus — was satisfied by the pronoun ekastos "each," characterizing the term o ekastos, thus giving to it exact individuality. Nevertheless, this remained to be only a pronoun, something, that was "instead of the name." Only the theological concept of the "Hypostases," as of the independent "existence in itself," was capable of filling that void in the language, which the contemporary dictionary replaces with the word "personality." This is not only the "individual," as the part of mankind, as the creation of the biological ancestral process or something mortal like a number of the naturalistic series, not one-piece, but somehow completely repeated. Personality is an imprint of God, His creation, but not the creation of a kind. Personality is spiritual and belongs to the spiritual world first of all. This is the highest value of the spiritual existence.

All these differences between the individual and the personality, so vividly described in the philosophy of Berdyaev, serve to augment his observation on the fact that "man is not a fractional part of the world, but in him is the whole puzzle and solution" ("On the Purpose of Man," p. 50). The human personality is not a product of society, of the natural world or even of the birth and family. Each person is a direct creation of God in the spiritual sense. Therefore man does not depend on birth or the world in his origin. The human spirit is higher and wider, and the main thing, before birth, society, and world. These collaborations do not give birth to the spirit of man; therefore this spirit is not the part of the mentioned "birth, society and world." On the contrary, it envelops them, accepts or rejects them. Birth and society consist of human individuals, but the spirit of man, his personality is not the component part of them. The human spirit can depend on them, in the way it wants to, but it is neither the property of these public organisms, nor their slave. Personality is higher than society, before it and more important. Furthermore, every personality is unique and cannot be replaced by another "similar" personality. A "similar" personality does not exist. There exist "similar" impressions, imprints, serial numbers, like production of some machine, but each personality, however many billions of them the historical process gives birth to, is unique. A pastor must know this, take this into account, and always remember it.

2. Freedom. Man reveals his Divine origin in this quality as well. The reflection of Divine freedom rests in man. All the other creatures, composed of race, geneses, societies, herds, flocks, etc., are subordinated, whether they wish it or not, following natural laws, by which these groups are arranged and live; however, man can posess the desire to rise against these laws of the natural existence (for example: monasticism) or be subordinated to them more or less implicitly. It is always possible for man, due to his Heavenly origin and the reflection of the Divine freedom in him, not to accept this nature and its laws. It is possible for man not go with the society and race; he can contradict them, in a way that bees or ants or animals cannot.

But, speaking about the man’s freedom, first we must remember well that theology speaks not about political freedom, for which people fight at the speaker’s platforms and which lives in the dreams of a young insurgent in the period of the "storm and impulses." The only human freedom which can interest a thinking creature, and especially a theologian, is spiritual freedom. Its purpose is not in social or political independence, but in the release of the human spirit from everything that reduces it and deprives of Divine foundation. This freedom is not the despotism that anarchists and insurgents dream of, this is not tyranny, but the release of ones spirit from everything that can lower its primacy and replace this primacy with other, non-spiritual values. This freedom is insubordination to the authority of the evil, sin, mundane or other temptations, but this is also the freedom from the absolute power of the birth and society over the religious independence of man. The primacy of freedom is perhaps the feeling most deeply placed in man, but at the same time, the most paradoxical.

A) First of all, man mayt have no idea of freedom at all, since this concept is a rather complex product of the development of thought, however he cannot have any consciousnesses of freedom, because actually he acts only in the name of this consciousness.

B) Furthermore, as unconditional the primacy of freedom above all the others in man is (feeling of a kind, family, society, etc.), this freedom is given to man by force. Man is not asked at his birth, if he desires to be born having a free spirit, or being a slave or a part of some herd or beehive and so forth. Our freedom is given to us without our free will. This perhaps is the largest paradox of freedom.

C) Freedom, in spite of the way that all those, who dream about it, desire to acquire it, is at the same time such a big burden, — since it is always connected with the understanding of responsibility, — that man easily rejects it. Dostoyevsky, that same subtle inquisitors of souls, understood that love of patronizing through the "dictatorship of the conscience," which can be easily named the elder’s teaching, although it has nothing in common with real elders. A pastor must know and understand this.

3. The Moral Dignity of man is also one of the problems of Christian anthropology, which is subject to no simplification, no matter how tempting these simplifications may be. The tendency towards holiness and purity belongs to man as to the image of God, but at the same time, the entire life experience teaches the impossibility of reaching this ideal. We have melancholy towards our celestial native land inside, melancholy about the lost paradise, and at the same time the burden of enormous gravity lies in us, and draws us down. No one expresses this better than Apostle Paul did in his study of the two laws (chapter 7 of Epistles to the Romans), — the law of the mind and the law of the flesh within us. Those words, constantly resounding inside as a reproach, are the experience not only of his life, but also of the whole of humanity, which tries to fulfill the law of the mind: "I do not what I want, but what I hate."

The entire Christian asceticism strives to overcome this contradiction of the two laws and to fulfill the ideal of the moral purity. But here dangerous underwater stones are waiting for a simple layman or monk, and for their leader, the pastor, in the same manner. Asceticism must not be reduced only to the negative. This means that if monasticism can be acknowledged as the highest moral aspiration of the Christian spirit (that does not completely mean that the monks are always ideal Christians), then this aspiration fences itself by the three known precepts of the monastic life: benevolence, obedience and abstention. This indicates: not to have ones own property, not to get married, not to give in to any bodily pleasures and not to have ones own will. However, these four "nots" cannot be treated as the ideal spiritual practice for all Christians, since they by themselves require only nonperformance. This relates only to the first part of the verse of the psalm: "keep thyself from evil" but leaves the second disregarded: "and do good." Man is called to do good things; moreover making good things is not only the product of some moral values. Man is commanded to be a creator, who bears the image of the Creator, Who made him. Therefore, man must, here on earth, in obedience to his Creator, produce all kinds of good both in the sphere of the moral virtues and in the spiritual, artistic, scientific world. This is exactly how the words of the Bible "on the image and similarity" were seen by the most thoughtful theologians among the writers of the antiquity: St. Gregory of Nyssa, blessed Theodoret, Basil the Selevcian, St. Anastasias of Sinai, St. Photius of Constantinople, St. John Damascene, and St.Gregory Palamas.

Man must create good, and not just abstain from doing evil. In his activity, a human rises above the usual imitation. He does not copy as a monkey does, but creates things of value to the spiritual world, science, beauty, thought and so forth, which did not exist before. In the area of such creation, a pastor must be especially wise and thoughtful, since in this he has rich educational and healing means for the pastoral care of souls.

We find a precise weapon for fighting many temptations in the creative instinct placed in man. He can use the innate forces of creation to do evil and these can lead him to their incorrect application, but they can turn out to be the rescue, a means for the transformation of his bad instincts and impulses, directed towards the lowly. The "sublimation" of the forces resting in us, which the contemporary psychoanalysis knows about, is especially applicable here. In man — the slave of passions and vices — a pastor can wake up the spirit of a creator and artist and save him from despondency and hopelessness.

Without speaker longer on the questions presented here, it is possible to say that the puzzle of man, about which the Orthodox thinker Nesmelov, the Roman Catholic psychologist Johan Klug and the Protestant theologian Emil Brunner wrote, cannot to be limited by a pastor only by the moral categories of good and evil, holiness and sin, alone, but it passes very frequently to the sphere of suffering and tragedies, conflicts and paradoxes. Plotinus said in antiquity: "But indeed man is not harmonic," — and the pastor who desires to graze his herd wisely and save it from all contemporary dangers and paradoxes should understand this. It is not possible to define a man as a sinner or a righteous man, since this mysterious hieroglyph contains such things as fall outside the boundaries of the moral theology, and require thoughtful Christian moral psychoanalysis.

On pastoral serivce in general.

The above is the ideological foundation for pastoral service. Let us recall briefly this prerequisite for the pastoral guidance that takes place not in the desert, but in the world, and among people.

The world, as the unit, hostile to God and to that which is good, is a sphere lying in the evil, but the world as the empirical creation is not at all evil by itself. Man, even if fallen, nevertheless is the image of God: "I am the image of Thine inexpressible glory, even though I bear the scars of transgressions." In the depths of the human soul, there can be whirlpools of sin, but man nevertheless remains the dear creation of God, which the pastor cannot but love, as he cannot but love the world — the empirical creation.

The pastoral activity, feeding ("paseniye" in Russian which philologically approaches the word "salvation" — "spaseniye") is the internal construction of the Reign of God in man. This construction of the Reign of Christ, of the new Christian creature, is, of course, at the same time the struggle with the reign of the evil, with the forces of the evil in us. But good and evil are incomprehensible without freedom, about which was mentioned before. The good to which a pastor calls is only the free good. Good which is forced is not the good anymore. Good is only that, which is not distorted by evil, violence, coercion, and threats with infernal tortures. In good imposed by feelings of fear is easily seen the reflection of the bonfires of the inquisition.

These are the ideological prerequisites of the pastoral service. This service requires a very attentive attitude to itself, within its internal content. From a historical approach, it is clear that Orthodox Christian pastorhood differs qualitatively from the non-Christian types of the priestly service.

In paganism, the model of the cult priesthood rules. A cult priest, shaman, hierophant appears to be the mediator between man and the deity. He makes sacrifice, adjures, pleases the angered god, he bewitches human diseases, protects man from an evil fate. On the highest points of the heathen religious consciousness, where man rises to the level of the primitive religious experiences, a mystical religious feeling awakens. Here the leader of man in the sphere of mysterious revelations appears in the clergyman more strongly, in the appearance of religious knowledge, inaccessible to all people. A mystic, hierophant penetrates into those spheres, where there is no access to a common person or cult priest. In the mysteries, at the apexes of the pre-Christian religious consciousness, a melancholy about the authentic spirituality appears, but the religion of the masses cannot bestow it. The exoteric and esotery are typical of the paganism. In the mystical cults, both the priesthood and the initiated feel the approximation of the authentic Revelation more strongly and long for it. However, very small requirements for the spiritual leadership are applied to a priest. The concept of pastoral service yet did not mature in the paganism.

The priestly service is esteemed considerably higher in the Old Testament. Especially after the captivity of Israel, the priesthood, together with the priestly code, is connected with a number of responsibilities unknown to the paganism or only partly characteristic of its class of the cult priests. An Old Testament priest appears not only as a person who makes sacrifice; he is a judge, a teacher, and sometimes also a ruler. The Old Testament inherited the better elaboration of ethical standards. The most perfect moral code before Christ's advent was found precisely in the biblical priest. The Old Testament works out the concept of holiness, which other religions of the ancient world lack. The Biblical religious ideal gave the specific concept of righteousness, which is expressed in the execution of the legal orders. The ethics of law, of the standard, predominated in the Old Testament consciousness. It rose above the other ethical ideas of the antiquity, but it bore infirmity in itself as well. The law, as the sum of the commandments, which must be fulfilled for the justification, did not give strength for the performance of these commandments by itself. More than that, the law took away man’s hope, constantly pointing at his infirmity, imperfection and non-righteousness. "The infirmity of the law" was the theme of Apostle Paul’s sermon. The infirmity of man could not be healed by the infirmity of the law. Man remained the same distance from God, being unrighteous, together with existence of the ideal moral law. The law did not give power for the sanctification of the human spirit; it did not report the means for the achievement of that holiness, which it so clearly indicated.

The law taught good things, it revealed the deficiency of the virtues, but it also took away hope from man, who searched for this good, but who succumbed under the burden of the orders of the same law. Israel did not know any compassion to the sinner. The prophet Elias, who ardently loved God with perfect love, not only hated sin, but also hated the sinner. He burnt the prophets of Jezebel, was not merciful to creatures and people, he gave orders to elements and even to death, but did not feel mercy for those who had fallen.

The priesthood of the Old Testament is feebly before God and does not bring comfort to man the sinner. There are plenty of rules for rabbis about the uncleanliness of animals, andof man in different cases of his life, which generate the detailed code of various ablutions, purifications, pleasing, burnt offerings, etc., but they cannot draw man closer to God or God to the people. The strict concept of being chosen, circumcision as the sign of agreement with God, alienation from the other nations — here is that sphere of the religious- moral ideas, in which acts a priest of the Old Testament. All Israel consists of people and sons of God, but the notion about the adoption of man as the creation of God did not exist in the religion of the ancient Israelites. Only the blessedness of the New Testament brought a new revelation about the priesthood and present pastoral service to the people. Christ the Savior’s Gospel brought a new doctrine about man’s acceptance by God. Any person is a child of God and can call God "Father." The sermon of the apostles gave man hope to take Communion of the Divine nature, what then in the theology of St. Athanasius, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, Maxim the Confessor, Simeon New Theologian and Palama will develop into the final doctrine of similarity to God, the beginnings and roots of which go back to Plato and Plotinus. The Gospel gave the belief that we are new creatures in Christ. The act of God becoming man and the ascension of our nature above the angelic ranks inspires man in his Christian self-consciousness. The Christian humanism, contrary to pagan and revolutionary humanism, ennobles the concept of man in comparison with the heathen consciousness and that of Old Testament Israel. The edges, insurmountable for the heathens and the Israelites, are smoothed out with Christ. In the Realm of the Gospel, there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor male nor female, nor barbarian or Scythian (Gal 3:26-28). Christianity implies the joyful cosmos understanding, i.e., the full concept of the world, creature, and nature and, of course, man, this best creation of God, His image.

Therefore, both the priesthood and Christ's pastoral service substantially, qualitatively differ from the priesthood of the pagans and of Judaic Levites. A Priest of Christ is the Builder of Mysteries, the builder of the Body of Chris. He is called, and the others are called through him, to create the new Reign of Grace.

The priest of Christ is called to the sermon of adoption; to gathering together those separated sons of God, to the transformation of the world and of man. It is clear that not the perfection of the Evangelical morals or elaboration of the dogmatic truths compose the very important part of the Christianity. Most important is the God Man himself. "The great mystery of piety," the mystery of God, manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16) lies in the basis of the Christian sermon, in our Eucharistic life, in our asceticism of becoming God-like, in our mysticism. God is not only the initial reason of the world and man, but also their final goal. The "Godly-material process" about which Vladimir Solovyev wrote in his time ("The Justification of the Good," p. 196), is the sermon of the world perfection, about which only the One Who is the Creator of this world dared to teach. This determines the attitude of a Christian pastor towards the world and toward man, as was discussed in the previous chapter.

Man, in the company of whom the pastor is called to work, was and will be, in spite of all his sins and falls, — the dear creation of God. Therefore, an Orthodox pastor be encouraged faith in humanity, in its predestination for Communion of the Human God, Who relates to people by flesh, in the eternal council, through the words of St. Simeon the New Theologian (58-th Hymn).

Therefore, the chief pastoral means must be good news about salvation, the induction of faith in this salvation and sanctity, but not intimidation by mentioning infernal tortures. In his heart, a pastor must predetermine people to these tortures less, and must not dare to judge impudently.

Healing the evil in the world and man with the goodness and love must be more characteristic of pastoral activity than exposure and judgment. A pastor should have more care for salvation, than anticipation of the Dread Judgment and censure of all "heretics," sinners, and those thinking differently. He must remember, thinking of the entire history of saints that a standard type for a righteous man and for a sinner does not exist at all: falls are possible from the apexes of holiness; repentance and revival are always possible in those depths of failure which seem hopeless to us. First, a pastor must especially remember that freedom reigns over the moral fate of man. In freedom there is always the danger of evil and sin, but freedom includes goodness, which will win. Christianity is the good news of freedom, which we must distinguish in essence from the preaching of revolutionary freedom, which is political and rebellious. This is freedom of spirit. Therefore, a pastor must worry a little less about the absolute character of his authority, but more about the persuasiveness of his truth. The criterion of the truth is in the truth itself. Forcing authority is not characteristic of Orthodoxy. A pastor must call people to the free acceptance of the truth, to personal subjugation to the burden and yoke of the Christian freedom.

In his "Advice to the Celibates" (53) Evagrius, monk says: "God created the sky and the earth and remembers about them. There is no angel, who could not have committed a sin; and there is no demon, evil according to the nature. Both of them God created with free will" (the Philocalia, volume 1, p. 645).

Pastoral Vocation.

In courses on pastoral theology, the question of pastoral vocation usually receives sufficient attention, but not everyone explains it equally. It is completely clear that a vocation to any service is an important guarantee for its fruitful attainment. Love for that work which a man is going to do determines his relation to his work. To perform this service with coercion and without any attraction to it previously consigns this matter to futility and death. However, during his ordination a priest is entrusted, in a very mysterious and beneficial way, a special gift, or the "pledge to be held to account for it at the second and dread coming of our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ." (From the word after the hierotonia while a new priest is being given the particle of St. Lamb).

In the Holy Scripture of the both Testaments, a lot is said about vocation in general. The service of the prophets or apostles is specified with the special call from above. This service is not something that one is taken up into arbitrarily, but is given by the Heavenly High priest to the definitely chosen persons, and not to any random person. The voice of the special predestination to this service is heard in the vocation. In this question the emphasis must be, however, set at that person or event, which either can be acknowledged as vocation or which does not satisfy to this requirement. Can everything that seems to be a vocation be considered as such?

In the Old Testament the Lord predetermines His prophet to the prophetic service by such words: " Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak." (Jer. 1:5-7). God also called Abraham and blessed him, and increased him. (Is 51:2), — about which Apostle Paul writes in the Epistles to the Romans (chapter 4, and Hebr. 11:8). From the wealth of people following Him, God calls 12 disciples, and then 70. The Holy Spirit orders: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." (The Acts. 13:2). The same Saul, who became Paul, can boldly speak of his holy vocation (2 Timothy 13:9) — "not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." He himself writes the signature: "Paul, called to be an apostle" (Rom., 1 Cor.) and even "Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ" (Gal.).

This thought of Apostle Paul in the first Epistles to Timothy (3:1) is rather interesting: "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work." In translation, these words of the Apostle sound much feebler and less significant than in the Greek original. In Russian both times is used the word "desire"; in the Slavonic - in the first case "he wants," and secondly "desires," which in the essence sounds almost equal. In the Latin translation the same verb: "desiderat" is used. The French translation introduces a certain difference, which does not transmit, however, the central idea of the original: "si quelqu'un aspire a etre eveque, il desir une charge excellante." The English and German verbs do not make any distinction, preserving the verb "desire" and "begehren," the Greek original not only uses different verbs, but their content is stronger and of more weight in the both cases. "Who desires episcopacy" — in Greek it sounds oregete — which literally means "has a taste for episcopacy," "has appetite to episcopacy." In the Modern Greek language, orexis directly means "appetite." Before the dinner, wishing the good appetite, a host says kalin orexin. In the second case, the Apostle says: epithimi, which in the Slavonic should be translated as "desires fervently" since the word epithimia indicates not simply a desire, but a strong desire, longing. In its negative sense this word is translated as "lust." By this expression, the Apostle Paul emphasizes not a simple desire for episcopacy, i.e., being a priest, but having a taste for this service, whereas in the second case he speaks not of a simple desire, but of a strong aspiration and longing. Special predisposition to the service is supposed to be found in a candidate, but not only desire. It can be interpreted as the sensation of calling to this work. Bishop Theophan (the Recluse) wrote about this place of the New Testament in his interpretations precisely so.

In the science of pastoral service, the question about vocation is put differently. The Catholics, with their tendency to refine, subdivide and classify everything, reasonably teach about the internal vocation (vocatio interna) and the external vocation (vocatio externa). The first is recognized as a certain internal aspiration, an attitude of soul, and the voice calling man to another way life, different to the usual mundane manner. However, the external vocation is more like a certain external push in the form of the encounter with someone spiritual, which turns over the entire life of man, or some illness, stress, loss of the dear ones, that suddenly change the entire line of life (examples of Anthony the Great, Ephraim the Syrian, Francois D' Assi, Ignatius Loyola and many other examples in the history of pastoral service and asceticism).

The Russian science of the pastoral theology weighs this question differently. Some, as, for example, Bishop Boris, related it thoughtfully, critically, they did not deny the need of vocation for the priestly service. The others simplified the problem, as, for example, Archbishop Anthony (Amphitheatrov) of Kazan, who perceived vocation in the purely external and even random facts. These include a) the origin from the spiritual rank; b) education in all sciences, taught in the spiritual schools and the proper encouragement in the abilities, successes and behavior; c) internal agreement and love for the priesthood and even g) the will of the local bishop. (From Pevnitsky’s book "The Priest"). One cannot fail to perceive the tension and formality in this approach.

Even more definite is the view of the Metropolitan Anthony Krapovitsky. He simply denies any possibility of vocation and considers that the voice of God perceptible in the heart of man is "nothing more than the fruit of self-delusion. The Catholic theologians assert that each candidate to the priesthood must hear it, but we think that only that candidate, who is previously indicated by the Church, can hear this voice. Self-appraisal and self-feeling should have the negligible value." (Coll. Works, vol. 2, p. 184). Therefore, for our outstanding pastoralist "all the reasoning about the pastoral vocation must be displaced from that basis, on which they stood, and must be substituted with the thoughts about the pastoral preparation" (Coll. Works, vol.2, p. 186). In courses, enough time is dedicated to this question about preparation, and it must be illuminated especially in detail, but nevertheless it does not replace the very fact that of an internal voice, which is felt by some, but which is completely silent in the others. Certainly, a known portion of self-deception is always possible, and internal soberness is especially necessary in defining the "spirits," but here another thing is shown in Metropolitan Anthony works: his perfect negation of any mystical feeling in the spiritual life of man. Metropolitan Anthony extremely negatively perceives everything mystical and even the very word "mysticism," in spite of its frequent usage by such writers as Areopagits, Maximos the Confessor and the others, he completely sweeps it aside. He was an extreme rationalist and nominalist in his theology.

On the one hand, there is such a negation of the internal mystical voice, while on the other — one cannot fail to recognize the "pre-indication by the Church" as something extremely undetermined. What is it? The origin from the spiritual class as it was in the former Russia? Or the forced enrollment into the seminary of a boy, who still has no understanding of the priesthood or anything in general? Or the sad sign of a scholarship in the spiritual school, which other schools do not give? A similar state of affairs occurred in the Serbian church before the crisis of 1945. It is not possible, furthermore, to forget the general flight of students from the seminaries and Academies, who got there according to the class rank and later filled the other departments. Metropolitan Anthony called such former seminarians "Rakitins" (according to Dostoyevsky), who were precisely such renegades of their school because of the absence of vocation to be there.

What should the question about vocation in the conditions of our reality be reduced to? What can be considered as the sign of vocation? Are there such objective data for judgment about the vocation to the priesthood of a certain person? If for the military service we must have courage, bellicosity, and for artistic activity, a feeling for beauty, soul refinement, etc., then what signs must one possess who considers himself to be called to pastoral service, and absence of which is sufficient for the judging one as not having vocation, concerning a definite candidate?

Here are the approximate points that must be considered as the absolute sign of not being called to be a priest:

Searching for the priesthood because of the material benefit, on consideration, that a priest never will die of hunger.
Calculations of political or national type, for example, entering the priesthood for the "rescuing of Holy Russia," for nationalistic propaganda, which is more convincing when made by a priest. The Church and priesthood have more important tasks than these national or political instincts.
Ambition and desire to rule, to become a bishop, the leader of people or the known class.
Aesthetical motives: the beauty of the divine service, chanting, magnificent Archpriest ritual, etc. Similar enthusiasm often passes rapidly, the flames cool, and this type of "vocation" turns out to be the fleeting exhilaration.
The very fact of enrollment into a spiritual school or belonging to the spiritual class, being purely a formal sign, in no way indicates an authentic vocation.
Neither it is possible to consider a vocation that what is caused by tiredness with life, disappointment, aversion to the previous raptures. This mood is also fleeting and reveals a certain passion. Disappointment in one thing cannot be acknowledged as vocation to another: "it is romantic stupidity to think that the aversion to life is a sign of religious vocation" (L. Blua). In the most holy service addressed to Him, God needs not the disappointed and slack spirit, but the heart, full of flame and feat, spirit of sacrifice and creative impulses for the construction of the body of Christ.

What are the signs of vocation or, in the words of the Apostle, that the person has a taste for the priesthood?

First, there must be the free inclination of the heart to the great and holy matter of the pastoral service.
The desire of creation of the Reign of God, but not the reign of this world, whatever its political colors might be.
Readiness for sacrificial service to ones neighbor and acceptance of pastoral service as the yoke of Christ.
Readiness to commiserate with the culpable and sick, suffering persons.
Readiness for the persecutions by the world and its princes. Fearless negation of any conciliation (conformism).
Resignation to the consciousness of ones personal unworthiness and striving after the similarity with Christ, but not exposure and judgment of those thinking differently.
Experience of the faith and life in the Gospel, which led to the resigned serving to God.

The Pastoral Mindset.

This question is the cornerstone in the science of pastoral service and determines the mystery, which lies in the actions of a priest. Here we speak not only about the content, but also of the inclination of the pastoral heart. The reservoir of the knowledge and preparation of a priest will be discussed in the following chapter. Here we are to investigate where the spiritual sight of the pastor is directed and what distinguishes his service from the other services in the Church.

Science approaches this question differently. For a long time under the influence of the scholastic West, our textbooks repeated what was said in the Catholic and Lutheran "hodegetiks." Only at the end of the 19th century did Archimandrite Anthony (Krapovitskiy) give an entirely different direction to this question. He turned back to the sources of the Holy Fathers and the truly Orthodox tradition, decisively getting rid of the dust of dry scholasticism.

It is usually pointed out that a pastor must be praying, spiritual, not greedy, sober, and meek and so on. But actually all these virtues are also required from the lay-people. Their application is required more strictly from a pastor and must reach perfection. However, this means that the difference here is only quantitative, and in reality, the priesthood reports to a Christian no special gift. The merit of Metropolitan Anthony in Russian Orthodox theology consists precisely of the fact that he raised before his listeners the question: "Is there a special gift of pastoral service and if there is, then, what of what does it consist?" He gave an interesting, original and completely non rational-scholastic answer to this question. This answer must not be taken as the absolute truth, out of which there is no other possible true answer, but his statement completely coincides with the spirit of Orthodox patrology and asceticism. Below we shall speak about the incompleteness of his view, after presenting its essence and the doctrine of some Holy Fathers.

First, let us say that Metropolitan Anthony was a leader in strongly expressed psychology and morality. This is evident from his work "The Psychological Data in Favor of the Free Will and Moral Responsibility," in his articles about the moral application of dogmas, and in his famous work "The Dogma of Atonement." At that time, in the epoch of the supremacy of positivism and determinism, a similar view was the ray of the bright sun and fresh breath of the invigorating wind. Theology cannot reconcile with it nowadays.

He reveals psychology and morality also in pastoral theology. Vocation decisively has no value; he places the stress on spiritual ascetic preparation. He paid attention to the disclosure of a pastoral gift and mood in oneself, and to the multiplication of this gift inside. This study can be schematically reduced to the pastoral influence.

The will of man is free, but it is subjected to the influence of any other will, which changes it to the extent of its significance. The force of the influence is not so much in the words and content of what is said, but in the persuasiveness of the spirit, morals, and perfection. "The pastoral sermon, — said Metropolitan Anthony, — is represented in the Holy Scripture as the force that acts not depending on the very content of the admonishment, but on the internal mood of the speaker. The influence of the soul of a pastor on the guided depends mainly on the degree of his devotion to vocation. The main foundation is not in the erudition, or the psychological finesse of the moralist, but in something else that requires neither mediation nor external manifestations. Or in something that remains together with all these manifestations, being not defined in the outside that directly pours into the soul of the guided person."

However, what is this special mood, which can influence that guided? This is the gift of compassionate love, answers Metropolitan Anthony himself. This gift can revive the fallen sinner, can raise him from the depth of desperation and give him strength for further moral improvement. One ought not to forget that even the very atonement of the humanity is explained by this author as compassion for people in their sins, the moral bearing of their internal burden and taking them to His heart with compassion and love. As is known, Christ’s atonement of our mankind is found in the moment in Gethsemane of moral sufferings, in which the is cup not of the physical sufferings on the Cross, but of the moral sufferings for mankind.

A pastor in his activity must strive, and he will be given a beneficial gift — to identify himself spiritually with others, "to assimilate himself, his heart, with each neighbor" (Vol. 2, p. 256), to spread his news to the entire flock. In the moral experience of the sins of his flock, in compassion to their downfalls, an ideal pastor must reach the identification of himself with the others to such extent, that already "disappears any "I" and there remains only "we." In other words, this study attempts to overcome isolation, subjectivism and to reveal the gathered mutual compassion with sufferings and happiness between all the members of the Body of Christ to the highest degree.

Metropolitan Anthony easily finds confirmation of this study in compassion and co-experience in the Epistles of Apostle Paul, and in the works of some fathers. In fact, if in the wordsof the Apostle, in the contrast with the Old Testament we have such High Priest, Who can commiserate to us in our infirmities (Hebr. 4:15), then Apostle Paul can say: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again" (Gal. 4:19) or "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" (2 Cor. 11:29) and even long for that "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor. 9:22).

Metropolitan Anthony finds confirmation that this gift of compassion is given to a priest precisely in the sacrament of the hierotonia in the writings of St. John the Chrysostom. In the interpretation of the Epistle to the Colossians the Saint writes: "spiritual love is not born by anything terrestrial: it proceeds from above, from Heaven, and it is given in the sacrament of the priesthood, but mastering and maintenance of the beneficial gift depends on the aspiration of the human spirit." Similar thoughts can be found in Chrysostom’s other works, for this understanding of pastoral service was precisely characteristic of this great Antioch preacher and priest.

Let us add some thoughts of the Holy fathers. Thus, St. Maximos the Confessor in letter 28 to Syrisitsius writes about the blessedness of the archpriest given to him to be the imitator of mercy and to long for gathering together the scattered children of God, and to connect himself to them in the undivided union of love. St. Isaac the Syrian in the 8th word wrote: "He who equally loves all with compassion and without the difference, has reached perfection." However, his word about the "pitiful heart," which "flares up in man towards any creation, humans, birds, animals, demons and any creature" is especially note worthy. "During the recollection of them and with the view on them, the eyes of man shed tears. Because of great and strong pity, overwhelming the heart and great compassion the heart is wrung, and it cannot bear, hear or see any harm or small grief, which this creature undergoes. Therefore, man hourly prays with tears about the dumbl creatures and the enemies of truth or about those doing him harm, for their salvation and pardon. He also prays about the race of reptiles with great pity."

This doctrine about compassion in the pastoral heart to any suffering, and especially towards a guilty person, was to a considerable degree influenced by the writings of Dostoyevsky, to whom Metropolitan Anthony frequently and willingly refers and under the impression of whom he indisputably was. This, undoubtedly, to a considerable extent renewed that pastoral science, dried in scholasticism and rationalism, and inspired many young priests for the sacrificial service to the humanity. This influence was strengthened unquestionably by fascination with the personality of the Metropolitan himself, who in reality carried out the same doctrine and fulfilled the soul revival in practice.

But the correct study itself of compassionate pastoral love and about taking into the heart the conscience of another person must not, however, be made absolute. This is not all in which the work of the pastoral service lies. If this gift is given in the sacrament of the priesthood, then the matter is not limited within it. Theology is not just asceticism, pastoral service is not just moralizing, the transformation of man is accomplished not just by psychological understanding and the influence of one will on another.

The Metropolitan wrote: "Where there is no pastoral activity, there is pastoral conscience." This undoubtedly narrows the thought. If we do not actually say "not he, who does not know how to speak Greek, does not have ear for music or is not of imposing appearance, is the poor pastor, butrather he who does not know how to pray, who did not kill egoism as the purpose of his life in himself, who does not know how to love, to commiserate and to pardon," then nevertheless the service of a pastor has importance beyond it.

Even Anthony Khrapovitsky himself was not inclined to make the extreme conclusions from his postulates. He did not identify Christianity and even monasticism only with repentance (2, p. 417). To him belong the excellent lines about the degeneration of our hymnography from the samples of the inspired poetry in chanting, in which "predominates a character gloomier, full of the slavish fear and dread of the other world tortures." He wonderfully considered the tendency of some pastors to be occupied with the "compulsory saving" and, incorrectly understanding, what it means to be an elder, to place stress "on the exploit of obedience in the sense only of performance of the known responsibilities." Such, as he says, "deeply religious and pious ascetics, but little gifted with the pastoral spirit" become heavy officials for the guided.

The requirement which pastoral science presented to him is not only to mention the responsibilities and separate functions of a priest, but also to induce this pastoral spirit and mood in him. It is erroneous to limit this mood only to compassion, psychological influence of one conscience onto the other, to ae sermon on the moral perfection and so forth. In the theology of Metropolitan Anthony, psychology and morality always shielded the other things, and in particular, totally excluded everything mystical. However, in the pastoral mood the aspect of mysticism cannot but occupy a very important place.

The moral aspect enters into the Christian good news, in the same way as it occupies its legal place in any religious doctrine. But this aspect cannot be the limit of the entire spiritual life in Christianity. Although the very Christian sermon began from the words of St. John the Baptist: "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mat. 3:2), the understanding of the repentance in Christianity consists of the two aspects: the negative and the positive. The genius of the Greek language expresses this religious feeling by the word metanoite that differs significantly from our "repentance." In the word "repentance" is heard the regret about what had been done, remorse, something passive in the creative sense. The bitterness about the irreparableness occupies here the main place. We do not hear in this word " do good" but only "turn away from evil." However, the Greek word metania does not contain this grief about what had been done, but something impulsive, calling to the new activity, the reverse to what led to the sin, because literally this word indicates "the change in the thinking" or more widely, a change in behavior, life, actions. In this call, we hear something active, constructive. The sermon of Apostle Paul directly tells us about this, since "Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Cor. 4:1) or it is still more concrete: " And he (Christ) gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:11-12). The same moral, spiritual aspect, acquires the nature not only of regretting what had been done, of repentance, which is fruitless by itself, but also the nature of creation of a new, good, positive matter, the matter of construction of the Body of Christ. Here is that sense, which the sermon of a Christian pastor and teacher must have. Construction of mysteries, work on the tasks of the church, for the creation of its mystical body. This task is already considerably more extended than crying about one’s sins.

Therefore, the matter of salvation and learning is not limited by only psychology and moralizing on the subject of misdeeds, but is the creation of something positive, that will not perish in the Celestial Reign. Even Metropolitan Anthony, who taught about the pastoral influence of one conscience onto another and about the acceptance of the other’s personality, up to the dissolution of the personal "I" in the council "we" of the pastoral love, did not think to be limited only with the negative aspect of repentance, which is indicated above. He only hid the purely mystical aspectt to a considerable extent, which completely corresponded to his realism and psychologism.

But how ought one to reveal the meaning of the apostle’s words about the mysteries’ structure? In what atmosphere must the pastoral activity of a priest flow? What can complete the unilateral character and exceptionally psychological aspect of the influence of one conscience onto another? In the most important Christian sacrament, — we will answer, — in the Eucharistic life, in Communion of the Eucharist body and the mystical body of the Church. The Eucharistic life is and must be the main spiritual aspiration of a priest.

A priest is first a theurgist. The priesthood comprises of the Liturgy, the Eucharist, the mystical unity with Christ in the sacrament of the Body and Blood. It is the unity of a pastor and the flock. The spiritual life of a priest must run, first, in this Eucharist sanctification of life, himself and the people. The Eucharist character of the church should involve a priest more than anyone else. Just as the Eucharist is impossible outside of the Church, equally the Church cannot exist without the Eucharist. The holy fathers did not write treatises on the Church, but lived in it and with it, just as they did not write scholastic treatises on the Holy Spirit, but they lived in the Spirit in the classical period of the theology. The sacraments’ stewardship, this is the way commanded by the Apostle Paul.

The priestly service includes many responsibilities. He must satisfy all the requirements of his rank. They include the duties of teaching, spiritual guidance, missionary work, and divine service, taking care of the sick, prisoners, sorrowful and many other things, if not to speak about the contemporary interests of a priest in the West — his social, sportive and other activities.

However, God can give or not give some certain talents to a priest as to any simple mortal. A priest can prove to be a poor speaker or incapable administrator of his parish, dull instructor of the Holy Scripture. He can be an insensitive or even too demanding a confessor, he can be deprived of the social service solemnity; but all this will be forgiven to him and will not blot out his spiritual making, if only he possesses the Eucharist feeling, if his main occupation is "the sacraments’ stewardship" and service at the Divine Liturgy for the mystical union of himself and his flock to the body to Christ, for the sake of being "partakers of the divine nature," in the wordsof Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:4). A priest is given no greater authority or mystical means than this service to the Mystery of the Body and the Blood of Christ. This must be the work of life of a priest. If Metropolitan Anthony himself so wonderfully called the pastors "by the means of the lasting exploit to create the praying element inside of them," as the capability to be raised to Heaven, then nowhere and by no method this element and ability are accomplished in a priest as in the sacrament of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

The splendor of the concelebrated Holy office might correspond to the ritual of Byzantine or Vatican tsarist ceremonies, but it is not appropriate for the Chalice of the Eucharist Blood, poured for the life of the world. In concelebrated services it is possible to speak about communion of those standing in the circle around the common Chalice, or taking communion from one priest or bishop, but one cannot speak about co-serving, for here serves only one priest, only he symbolizes Christ, and the remaining priests should imagine themselves the accompanying apostles, who wait for the moment of communion from the hand of the person that serves. The history and writings of the fathers of the early Church and its Liturgy, to whom the late magnificent ritual was alien and incomprehensible, teach us this.

Therefore, a priest must thirst to celebrate the Eucharistic divine service himself and not to be satisfied only with the presence in the medium of the highest spiritual rank. A priest must have this thirst to celebrate the Eucharist, but it does not diminish his desire to take Communion from the hand of another brother. But the mystical feeling, incomprehensible to lay-people, to bring the Sacrifice himself and to transform the gifts by the power of the Holy Spirit into the Body and the Blood, entirely differs from the experience of taking Communion at the Liturgy, served by another. With this thirst to serve, it is possible to measure independently the Eucharistic power of a priest. The most spiritual pastors always felt the happiness of the theurgist service and prayer.

Father Sergius Bulgakov wonderfully wrote in his "Autobiographical Notes": "I joined the priesthood exclusively for the purpose of serving, i.e., chiefly to celebrate the Liturgy. Because of this, coupled with innexperience I distinguished no appointments of the position of a temple priest. Very soon, I understood that in order to serve, we must have a temple or, at least, the Holy Table. As a result for the quarter of a century of my priesthood I never had my own temple, but always co-served to bishops, archpriests or held random services" (p. 53-54). These lines as the other pages of this book, tell exactly about this melancholy and thirst for one’s own service, the independent celebration of the sacrament. Here he speaks not at all the feeling of "non-resignation" with which they love to reproach, but simply the great, ardent love of a clergyman to celebrate the service actively and on his own, and not to be passive being the present co-servant of his brother, even of those older and very deserving.

This opinion about the independent celebration of the sacrament (with which, probably, a great number of priests will agree) is our personal opinion and does not pretend to an entire infallable understanding of the priestly service of the Liturgy. We do not deny the principle of the concelebrated services, accepted by the Church, which is indisputably ancient. We only want to stress the possibility for a priest to feel more natural and closer to the Eucharist sacrifice in independent service than in the concelebration.

Summing up what has been said about the pastoral gift, we must draw the following conclusion. A special gift is given to a pastor in the laying on of hands, one inaccessible to the laity: the blissful revival of souls for the Reign of God. This revival can be led in through a moral influence upon the personality of those guided, through compassionate love for the guilty, through a way of joining in with their personalities, but, mainly, through the Eucharistic service and joining the faithful, through it, to the mysterious Body of the Church. Anyone beside a priest can influence a neighbor, a mother and educator can commiserate, a close friend can also share ones sorrows, but the Eucharistic ministry is given only to a priest. The Divine Liturgy is the most powerful means of pastoral service. Neither molebens, nor commemoration services or Acathists can replace the most holy service of the Eucharist. A priest must always remember that he is called to be the establisher of God’s mysteries, that the Liturgical service and Communion of the faithful is the most powerful means of pastoral influence through to bring about the moral and mystical revival of man.

Preparation for the Priesthood.

The question of the preparation of a future pastor for his activity was central to theologians and teachers of ascetics in all times through Christian history. For more clarity, this question must be divided into several special problems. We have divided the questions into two: 1) if preparation for the high priestly service is necessary, or if the entire matter must be entrusted to the will of God, which fills and cures everything, and 2) what this preparation must consist of, should it be acknowledged to be necessary. In this last case, a number of special topics will arise: spiritual, intellectual, external preparation and so forth.

In general, one encounters two opposing viewpoints. According to one, no human science, specialization or skill can, nor must do anything there, where the blessedness of the Holy Spirit oversees. It is omnipotent, and therefore sufficient. The other opinion is the exact opposite: preparation is necessary and, moreover, it should be the most thorough, developed, and broadest possible. If, as it seems to us, one view is that a priest must meet only the necessary and simplest requirements of liturgical typicon and primitively understood piety which (in the opinion of the eastern bishop Porfirius Uspensky) would be limited to using a censer and aspergillum, and nothing more was required for service (as many think, out of humility), then, in the other view the preparation of a future priest is seen in the widest possible terms and he is required to understand agriculture, medicine, different practical disciplines (from the 1893 regulations of our spiritual schools ), and be skilled to lead youth camps and to be aware of social questions.

Pastoral science needs to find the informed equilibrium and reach that medium, "golden, royal" way, on which a priest would not turn to primitivism and obscurantism, but also would not be excessively fascinated by the mundane and with interests and concerns not typical of a pastor.

From these introductory observations, we pass over to the answer the first of the presented questions, if preparation for the priesthood is necessary.

The question answers itself in the affirmative. The entire history of the priesthood and all the experience of the church teach us this. It is correct that in the past Christian life spiritual schools have not always existed — it was not always required from future pastors to be prepared to accept their high calling. On the other hand, with the establisment of more calmness in the life of the Church and its organization, its hierarchy longed for the arrangement of systematic education. Church history recognizes famous schools in Alexandria, Ephesus, Constantinople, Rome, and in many other places even in the first centuries of its life. The epoch of great theological disputes and appearance of heresies established this requirement even more sharply. If in the first three centuries there was no systematic theological and pastoral education yet, then by the time of the acceptance of Orthodoxy as a free and state religion, this education had become better and more organized. It did not always take the same forms. For a long time monasteries were the centers of education. Sometimes outstanding hierarchs or pastors gathered the future priests around themselves; the training of pastors was thus in the periods of the enslavement of the Church (by Tatars, Turks, etc.), or in the countries, situated far from the main centers of life. But it is possible to assert definitively that the Church was never inattentive to this question, with the greatest caution allowing the laying on of hands upon young candidates to the priesthood, and requring thorough and many-faceted preparation for the pastoral calling.

Among the famous teachers and pastors of the Church, we may find the most educated people of their time. The works of John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Photius and others are full of quotations from the diverse writings, both spiritual and secular, including from pagan writers. Among the various errors about the essence of the Christianity, one of the most dangerous is the idea of Christianity as the religion of simpletons, of the ignorant and of people incapable of being educated. Julian the Apostate and famous Celsius asserted this in their time from feelings hostile to Christianity and from a desire to belittle it. Nowadays people devoted to Christianity sometimes assert the same, but for the sake of safeguarding its purity and prepared by its simplicity and tender feelings.

It was symbolically indicated above that not only simple pastors, but also eastern wise men searching for God, the carriers of the highest truth outside of Christianity, came to the cave of the incarnated Logos. If, on the one hand, the Savior called the simple fishermen, then on the other hand, numbered among those who most spread Christianity was the Apostle Paul, a most educated person of his time. Christianity very early knew such thinkers and defenders as the holy Martyr Justin the Philosopher, Athenagorus, Clement of Alexandria, to say nothing of the universal teachers and pastors of the Golden Age of the history of the Church.

We must recall that the Apostle Paul, the author of three Pastoral Epistles, created many requirements for his disciples and colleagues and indicated the proper checking of those, who seek ordination at the hand of a bishop. The Apostle proscribed: "Lay hands suddenly on no man" (1 Tim. 5:22), placed the requirement that, besides the moral qualities, the bishop would be "apt to teach."(3:2); demanded, "Let these also first be proved" (3:10) of those looking for the ordination. A priest must always "exhort and rebuke with all authority" (Titus 2:15); retain that "which thou hast learned and hast been assured of" (2 Tim. 3:14), "holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers" (Titus 1:9); "these things command and teach" (1 Tim. 4:11), "give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine" (4:13).

If from the apostolic Epistles one would pass over to the works of the teachers of the classical period of our theology, then the confirmation of the above can very easily be found. Supporters of simplification in Christianity love to refer to examples from the lives of certain pastors, like bishop Sevira, who was a cloth maker, and Alexander, a collier. However, such cases do not represent the general rule, but can be found in the history of the priesthood as the exception to the general mass. The Church required something different. Through the mouths of Her best and most experienced teachers She prescribed that a priest, especially a bishop, have experience not only in piety, but also in studies and scholarly wisdom, which grows and deepens with years, due to the increasing danger to the Church. It is always necessary to remember that the direction of the Church ship straightened in the critical minutes of large disturbances, heresies, schisms and other temptations through the help of faithful, tested and wise helmsmen. However, the temptation of primitivism, apparently, always soared above the priesthood. Not without a reason many outstanding writers of the Church warned those searching for the priesthood about the difficulty of this art, raising it above the human wisdoms and sciences. There exists an interesting legend from the life of Pope Leo the First, the Great, to whom the Apostle Peter announced the forgiveness of all his sins before his death, except the sin of rapid and careless ordination of priests. Through his special prayer in a second vision, he was told about the forgiveness of this sin as well.

Therefore, it is natural that the great teachers and hierarchs of the Universal Church repeatedly dropped words of warning or reproach about an inattentive attitude toward acceptanting the priesthood both from the side of those seeking it and from the side of those ordaining others to the priesthood. To such luniaries as St. Chrysostom belong the famous "Six Books About the Priesthood," which can be referred as the guiding manual and warning to the future pastors of the church; to St. Ambrose of Mediolan "About the Responsibilities of the Clergymen"; to blessed Geronimos "On the Life of Clerics." St. Pope Gregory the Dialogist wrote about the responsibilities of priests. The words on the same theme by St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. Gregory the Theologian, who being forcedly ordained to the priesthood by his father, escaped to the desert, being frightened of the high calling of priesthood, are remarkable. His 42nd, or word in defence, explains his escape and at the same time confesses how he thought of life and the work of a priest. This word serves as a very edifying guide for priests.

This is what Chrysostom writes: "They make the priests of ignoramuses and put them as the supplement to the property, for which the Son of God paid with his Blood! We disfigure the priesthood, putting inexperienced people in its charge." Frequently we hear the opinion that preparation disturbs piety, holiness, resignation, etc. Concerning this it is worth citing the words of blessed Geronimos: "The ignorant and simple priests consider themselves to be saints, because they know nothing." However, St. Gregory the Theologian (word 3) warns: "it is necessary to become wise, and then to teach"; "there is no established boundary between how to teach and to learn"; "It is one thing to guide sheep and oxen, and another to guide human souls."

In subsequent times never ceased the warning voice of those teachers and archpriests, who realized the danger of the rapid and untested ordination. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and St. John of Kronstadt wrote about preparation, and much is said about this in the courses on Pastoral theology. Let us recall that some specialists in Pastoral Theology (like Metr. Anthony), denying the need of the so-called vocation, shifted the center of focus to the question of pastoral preparation.

The contemporary setting of the spiritual training made the period of the preparation for the priesthood long. In the pre-revolutionary Russia the compulsory course of the priestly education was 10 years (four years of the spiritual school and six years of the spiritual seminary), Those desiring to get even higher preparation looked for the four-year course in the Academy, so a complete education took 14 years. The Catholic world also has its small seminaries, large seminaries and faculties, which correspond to our Academies. Sometimes, in special cases (after wars, catastrophes or in the outlying districts), the need for clergy made it necessary to resort to reduced pastoral courses, but that was only the exception to the general rule.

Passing to the question of what the training of a pastor consists, we must divide this into: 1) spiritual preparation, 2) intellectual preparation and 3) external preparation.

1) Spiritual preparation.

A candidate to the priesthood, a future pastor, prepares to step on the spiritual path, or, following the Russian term, to join the clergy. This word, "dukhovenstvo," by itself imposes many obligations. It does not completely correspond to the single-valued terms in the other languages. Sveshtenstvo (Serbian.); the clergy, clergé, clergy, (French, English, Greek); its sense rather corresponds to the German notion Geistlicher from Geist, i.e. the spirit. This means that the clergy must be, first of all, spiritual. This implies the belonging to the reign of the Spirit, not to the reign of the social ordinariness, to the sphere of material calculations and interests, political longings and so on. This is first, nurturing within oneself the spirit of the Reign of God, its construction in oneself, since it is not off somewhere, but on the terrestrial territory, inside of us. The Reign of God is not a theocratic idyll, but the category of our spirituality. This is the first thing that is required in the way of the spiritual education and is what so frequently the clergy lacks, absorbed in politics and national tendencies or concerns about their daily bread and the search for material goods. This growth in spirituality is not given immediately, but it is acquired in the long-term course of the entire life, by training oneself since from youth, through decisive choice, where to direct one’s aspirations, — to the reign of this world or to the one, which is not of this world.

This choice has two aspects — the negative and the positive. The first relates to the decisive rejection of what attracts man in this world: the sin of worldly calculations, career motives, national-political prejudices, etc. This does not at all mean aversion from any cultural setting and from participation in the society of people, but this is release from any attraction to this world, to evil, and to its non-spiritual instincts. This means not to be a slave of the calculations of this world as of anything sinful. However, the positive side lies in the accumulation of everything spiritual in oneself, of all that belongs to the Reign of blessedness. This must be developed; this notion comprises a number of goals.

According to St. Gregory the Theologian, a pastor must be celestial, that is, not participating in the sins of the world and not captivated with the worldy material goods. A pastor must be holy, but this means not the spiritual Puritan style and sickly spiritualism, not learning some special Church Slavonic expressions by heart, not hypocrisy but authentic spirituality. That is, longing to becomine a son of God, for being spiritualized from inside, making the image of God from oneself and the others, as the highest ideal of the Orthodox asceticism. A pastor must be merciful and compassionate, which does not indicate sentimentality, but the ability to assimilate and acquire the happiness, sins, grief and sufferings of others. A pastor must resemble a saint, that is, become similar to Christ, Who is the perfect ideal of the Kind Pastor. A pastor must to be prayerful, that is, loving prayer in all its manifestations --- namely private, instructed prayer, (Jesus prayer), temple prayer, and especially the Divine Liturgy service.

A priest without prayer, not knowing how to pray, not having obtained the fundementals of prayer, not having fallen in love with the divine service and deviating from it in every possible way under the different pretexts, is a contradiction to himself and a barren official in the spiritual department. A pastor must be humble, rid of the instincts of pride, swagger, arrogance, ambition and selfishness. This resignation must be expressed not in the low bows before the higher ranks and is not proved with the signature epithet "unworthy priest N.," but with the real release from all attacks of egocentrism, and not placing oneself in the center of the entire world, not admiring oneself and so forth.

These are the central objectives that a priest must approach, and all this can be summed up as one thing — spirituality, i.e., personal release from the authority of any sin and from every mundane, national and political temptation. Now we should turn to the means of this spiritual education.

It would not be erroneous to say that the prayer is the most powerful means for the acquisition of the spirituality. This is the field of the spiritual life itself, and furthermore, thanks to the latter it is possible to obtain other goods from the spiritual world, one can ask for what one lacks. We must learn to pray from starting school. From those loving the divine service or deviating from it can already be seen, where the aspirations of a future priest are directed to, if it is difficult for him to bear the exploit of the prayer, or if it appears to be the best minutes of the day. We should not generalize this, since the gift of prayer is individual. To some the church service prayer is closer, for it is aesthetically attractive, regulation organized; to the others — the concelebrated service prayer is more difficult than the private and secret prayer of the heart. However, a priest must obtain this spiritual foundation.

Then follows the reading of the Holy Scripture, learning it by heart, reflection on it, plunging into the interpretation of the Scripture, acquaintance with the ascetic literature, both of the holy fathers and the contemporary instruction.

Furthermore, for spiritual growth we must become acquainted in general with the literature of the holy fathers, and mainly, with the ascetic literature, as guides to moral perfection, emanating from the experience of the long-term hermetic and cloistered life. Here must be a gradual hierarchical preparation in reading: we must begin from the more simple writings (Abba Dorotheus, John of Kronstadt, Theophan the Recluse and Ignatius Bryanchaninov, the letters of Ambrose of Optina Hermitage, etc.), and then pass to the more difficult ones as for example, "The Philocalia," Isaac the Syrian, "The Ladder," Simeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas.

A rather essential means for one’s preparation to the priesthood can be frequent confession, spiritual conversations with experienced people, reading from the life examples of the seekers of piety, famous confessors and men of prayer. The Western world recognizes special prolonged exercises in prayer and contemplation, accomplished in monasteries. Such secluded and concentrated exercises, or fasting, substantially teach and form the intellectual wealth in the soul.

Visiting the sick, helping the suffering as well as any compassion to those in need can contribute to spiritual preparatiom. It can be useful to concentrate not on the beauties of this world, but on the mortal hour, eternity, on the other world often. For this, reading the Psalms with the prayer for the departed can also help greatly a young candidate to the priesthood.

Summarizing the above, we must combine with the spiritual creating everything that is useful for the rejection of the obliging laws and customs of this world and that can help to a future priest to be holy and spiritual. All this is the content of a special discipline, recognized under the name of pastoral asceticism.

2. Intellectual preparation.

In this question it is necessary, first of all, to overcome and decisively deny one most harmful and inveterate prejudice, that the intellectual preparation is not necessary for a pastor, but is even harmful, since it, as it seems to some that it harms humility, prayierful practice and spirituality. This is the one of the most dangerous errors both in society and among the clergy, and most important, among the leaders of the future priests. We raised the question about the three sides of preparation: spiritual, intellectual, external, — in that hierarchical order on purpose: in order to state decisively once and for all, that without the spiritual preparation and spiritual aspiration a priest is nothing, being a contradiction to himself and something false and unworthy. Therefore, we insist again that, without a doubt, the first place belongs to personal spiritual preparation and then to any other kind. However, we must emphasize here that personal spiritual preparation does not at all interfere with any other improvement, such as mental or external. Contemporary reality insistently requires the training of pastors with the broadest possible mental range of vision and external qualities of decency and public service. However, as to fears that mental or external preparation can injure or even destroy the intellectual wealth of a priest, one should answer that the cost to this spirituality, which can allegedly suffer from the touch of culture and science, is very small. Orthodox spirituality, we must remember, is far from being fragile, as many might fear.

If we turn to history, again, then the examples from the past give rich material for the favorable resolution of the presented question. In essence, the fathers of the classical epoch of the Orthodox theology: St. Athanasius of Cappadocia, St. Maximus the Confessor, Patriarch Photius, St. John of Damascus and many others — were representatives of the broadest intellectual culture of their time. They belonged to the refined elite of that epoch. Their creations are full of proofs taken not only from the writings of the earlier holy fathers, but also from the purely external evidence of heathen writers. They knew perfectly philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, and music, i.e., everything that in the language of pedagogy of those days was called the "seven numbered art"or "trivium, quadrivium." Granting the superiority of spiritual preparation and piety, they did not fear at all that a secular education somehow would be able to keep them from piety and spirituality. And, in reality, neither their humility nor their faith or the prayerful efforts suffered because they knew Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Virgil, etc. Those who at least a little plunged in the study of patrology and read the works of the holy fathers cannot but be astonished with the erudition and high level of those whom they wish to represent as simpletons and obscurants. The enemies of Christianity Lucian, Celsius, and Julian wanted to represent them precisely so, but in reality the holy fathers struck even the heathens with their "external" i.e. intellectual preparation. In cloister libraries they preserved not only assorted books on the lives of saints and ascetic collections. It is interesting, for example, that St. Anastasias of the Sinai, a refined Hellenist and expert in his language, used expressions, which are located only in such rarely read works as scholium on Euripides or Aristophanes. In order to memorize such linguistic details, it was necessary to attentively read such books as now, probably, they will consider completely inappropriate for monastic reading. From the knowledge of Plutarch or Plotinus at that time, it is possible to draw a conclusion about our epoch as well. An acquaintance with contemporary philosophy, literature, sciences and art can only raise a pastor in the eyes of his disciples, who desire to learn from a priest anything about one or another cultural phenomenon. For a priest such knowledge can only become useful weapon in his missionary and apologetic activity. He can influence the flock only when he knows how this flock lives and what attracts it. The spirituality of a priest will not suffer, if he knows contemporary philosophical and literary trends. But the entire intellectual preparation implies, first of all, an authentic and deep spirituality in a priest himself, and this preparation on no account can become the pretext to turn into a layman.

It is quite necessary to remember the effect of cultural influence on the society. Society, left by its pastors to the mercy of fate, given in its training and education to itself, easily yields to outside pressures and grows without the blessedl guiding influence of a priest. (However, no one of the cultured people will address a pastor who knows nothing about contemporary questions or who has a contemptuous idea of everything outside his specialty). They wait for the authoritative and weighty word from a priest who is wise, competent and established. The Orthodox clergy in the view of many historical and social reasons sometimes could not create such an influence and be in the forefront of cultural development.

In France, the clergy was the educated class, and people listened to it. During the 300 years of existence of the French Academy numbered among the "immortal" were 120 priests (105 before the revolution of 1789 and 15 afterwards). In the ranks of these 120 the Academy there were 15 cardinals, 33 bishops and archbishop, 13 oratorios (a monastic order?), 1 Dominican (La-Corder), several Jesuits and the rest — simply curés. The Russian academy existed only for 200 years, but to it belonged such persons as Metropolitan Philaret, Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov and Plato Levshin, several priests (fathers Kochetov and Gerasim Pavsky, Archimandrite Polycarp Goytannikov). By this purely formal designation, it is not possible to limit the presence of culture and education in the ranks of the clergy. (But even, expanding these limits, we will not see as many experienced leaders in the matter of civilization in the Orthodox clergy as we see in the countries of the Western Europe).

Nevertheless, it is possible to give many examples of educated priests whowere leaders in the affairs and models of the spiritual piety and pastoral education. It suffices to remember such refined thinkers as Dean Feodor Golubinskiy, Archimandrite Theophan Avsenev and Archbishop Nikanor Brovkovich; the famous sinologists Archimandrites Avvacum the Righteous and Palladium Kapharov; the Hebraist father Gerasim Pavsky; Bishop Porfirius Uspenskiy and Archimandrite Antonin Kapustin, — the greatest Russian Byzantologists and remarkable experts of Greek, and surely the of their native Russian language. This same Antonin and his brother Plato Kapustin, one of the best-known Moscow priests, were good astronomers, and Father Plato wrote articles on higher mathematics. The last protopresbyter of the Assumption cathedral (before the revolution), Father Lubimov, was a master of the Russian literature, which he taught in the famous Fisher secondary school, where the teacher of religion was Father Fudel, a great friend of Constantine Leontyev and of the writer himself. Our foreign priests became members of the scientific societies of Germany, Sweden, Spain and England.

There is another example from Russia’s past: Protopresbyter John Pervushin, a humble and prayerful priest, a good and caring pastor, was a mathematician well known in the scientific world. After his graduation from the spiritual academy he went to a country parish where he spent his entire life. Gifted with exceptional mathematical abilities, he sent his works to the Academy of Sciences, knew the outstanding mathematicians not only of Russia, but also of the West. His most complex works on pure mathematics and the theory of numbers were rewarded by our Academy and they were noted at the Mathematical Congress in Chicago and Neapolitan physical-mathematical society. The theory of numbers did not distract him from being a good priest.

It is possible, if one so desired to continue this list. But the important thing is to note that neither the title of a member of the Academy of Sciences nor studies of astronomy, philosophy and other manifestations of learning prevented the previously mentioned spiritual men from being prayerful, excellent pastors, humble monks, and most importantly, from having an enormous spiritual influence on those whom they guided.

There is no greater untruth and slander about Orthodox spirituality, then its comparison with obscurantism and gnosimachia. The obscurant tastes of some spiritual persons must not be projected upon Orthodoxy itself. It has nothing to do with that.

It is especially necessary to remember that nowadays, when the enemies of the Church mobilize all the forces to fight with it, that the presence of educated pastors, scientifically prepared and ready to always give an answer to our "hope," in the words of the Apostle Peter, is more than proper. The point is that from a pastor one expects not a timid (as if humble) acceptance of his incompetance, but rather the word of authority, gravitiy. (Our clergy is not used to be a leader in these questions; it is no wonder that they refer to people distant from the church and spirituality for the guidance.). The lack of spirituality of the intelligentsia can cure the clergy itself to a considerable degree by putting it into closer contact with its interests and pursuits.

Turning to contemporary reality, we must recall that the enormous influence on society of Metropolitan Anthony, father S. Bulgakov, A. Yelchaninov, G. Spassky was explained by the fact that they knew the secular literature perfectly well and kept up with science, art and intellectual trends.

In the secular education of all times it is possible to find things both useful and harmful for a pastor. The fathers of the church extracted from Plato and Homer that which could bring edification for their time, but they avoided everything corrupted and unnecessary in heathen learning. Here the matter is not in one century or another and the danger is not in just contemporary or ancient. Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret wrote in his time (1858): "They fight against the contemporary ideas. Are the ideas of Orthodoxy and morals no longer contemporary? Did they remain only in the past? Could we all be already pagans? It is not the time that is to blame, but rather the non-Orthodox and immoral thoughts, spread by certain people. Thus, we must fight against the non-Orthodox and immoral thoughts, but not against the "contemporary" ones ("The Coll. of Thoughts and Opinions" volume 4, p. 344). It is not possible to find salvation from the dangers of the present day in a barren desire to return the past. Metropolitan Philaret wrote in 1839 to the Dean of the Trinity Monasteries, Archimandrite Anthony: "It is not possible to substitute the ninetheenth century withy the fourth or the fifth, and Vologda province — by Thives" (volume 1, p. 315). Anyway, our great Holy Father understood the benefit of education and always protected Orthodoxy from the attacks and charges in the obscurantism. He wrote to Novgorod Metropolitan Isador: "The critics think in vain that the faith of Christ is hostile to the knowledge. It is not hostile to the true knowledge, only because it is not in the union with the ignorance" (Coll. Volume 5, p. 48).

It follows, of course, having discussed this subject, to mention the possible danger waiting for a pastor in this way. Absorbed by the desire to be cultural and well read, a priest can easily yield to the temptation of the world and, without himself noticing, to the incorrect estimation of mental values. When a pastor begins to lose his essence and unity, when he substitutes secular interests for his spirituality, when literature, philosophy and science replace prayer and compassion to the flock in his heart, then this means that the interior equilibrium is disrupted and a pastor has strayed. Becoming acquainted with the secular must be checked by the degree of his pastoral prayerful attitude and by his purely spiritual aspirations. The purpose of the priestly life and activity is the spiritual foundation of oneself and ones close ones. Intellectual and secular education can only serve as a means of pastoral influence and in addition to ones own internal wealth. A pastor must not fear intellectuality, but neither must he be fascinated by it to the detriment of his spirituality, because for the achievement of perfection in the spiritual plane education is always more difficulty acquired than in the intellectual, scientific and artistic plane. As in many other respects, the unique correct path lies in between and in the achievement of complete accord and equilibrium of all forces.

3. External preparation.

Not the least of mistakes among some people is the conviction that pastor does not need a formal education. The tendency towards simplification in Orthodoxy is conflated with the external simplicity of the clergy and some even perceive in this a positive quality. They frequently wish to find in the lack of a secular education the anchor of salvation for some imaginary "humility." There is no need to prove that the virtue of humility has nothing in common with ill breeding. It is clear that genuine humility cannot be harmed by purity, good breeding and good manners. It is difficult to imagine St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Photius of Constantinople or St. Maximos the Confessor in the past times, or St. Seraphim, elder Ambrose of Optina Hermitage, or Bishop Theophan the Recluse, in our days, possessing a forced rough style for the protection of their "humility," or being led by the fear to lose their spiritual aspiration. Such misunderstanding of the Christian spirit fills the words of Tertullian, (who already at that time had turned to his montanistic rigorism), that to "God the purity of the soul is more important than the neatness of the body." It is incomprehensible, how the neatness of the body could decrease the purity of our soul

But of what does his preparation consist, and where should a priest direct his attention, in order to hold himself contantly to external standards of decency?

A) In respect to his exterior look. A pastor must always remember that "people who meet you judge by appearance." Appearance has enormous value in the company of man. Something insignificant, a trifle, can repel others at first sight An innate feeling of fastidiousness is common to man, and because of it he cannot force himself to overlook a number of external trifles: neatness, odors, sounds, etc. A priest must never forget this. By not having paid attention to some negligible trifle, he can lose something much more significant, like the ability to draw a demanding person to himself. Hence it follows that a pastor must think thoroughly about his appearance, and always be clean and neat in both clothing and body. The cassock and podrassnik must be hemmed, clean and hang properly. Poverty of clothing will not be held in reproach, but its untidiness can repel those around one. More than that, a rich, silk or moiré cassock can also serve unfavorably and give a rise to reproach to a priest for foppery. However, poor clothing will never become a reproach to a pastor, if he wears it with dignity and keeps in order and neatly. Footwear, even if old, must always be clean and in order.

The same concerns the cleanliness of ones hands, face, teeth, because neatness has great significance for parishioners and those praying. An unpleasant smell, dirty nails or ears can repel the sensitive people. We must have great internal concentration and an absence of fastidiousness, in order, for example, to stand near a man spreading the bad smell of tobacco or garlic fumes during confession, as a priest suffers when someone like this confesses.

The attitude of the priests towards their long hair and beards must also be limited by the requirements of neatness. The Church regulations prescribe that one cut a shaggy moustache, as is necessary for communion of the clergy. The right to cut hair was always granted to our foreign clergy. Even in the time of Emperess Elizabeth, the Spiritual Consistory ordered that the priests should cut their hair, but not at the barbers, so that the priests’ wives would perform this function. Moderately cut hair, a trimmed beard and a moderately shortened moustache in no way can decrease the spirituality of a priest or give a way for a reproach for foppery.

Everything said about the appearance must not be turned into the opposite extreme, when a priest reaches a state of foppery and exaggerated secularity. Here, as in everything else, a sense of proportion must help to keep in balance.

B) In respect of time. A priest must be chronometrically precise in the designation of his business conversations, visits, and Divine services. A lack of accuracy can greatly irritate businessmen and those guarding their and others’ time. A priest must live according to a timetable; his day should be calculated up to a minute, all the time intervals considered. The Divine service must begin exactly at the time assigned. There must not be any changes in favor of careless and tardy persons. Only a case of the mortal danger, a call to the bed of a seriously sick, and the Baptism of a weak baby can allow a priest to change his schedule. A pastor is obligated to bring up himself in this spirit, and to ask those he guides to do the same. These are the conditions of the good public manners.

C) In respect to the language and gestures. The word of a priest draws the attention of those surrounding more than do those of simple people. By ones words we also get anidea of the internal content of ones thoughts and feelings. A free tongue displays disorderliness of thought; embittered words testify of the presence of the passion of anger; rough words are the sign of a deficiency in good breeding. On the other hand, strict, restrained, precise words, but flavored by good-natured humor in the proper place, show that they proceed from a disciplined, sharp, thoughtful mind, but one deprived neither of the power of observation nor of gentle merriment. Here a priest sees the two extremes, equally unpleasant. On the one hand, undisciplined and rather rough language, left over from school days, full of jargon and easily passing to the familiarity, even more than public decency permits. Unfortunately, this one can be observed even of persons of high hierarchical position. It also happens, on the other hand, that to pursue some "traditional" Levite position not inherited from our ancestors, a priest memorizes a number of special prhases which seem spiritual to him, expressions, like: " so save you the Lord" instead of the usual: "thank you" or "thanks," or instead of the simple "I" — "I the unworthy." "Your Holiness" instead of simply "you"; "my unworthiness," "the most humble" and other expressions, which in the consciousness of such a neophyte must seem to him a clear sign of his spirituality and humility in the Levite position. In this category belong a passion to show off whether it is proper or not with Slavonc quotations from the Bible and official books, which, being sometimes appropriate to the place and time, can flavor and revive a speech, but very frequently make it artificial, devised, and sometimes simply inappropriate.

The movements and gestures of a priest must also be measured and balanced, — for that we must work out for oneself a natural rhythm of walking and gesticulation. The scurry of a priest along the streets does not correspond to his rank, but pompousness as well makes him comical and does not fit his role. Iimmoderate gesticulation coarsens the habit of a pastor, but also a stone-like rigidity in his appearance gives away an unnatural tension. In the presence of an elder brother, a priest always must remember his place: not to sit down without permission, to go to the left of the elder, to let him pass, etc. He must not hurry to occupy a seat on public transportation. If someone will offer a priest a seat, he can take it, but he should always try to offer it to the older men, the sick, women with the children, the weak and so forth.

D) In respect to the correspondence. The paperwork of a priest must be in irreproachable order. An answer to each letter should follow immediately or after gathering of the necessary information. Letters must be accurately dated; it is useful to have copies of business papers to avoid misunderstandings. Letters addressed to hierarchically higher persons must be written according to the established protocol, — without any familiarity. The signature also should be according to the established form, without the excessive "sinful, unworthy" and other falsely humble epithets. The language of the letters means more than just the words and it must be thought through and checked. "The letters remain," notes an ancient saying. In general, it is always necessary to remember that it is undesirable that with this or that action or word one would subsequently blush or be ashamed. Moderate humor and witticism only testify in favor of the author, but disorderliness and garrulity reveal unthinking and an absence of discipline. The equilibrium is here, somewhere in between.

E) In respect to the decoration of a dwelling. This is of value as well and can give a means for the positive or negative estimation of a priest in the eyes of his parishioners. Neatness and order in the house were even the topic of the pastoral epistles of Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:4-5). The dwelling of a pastor must testify to his internal arrangement and about the interests of his life. Modesty, seriousness and cleanliness must decorate the house of a priest. The poverty will never be reproached, but disorder or excessive secularity can tempt many people. It is always necessary to remember the weakness of the human nature and its tendency towards temptations. On the other hand, one should not forget the big impression, which comes at first glance. Besides being clean, it must and can testify about the interests and the internal content of its owner. Books and a love of them will draw the attention of educated people to a priest. The adornment of the walls by sceneries, portraits or reproductions of pictures must not offend the aesthetical feeling. It is erroneous to think that the room of a priest must be decorated with "pious" pictures, good, but visibly insulting the artistic feeling. Everything banal, petty bourgeois, commercial, can only cause a smile and make people suspect the owner is imitating an overall level. Here, as in everything, the danger is in deviations into extremes of the inappropriate mundane life on the one hand and the falsely devised genre of the "everyday life father," whose original model has already disappeared from life long ago.

In conclusion, probably about the most important thing is this— to know how to develop personal spiritual tact in order to determine the manner and limitations which most likely suit the case and situation at hand.

Ordination/ The Hierotonia.

The most important and fearful moment in the life of each pastor, the moment that remains memorable for life, is ordination into the holy and great office of the priesthood by the archbishop’s hand. It was already mentioned concerning preparation for pastoral service, but it is especially necessary for a future priest to think how to protect himself in modern times from the secular life, in order to approach this high vocation, the very sacrament of the priesthood, with the appropriate attitude.

Before that time, the question arises before a candidate arises about his future parish, about the altar to which the Church will assign him as Her servant. Moreover, although this question probably has to do with the canons, we must say several words, since these formal and administrative details concern the future candidate for holy orders. Christian history recognizes three ways. The Protestant way (which in the essence does not have priesthood and ordination) turned to one extreme. The dissidents from Rome are bound only by election by community. This is sufficient in the eyes of those who purchased their freedom through negation of the Roman primacy and with distorted study of the Church, and by the negation of any hierarchy. The price of this is the self-righteous temptation of themselves and others, and anarchy, in which the blessed aspect is completely denied. This is the extreme democratization of the understanding of the Church.

Roman Catholicism went to the opposite extreme, through the complete suppression of the personal initiative and expulsion (in principle, at least), of the secular element, the people themselves. The Church, in the Roman mindset, is concentrated in the hierarchy. That churchly priesthood and chosen people, about which the books of the Old and New Testament spoke and yet which the original Christianity did not forget, got completely tarnished in the mindset of the dignitary prelates of Rome. The people do not participate in the election of the clergy for them. The ancient elections of an archpriest with the participation of people became the conclaves of the special class of cardinals, a thing unknown to the early Church. The same happened in the life of the parishes and dioceses. The people are deprived of the participation in the election of pastors. Not everything there is bad. The Catholics are released from many temptations from which Orthodox Christians suffer, possessing a conciliar mentality. However, there is certain numbness in their church life. One should note that the Roman service of ordination contains one detail (forgotten by us): the applying on of hands upon the one being ordained not by a single bishop, but also by the other presbyters, the entire pleroma (fullness) of the church.

Orthodoxy always tried to follow the median way and, avoiding the extreme of the view of the one part of Western Christianity, did not turn toward the immoderation of the other. Orthodoxy since the oldest times cherished the principle of the election of the priest and bishop by the people.

No matter how the historians resolve this problem, can the New Testament and canonical worshipers convincingly prove the primacy of this specific elective system? Or can we prove that the apostles always selected their candidates themselves, after conferring with "the people"? Is it is possible to unconditionally ignore Christ's words: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16), which indicate the election not from below, but from above? Is this system of election generally according to the spirit of the Gospel, that is, should one draw a general conclusion from some facts from apostolic history, if the benefit of elections with the assistance of the so called "people — the keeper of piety" — is indisputable and always proves correct? All these questions are outside the sphere of our science. However, they cannot but influence the position of a priest in his parish and in his relations with his flock. Of course, this third way smoothes out the extremes of the first two paths, the Presbyterian anarchy and Latin Papacy. Nevertheless, in this practice not all is indisputable and flawless. The participation of the people themselves in the election of their pastor is not a bad beginning; however, it is not a guarantee of correctness. Those people who have been brought up within the strict framework of the church life and who are faithful to the canons and traditions will be able to use this right more or less correctly. However, in the absence of these qualities, with the liberal tendencies of the flock towards independence, and mainly, when a priest has weak nature, he can easily become one who is guided by the "people - the keeper of piety," who elected him.

Be that as it may, the principle of election by the people or, to be more precise, the participation of the people in the matter of pointing out which candidate who seems more suitable to them to the authorities, has to some extent spread in the East. The ancient Russian practice recognized this principle, "when the prince wants something, the people will want that as well." Stoglav made this a rule for the simple churches, whereas in the "rouge" churches there were selected princely and tsarist "stewards." The "contract record" was made, which showed desire of one and the other side not to break the agreement conditions; this attitude introduces a certain element alien to the spirit of priesthood into pastoral relations. A bishop had only to ordain the future priest. With a deficiency of the prepared candidates, the bishop could hardly propose a "veto" right. With the synodal arrangement of the Russian church the principle of electivity of the clergy went out of use and they started to speak about the desire of its restoration only in the works of the pre-council institutes.

In the latter times (18^th to 19^th centuries), the principle of election was followed to a certain degree in the regions of Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Orthodox population (Voyevodina, Bukovina, Chernovitsa Metropolis, Dalmatian diocese).

Undoubtedly, it is possible to see some positive sides of this elective principle. Each person receives the right to select his spiritual leader and to give specifically to him ones conscience and soul. Nevertheless, in the priesthood and in pastoral activity the element of seniority predominates. The confessor and his disciples form that unit, which in the old-Russian dialect was called "the confessionary family." However, in the words "family" and "fatherland’ the element of submissiveness and obedience can be felt. However, the elective principle introduces something juridical, democratic, which has nothing to do with humility.

Leaving aside these questions, one should switch over to the ordination itself, to its meaning and content. No matter whether a priest is selected or is appointed by his future diocesan bishop, there comes the hour of his mysterious and dreadful ordination. If we speak about its symbolism, then it is possible to draw these parallels: the selection by the flock is certain matchmaking, and ordination — the wedding of a priest with his flock. The chain of actions, common to both the one and the other sacrament, fortifies this symbolism: walking around the Analoy or the Holy Table, singing the same chants (but in the reverse order) "Rejoice, Isaiah," "O holy martyrs..." Hence, it is possible to reach several conclusions: the marriage of a priest with his flock is an indissoluble union, as marriage is indissoluble as well. Therefore, the displacement of a priest from one place to another must not in principal take place, as the displacement of bishops from one department to another. In principle, a priest cannot be replaced.

But there is another essential feature in this sacrament: the priesthood is indelible, as the Roman Catholics teach. The Greek theologians share the same opinion. Metropolitan Philaret looked at it differently. Speaking decisively, the Grace brought down by a bishop in the mysterious divine service during the Liturgy cannot be taken by any authority on the earth. To consider that the act of consistory can deprive man of the Grace of the Holy Spirit is a theological inconsistency. Baptism and the priesthood are inherent and indelible. Even the sin of apostasy does not wash off the blessedness of baptism; those returning from apostasy are not baptized again. In exactly the same way the most terrible sin committed by a priest, that brought him to the deprivation of his rank, cannot by itself, as a consistory act, deprive a priest of Grace. In the case of judicial error a defrocked priest who proves to be innocent would be ordained again, which, of course, the strictest rigorist cannot admit. We must recognize as even more terrible and blasphemous the so-called "sacramental defrocking," practiced in t