nicholas / 2.12.2016 Kingdom of Heaven and Vichna In memory of a good HUSBAND, a talented preacher!

Sergei / 17.11.2016 Do not create an idol for yourself ...
Is it worth relying only on his books for understanding ?! Maybe you need to read a couple, three sources in order to compose not his thought forms, but your understanding ?!
Good luck and all the best!

Alexander / 8.02.2016 How can one condemn someone who opened people's eyes to the origins of Christianity? Did he distort the facts, did he call to resist the Faith? Or is it true? This is the truth of the Gospels! But there are the servants of the devil, and they bring confusion, trying to sow confusion among the people. Words spoken by Alexander Menem, words of truth! And shame and disgrace to all spiteful critics! Praise the Lord, the Son of God Jesus Christ!

hope / 12/13/2015 just shocked by the filth pouring on a person, I feel sorry for people who do not understand what is good and what is bad.o. And Men is a very good person without knowing him personally, he helps me and now reading his books and his letters. If all the priests had been like that, it would have been easier to live and the evil would have gone, but alas.

Peter / 4.07.2015 Gersh-Leibovich (Men) has never been a Christian. In his books, the glorification of Judaism. With money from foreign grants, Men was corrupting the church from within. And, judging by the reviews, it was quite successful!

Vlad / 4.07.2015 Albert Gersh-Leibovich (for the goyim - Father Alexander Men) "worshiped the devil. For there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Such conscious devil worship was and remains a lot of a few specially dedicated spiritual leaders and teachers of Israel. " The death of Albert Gersh-Leibovich turned out to be a boon for the peasantry.

Ludmila / 05/06/2015 Zoya, you are Maslenikova. How I envy you, kindly envy you. You knew Father Alexander during his lifetime, you were a parishioner of the church where he served, you were his friend. Thank you for the book you wrote about him. I read it in one breath.

Vyacheslav / 20.09.2014 Surprisingly wise books. I read every day.

zoya / 03/14/2014 Father Alexander I has a face like a prophet. The photographs show the swiftness, striving of his gaze. His books are like living water for me.

Zoya / 01/26/2014 I want to collect all the books of Father Alexander Men, make a library so that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren can read my father. There are few such priests. God, how I love him!

Zoya / 26.01.2014 Thanks to the books of Father Alexander, I learned about Christ, about Christianity. His books speak of a complex, accessible language. It is very sad, his books are not sold in candle boxes in Orthodox Churches, I do not understand. After all, it is obvious that rejecting the books of his father Alexander Me, our Orthodoxy infringes upon itself, causes itself irreparable harm. His book "The Son of Man", When you read it, you meet with Christ, and this is the most important thing for a Christian. Here is what a powerful book it is.

Svetlana / 13.04.2013 I thank the creators of the site for such a generous offer of wonderful books! All the best to you!

Priest Roman, Kharkov / 26.09.2012 Alexander Men is an example for me!

nihil / 14.09.2012 Our dear Father Alexander! Unfortunately there is no way for you to hear me. But everyone is naive to write to the authors in these reviews. Well, I'll write to Space, and suddenly it will fly: D. And although you were wary of Theosophy, much of what you said is saturated with it. And you carried the main idea of \u200b\u200bT.O. - Brotherhood of people - through Christianity. I think that knowledge of the history of religions - deeper than that of other Christians - led you to the unity of the Source. The most sad thing is that you looked at the T.O. as a whole. But after the departure of the Founders, it made a big tilt, like all human undertakings, and A. Besant's attempt to make a new Christ out of Krishnamurti is just madness, condemned by E. Roerich in her letters. Again, it is obvious that Besant did not understand the very word Christ. Madame Blavatsky never said that Christ is a man! But only that Jesus was human. But the church does not deny this either. As for the destruction of temples, I have never read about it. And after all, even this was said by you in such a mild form of bewilderment that you doubt that such a thing could have happened, all the more so come from such high Sources. Thank you for being there. And I recently read that time will cleanse the Truth from all delusions. And we will see the Light.

Alexander Vladimirovich Men - Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, theologian, preacher, author of books on theology, history of Christianity and other religions, on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, Orthodox worship. In 1959-1961. published about 40 articles in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. Published in Brussels under a pseudonym: the series "In Search of the Way, Truth and Life" (books 1-6, 1970-1983; pseudonym E. Svetlov), "Son of Man" (1969, pseudonym A. Bogolyubov), "Sacrament, Word and the image "(1980) and others; in the homeland, books have been published since 1990 without a pseudonym. Known for his ecumenical and liberal-modernist views. He was killed in 1990. The circumstances, motive and culprit of this crime remained unclear.

Alexander Men
Occupation: Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, theologian and preacher
Date of birth: January 22, 1935
Place of birth: Moscow, USSR
Citizenship: USSR
Died: September 9, 1990
Place of death: Semkhoz, Moscow region, USSR
Children: Elena, Mikhail

Grave of the archpriest Alexandra Men at the Sretenskaya church in Novaya Derevnya with the inscription "And whoever does and teaches, he will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven."
Born in Moscow and named Alexander. Father Wolf Gersh-Leibovich (Vladimir Grigorievich) Men was born in 1902, in Kiev, as a child he studied at a religious Jewish school, “remembered Hebrew,… read the prophets by heart”, but “was… a non-religious person”, “graduated from two universities, worked chief engineer of a textile factory ".

Memorial Day of the Archpriest Alexandra Men in Sergiev Posad, Archpriest Valery Malyshkin, Priest Alexander Kolesnikov, Priest Viktor Grigorenko
The maternal ancestors ("obviously from Poland, judging by the name of the Vasilevskys ...") under Alexander I already lived in Russia. Grandmother, Cecilia Vasilevskaya, and grandfather, from Odessa, Semyon (Solomon) Ilyich Zuperfein, met in Switzerland, while studying at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Bern. In the same place, in Bern, in 1908 they had a daughter, Elena (mother of Father Alexander). After graduating from the university, Solomon and Cecilia lived with their daughter in Paris. In 1914, during his arrival in Russia, Semyon Ilyich was mobilized, and the family settled in Kharkov. Elena Semyonovna Men (nee Zuperfein) from her youth was drawn to Christianity. She studied Orthodox doctrine at the Kharkov private gymnasium. As a high school student, she left for Moscow, to her grandmother Anna Osipovna Vasilevskaya; in 1934 she married Vladimir Grigorievich Men.

At the age of six months, Alexander was secretly baptized with his mother in Sergiev Posad by the priest of the Catacomb Church, Father Seraphim (Batyukov). When the boy was 6 years old, his father was arrested on false charges and spent more than a year in custody, and then until the end of the Great Patriotic War he was forced to work in the Urals.

Studied Men at the Moscow school number 1060 in Stremyanny lane.
In 1953 he entered the Moscow Fur and Fur Institute in Balashikha, which in 1955 was transferred to Irkutsk. In March 1958 he was expelled for religious beliefs.
A month after his expulsion, on June 1, 1958, he was ordained a deacon, and on September 1, 1960 (after graduating from the Leningrad Theological Seminary) - a priest. In 1965 he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy by correspondence.

In 1964, at about. I was searched, in 1974 he wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU about a group led by Alexander Menem... In 1985, he was almost imprisoned, but Metropolitan Yuvenaly stood up for him.
Served in a number of parishes near Moscow. In 1989-1990, he was rector of the Sretenskaya Church in Novaya Derevnya (microdistrict of the city of Pushkino). A unique combination of wide erudition, openness to secular culture, science, to other confessions, non-Christian religions and the energy aimed at understanding each interlocutor made me one of the leading Christian preachers.
He was a member of the editorial board of the journal Detective and Politics.

Creation
Father Alexander's main work is "The History of Religion" in seven volumes, consisting of the series "In Search of the Way, Truth and Life" (vols. 1-6, Brussels, 1970-1983; 2nd ed. - M., 1991-1992) and books about Jesus "Son of Man" (Brussels, 1969, 2nd ed. M. 1991, vol. 7); in which the author considers the history of non-Christian religions as the path to Christianity in the struggle between magic and monotheism.

Father Alexander is also the author of the books "The Sacrament, Word, Image" (Brussels, 1980, 2nd ed. M. 1991) (first edition entitled "Heaven on Earth" (Brussels, 1969), "Where did all this come from?" (Naples , 1972), “How to read the Bible?” (Brussels, 1981), the Bibliological Dictionary (about 1840 terms (including a large number of redirects), Moscow, 2002) and numerous articles, mainly of preaching and apologetic content. English, Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian and French.

Father Alexander Men is one of the founders of the Christian "samizdat" of the 1960s. Until the mid-1980s, his works were published mainly abroad under the pseudonyms E. Svetlov, A. Bogolyubov, A. Pavlov (the pseudonyms were given by foreign publishers without the consent of the author). Men was a spiritual mentor, and often the godfather of many dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s, although he himself refrained from active advocacy, seeing his mission in spiritual enlightenment.

Since the mid-1980s father Alexander Men - one of the most popular Christian preachers (including in the media). He was one of the founders of the Russian Bible Society in 1990, the Public Orthodox University, the World of the Bible magazine. Father Alexander actively supported charitable activities, standing at the origins of the creation of the Mercy Group at the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital, which was later named after him and became one of the significant charitable projects.

Murder

Cross at the scene of the murder in Semkhoz
During speeches, Father Alexander repeatedly received threatening notes. On the morning of September 9, 1990, he hurried to church for the liturgy. Presumably the following happened: a man ran up to him and handed him a note. Men took his glasses out of his pocket and began to read. At this time, another man jumped out of the bushes and hit him with force from behind with an ax (according to another version - with a sapper shovel). Bleeding, the priest walked towards the station. On the way, the woman asked: "Who are you, Father Alexander?" "No, no one, myself!" he replied. Then, losing strength, he turned back to the house, reached the gate and fell.

Despite the personal orders of the President of the USSR and the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Russia, the murder remained unsolved.

Police Lieutenant General Vyacheslav Kirillovich Pankin says:
“When the suspect was detained, he made a confession. Interior Minister Barannikov was delighted: you can celebrate! However, apart from the confessions, there was no material evidence. And even when the suspect gave the investigation an ax with which he allegedly killed the priest, the examination did not confirm that it was a murder weapon. The briefcase with the priest's vestments also disappeared. A lot of versions were worked out, they paid attention to the little things. When the priest, with his head split open, reached the gate of his house, hung helplessly on it, his wife did not recognize him. Why? They also checked his wife's brother, who had a conflict with Alexander Mene on the eve of the murder. But no substantial evidence has been obtained. Already in Afghanistan, I heard that the crime was allegedly solved. This was announced by the then head of the GUUR Kolesnikov. But they all worked with the same suspects. "
At the place of the priest's death in the Semkhoz microdistrict (now within the city of Sergiev Posad), a church has been erected in honor of St. Sergius of Radonezh, in which the Divine Liturgy is regularly celebrated. With the blessing of Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomna Yuvenaly, the scientific and theological conference "Menev Readings" is held annually.

Views

The following quotes express ecumenical ideas father Alexander Men.

"The Origins of Religions", chapter 4 ("Man before God"):

“Perhaps the difference in the knowledge of God of religious geniuses, such as Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Seraphim of Sarov, and people of an ordinary level is that for the latter, a meeting with God is like an instant flash of lightning, followed by darkness again , and the first with all their being joined the Divine life and themselves became its carriers. "
"History of Religions", Volume 3, Chapter 5 ("The Riddle of the Higher Self"):

“Following the path laid by contemplation, Indian brahmanas come to the same thing that all mystics came to, at whatever time and in whatever nation they may live. Yajnavalkya and Buddha, Plotinus and Areopagite, Meister Eckhart and Gregory Palamas, Kabbalists and Nikolai Kuzansky, Jacob Boehme, Reisbruck and many other clairvoyants of the East and West, with a unanimity that involuntarily thrills, proclaim what they have learned to the very the limits of being. All of them, as one, testify that everything conceivable and imaginable disappears there, that there is nothing and at the same time - ineffable Fullness. There it is impossible to find any of the properties of the world, nature and spirit; there is no good, no evil, no light, no darkness, no movement, no peace. There reigns something that transcends the deepest human thought, transcends being itself. In the sacred darkness that hides the basis of the foundations, they felt the reality of Being, the Absolute. A terrible, intolerable secret! .. "

"Letters to the spiritual daughter Alexandra Orlova-Model":

“Ecumenism has two origins: either a genuine broad and deep spirituality that does not fear the alien, or a superficial confusion of everything in a heap. Of course, I am for the first type of ecumene. But few reach him. Hence your observations. In the words of the abbot about the saints that they are "strangers" - not only limitation, but unwillingness to accommodate a different experience. And the peculiarities of this experience do not relate to the gospel as such. Their source is cultural tradition and ethnopsychology ... To say that 700 million Catholics and 350 million Protestants are in error, and that we alone are a true church means to be in insane pride, which is not justified by anything. "
Reviews about the activities and works of Archpriest Alexander Men

History of religion

Positive ratings
Many Orthodox people assess positively the activities and works of Father Alexander Men. So, in the opinion,

“Father Alexander was a talented preacher of the word of God, a good pastor of the Church, he possessed a generous soul and a heart devoted to the Lord. The murderers did their dirty work at a time when he could still do so much for the spiritual enlightenment and nourishment of the children of the Church. Not all of his judgments were fully shared by Orthodox theologians, but none of them contradicted the essence of Holy Scripture. Where it is emphasized that there must be differences of opinion between you, in order for the most skilled to appear (1 Cor. 11, 19). "

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, many years after the death of Father Alexander, spoke of him very emotionally:

“We dare not talk about our abandonment, about loneliness, about orphanhood! Father Alexander did not die, but joined the Divine Life, remained for his own - known and unknown, a Good Shepherd, a prayer book, an intercessor, an intercessor! And he calls everyone who loved him, who saw in him the image of a true Christian to the Path of the Cross and to the glory of the Resurrection! "Be my followers, as I am a follower of Christ!" "

Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomna Yuvenaly on the day of the 20th anniversary of the tragic death father Alexander Menhaving performed the funeral Liturgy and the litiya for the murdered man, he highly appreciated his pastoral and educational activities:

“Fr. Alexander, one might say, consulting only with his own conscience, in those years devoted all the fervor of his soul to serving Christ and the Church. We know that at times he stood out from among the co-pastors for his zeal for pastoral and educational activities. "
“A lot of things that Fr. Alexander, for not everything was allowed then, is now being done in every parish. And people somehow forget about the value of the freedom that the Church has now. But then it was a heroic deed, courage - not only zealous pastoral service, but also sacrificial educational service. We can testify that the seed sown by Fr. Alexander, fell on good ground. "
According to Archbishop Mikhail (Mudyugin),

“All his knowledge, encyclopedic erudition, the most diverse interests in science, fiction, art, all his talents, bestowed upon him by God, Father Alexander put into the service of preaching. He preached tirelessly. He always preached on principle, moreover, in a language accessible to his contemporaries ... He was a man of extraordinary spirituality, who led an ascetic life and ended it martyrically. But on the blood of martyrs, as is known since ancient times, seeds of Christian evangelism sprout, the Church of Christ grows and strengthens ... Father Alexander was truly a prophet of modern times and a harbinger of the evangelization of the entire ministry of the Orthodox Church, evangelization that meets the urgent needs and aspirations of the Orthodox people. "

Priest Georgy Chistyakov believed that:

“Father Alexander was one of the people who are not afraid. He was not afraid to go to hospitals to the seriously ill and dying, although it was strictly forbidden, he was not afraid to preach and, moreover, talk about faith with children, practically openly violating Soviet legislation. He was not afraid of the language of his era and, unlike almost all of his brothers, he was able (like the Apostle Paul) to speak with the “pagans” about Christ in the language of these pagans. He was not afraid to synthesize the experience of his predecessors, very different and sometimes mutually exclusive, and he did it surprisingly well, because he did it not at the human level, but at the level of God's love. I was not afraid of the new. "
Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, speaking of Father Alexander, emphasizes the historical context in which he had to live and whose challenges he had to answer:

“As a preacher, Father Alexander developed in the 60s. These were the years of “triumphant” atheism, the years of euphoria associated with the success of scientific and technological revolution, the years of space flights and positivist self-confidence. Even those who did not consider themselves communists sincerely saw religion as just a misunderstanding. And the task of a preacher in an atheistic country was clear: look, it is only in our time and in our country that believers are a frightened minority. But in other countries and in other times everything was different. The entire world culture was created by believers. If there was anyone who ensured the moral progress of peoples, it was religions. It is not true that religion is darkness: there is good in any religion and, by the way, in Christianity. It was necessary at all costs to show that the best values \u200b\u200bthat exist in the sub-Soviet secular culture are not alien to Christianity and are shared by it. The dignity of the individual, creativity, freedom, boldness - all this is in Christianity and, by and large, only there and can be logically justified. "

Criticism
At the same time, representatives of the conservative circles of the Russian Orthodox Church argue that some of the statements of Father Alexander Men contradict the foundations of the Orthodox teaching; criticized his ecumenical views. He was also accused of sympathizing with Catholicism. The well-known Orthodox theologian, Professor of the Moscow Academy of Sciences A.I. Osipov and Protodeacon-missionary Andrei Kuraev did not recommend the books of Archpriest Alexander Men for acquaintance with Orthodoxy.

Protodeacon on the Catholicism of Alexander Men and the attitude of an Orthodox person to this Catholicism (from the article "Alexander Men: The Lost Missionary"):

“The fact that the writer Alexander Men is a Uniate does not mean in any way that his books should be removed from the library of an Orthodox person. In the book collection of any theologian, student, seminarian there is a lot of Christian literature written by non-Orthodox authors. These books are read, appreciated, used. But it is always more convenient to know in advance what confessional views a writer holds. This will make it easier to separate the facts or unquestionably Christian judgments they are reporting from those brought about by confessional bias. You can give a person a book by a Catholic theologian to read, but at the same time it is better to warn him in advance that the author of this wonderful book is a Catholic, and that therefore one should not recklessly agree with some of his judgments about the place of the pope. Reading books about. Alexandra, just keep in mind that you are reading pro-Catholic books. Catholic does not mean bad and does not always mean heretical. It's just that if you want to form an idea of \u200b\u200bOrthodoxy in that depth that distinguishes it from Catholicism, you need to look for other books. "

Kuraev also spoke about the legacy of Alexander Men in the light of today:

“This is the fate of a missionary: the one who speaks the language of his contemporary culture becomes too outdated when that culture is gone. Today we live in a different world. Triumphant atheism was replaced by triumphant occultism. Everyone is playing with beads with words like "karma", "horoscope", "astral", "cosmic ray". Almost all religions of the world came to our house and in a united chorus declared Christianity "obsolete". And here a completely different intonation turned out to be necessary, not the one that was in the books of Father Alexander Men. When the islets of Christianity are threatened to be swallowed up by the occult element, it is no longer up to the search for "common". Time to draw boundaries, dividing lines. It's time to conflict. Christ is not only the One for whom "all nations expect". He is also the One Whom the priests of all popular religions rejected. It is a scandal for the Jews (σκανδαλον) and madness for the Greeks. "

In the "Open letter to the priest Alexander Menu", written by Metropolitan Anthony (Melnikov) (however, the letter was not signed, therefore there are doubts about the authorship of Metropolitan Anthony), he in particular writes: "You are not a newcomer to the church, Father Alexander. So when you you unite in your interpretation the One God of Christians and Ancient Israel with the “god” of modern Judaism the devil, you do this deliberately, knowingly mixing light with darkness. "

Missionary priest Daniel Sysoev considered Alexander Me a heretic, listing 9 basic views of Me, incompatible with Orthodoxy:
Manichaeism. - The doctrine of the complicity of Satan in the creation of the world, the result of which was the alleged evolution.
The doctrine of man as a transformed monkey. Contradicts the definition of the V Ecumenical Council against Origen (it was proclaimed there that the soul and body appeared at the same time. With regard to the teachings of Me, his opinion was condemned by the Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate on December 7, 1935 in the case of Archpriest S. Bulgakov)
Rejection of the inspiration of Holy Scripture (see the anathemas of the week of Orthodoxy).
Rejection of original sin and postulation of the independence of death from human sin (see 124 right. Carthage Council)
The rejection of the existence of a personal Adam and the introduction of the Kabbalistic teaching about Adam Kadmon.
Rejection of the authorship of almost all Old Testament books (see the anathemas against Theodore of Mopsuestia V Ecumenical Council).
In the doctrine of the Church - the adoption of the theory of branches (condemned by the Jubilee Council in 2000).
Syncretism, condemned (together with Theosophy) at the Council of 1994
The encouragement of magic and extrasensory perception (in a lecture to students at the school of psychics) entails 25 years of excommunication from Communion. And it is almost the only one of the wines that brings down two punishments at once on a priest - defrocking and excommunication. (Rules of the VI Ecumenical Council, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, etc.)
- http://www.cirota.ru/forum/message.php?id\u003d318161 (http://www.webcitation.org/6X4IKyLNU)
Archpriest Konstantin Bufeev, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, criticized Alexandra Men, considering his views as a substitution of the Orthodox faith with heretical evolutionist ideas.
Similar accusations against Fr. Alexander is also heard from the Catholic traditionalists.

Editions of Alexander Men

Orthodox worship. Title page

History of religion in seven volumes. Title page of 1 volume

History of religion. Volume 5 cover

History of religion. Output data and abstract of 1 volume

Family
Father - Vladimir Grigorievich (Wolf Gersh-Leibovich) Men (1902 -)
Mother - Elena Semyonovna (Solomonovna) Men (nee Zuperfein; 1908 - January 15, 1979)
Wife - Natalia Grigorenko (originally from the town of Kobelyaki, Poltava region, Ukraine)
Daughter - Elena Men (born 1957) - icon painter
Son - Mikhail Men (born 1960) - Russian politician, governor of the Ivanovo region (2005-2013), Minister of Construction, Housing and Utilities of the Russian Federation since November 1, 2013.
Mother's cousin - Vera Yakovlevna Vasilevskaya (1902-1975), teacher-defectologist, memoirist.

Bibliography

The works of Fr. Alexandra

History of religion. In Search of the Way, Truth and Life (in 7 volumes) (Moscow, 1991-92)
Volume 1. The origins of religion
Volume 2. Magism and Monotheism. The religious path of humanity before the era of the great Teachers
Volume 3. At the gates of Silence. The spiritual life of China and India in the middle of the first millennium BC
Volume 4. Dionysus, Logos, Destiny. Greek religion and philosophy from colonization to Alexander
Volume 5. Messengers of the Kingdom of God. Biblical prophets from Amos to the Restoration (7-4 centuries BC)
Volume 6. On the Threshold of the New Testament
Volume 7. Son of Man
First Apostles (not completed)
History of Religion (textbook in 2 volumes) (Moscow, 1997)
Volume 1. In Search of the Way, Truth and Life
Volume 2. Ways of Christianity
Bibliological Dictionary (in 3 volumes) (Moscow, 2002)
Volume 1. A-I
Volume 2. K-P
Volume 3. P-Z
Sacrament, word and image. On Orthodox worship (Moscow, 1991)
Isagogy. Old Testament Scripture Study Course
Light to the world. A gospel story retold for children
A Practical Guide to Prayer
Reading the apocalypse
Father Alexander answers questions
Magic, occultism, Christianity. Lectures
World spiritual culture. Lectures
The difficult path to dialogue. Collection of articles and essays (Moscow, 1992)
Good news. Lectures and talks (Moscow, 1992)
Light shines in the dark
Death trampling on death (Minsk, 1990)
"Be a Christian." Moscow. Protestant, 1994
I believe ... Conversations about the Symbol of Faith (Moscow, 2001)
Why is it difficult for us to believe in God? Conversations and answers to questions
Articles from the collection "Christianos" (Riga)
Articles from the "Symbol" magazine (No. 43, September 2000)
Articles from the magazine "Vestnik RDKh" (Paris-New York-Moscow)
“... your Fr. Alexander". Correspondence with father Alexander Menem (St. Petersburg, 1999)
Smart sky. Correspondence between Archpriest Alexander Men and Nun Ioanna (Moscow, 2002)
“Alexander Men. About myself…". Memories, interviews, conversations, letters (Moscow, 2007)
All books…. Site library Alexander Men Foundation

Literature about Father Alexander

Grigorenko N., Men P. (compilers). Alexander Men. About me ... (Memories, interviews, conversations, letters). - M .: Life with God, 2007. - ISBN 978-5-903612-08-6.
Aman I. Father Alexander Men. Christ's witness in our time \u003d Yves Hamant. Alexandre Men, un temoin pour la Russie de ce temps. - Paris: Editions Mame, 1993 / Gromova T.V. (translated from French). - M .: Rudomino, 1994.
Bychkov S. Chronicle of an unsolved murder. - M., 1996.
Maslenikova Z.A.Life of Father Alexander Men. - M .: Pristssels, Russlit, 1995 .-- 5000 copies. (2nd ed., M .: Zakharov, 2002, 414 p.)
Eremin A. Shepherd at the turn of the century. - M .: Cart Blanche; Paper Gallery, 2001 .-- 496 p.
Zorin A. Angel-laborer. - M .: Progress-Culture, 1993 .-- 192 p. - ISBN 5-01-003941-9.
Ten years without Me. Index, 2000, No. 11. http://index.org.ru/journal/11/+(2000). - Thematic. release. Retrieved December 6, 2014.
Fainberg V., Levi V., Zavalov M., Zhurinskaya M. Rivers of living water. - M., 2003.

Kolupaev VE Brussels publishing house "Life with God": the Book World of the Russian Diaspora of the XX century. Radio Commission for Soviet Listeners. Saarbrücken. 2012.336 p., Ill.

https: //www.site/2015-09-09/kto_ubil_aleksandra_menya_k_25_letiyu_gibeli_vydayuchegosya_propovednika

"There was a combination of Russian fascism with Russian clericalism"

Who killed Alexander Me? On the 25th anniversary of the death of an outstanding preacher

25 years ago, early in the morning of September 9, 1990, on the way to the liturgy in a small village church, Father Alexander Men was killed - at that moment in history, the most influential Christian preacher in Russia, who was called the spiritual leader of the nation. Someone called out to him, handed in a note, Men bent down to read, took out his glasses - then there was a blow to the back of the head with an ax. The priest did not die immediately, he turned towards the house. An acquaintance who met halfway got scared: "Who are you, Father Alexander?" - "No, nobody, myself." Bleeding, the dying man made his way to his gate ... Now there is a memorial sign at the scene of the murder, but the murderer was never found.

Sergiev Posad. Murder site of Alexander Men

He was warned: leave. But, loving and courageous, he could not leave the flock. Born into a Jewish family, secretly baptized in infancy, in 1935, when some Orthodox were already smoldering in mass graves, and others were soon to lie in them, expelled from the institute for faith, received a spiritual education at the time of Khrushchev's "militant atheism", then found under the constant surveillance of the KGB, under the yoke of denunciations of well-wishers-informers and "chekists in robes", subjected to searches and interrogations, barely escaping prison, Alexander Men carried through his whole life the light of philanthropy, the joy of transformation and strengthening of personality with good, freedom, creativity. He admired and supported the disgraced priests Gleb Yakunin and Nikolai Eshliman, who exposed state repressions against believers (and expelled from the Church by Patriarch Alexy I); baptized tens of thousands of the afflicted; healed with prayer, strengthened seriously ill children and their parents; tirelessly writing articles and books, finally, during perestroika, thanks to the media, he got access to a millionth audience; took up the founding of the Bible Society, the Orthodox University, a week before his death, opened a Sunday school in his parish near Moscow for local children ...

So Men spoke

“Christianity is a God-human religion. This means that human activity here must be complete. If we think that at the behest of a pike, in some hypnotic way, a general change is taking place - as, remember, Wells had a comet in his days: a comet passed, some gas affected people, and everyone became kind and good. What is this good worth? No, constant and active efforts are expected from us. And if a person does not enter this world of Christ, if he does not draw strength from grace, he can be a Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, Baptist a thousand times over - and remain so only formally. We have a lot of such nominal Christians. "

“The Gospel gives us ... a model of human participation in the creative process. It speaks of the real responsibility of man, the real activity of man. We are creators, accomplices, co-defendants. If we fully understand the importance of Christian responsibility, we will see that some of us were looking for something completely different in the Church. ”

"Where the personality is suppressed, where it becomes humiliated, as if unnecessary, and is looked at with contempt - this, of course, is the anti-Christian pole."

“In the wonderful book by Georges Bernanos“ Notes of a Country Priest ”... one of the heroes, a French curé, talks about his altar girl, who suffered from a mania for purity. She polished the church every time to shine. The peasants came, they dirty everything; when they left, she scrubbed again. She, poor, died because she was washing the floor all the time and got infected from this dampness. She wanted one day, once and for all, to clean up. She thought she could do it. Curé cited this example in connection with a conversation about whether one day you can win and one day lie on your laurels and no longer move. No, constant cleaning, constant work, constant movement. Like the heartbeat, like the rotation of the planets. "

“I really appreciate Marx’s words about opium (“ religion is opium for the people ”- ed.), They are always a reminder to Christians who want to turn their faith into a warm bed, a refuge, a quiet haven. The temptation is understandable, widespread, but nevertheless it is only a temptation. The Gospel does not contain anything like a bed or a quiet pier ... True Christianity is, if you will, an expedition. The expedition is extremely difficult and dangerous. That is why the change occurs so often, and many people remain at the foot of the mountain to be climbed; sit in warm huts, read guidebooks and imagine that they are already at the top of this mountain. Some guidebooks very colorfully describe both the ascent and the peak itself. This happens sometimes with us, when we read the writings of the mystics or something similar from the Greek ascetics and, repeating their words, imagine that everything, in general, has already been achieved. There was nothing inviting in the words of Christ and in His calls. He said: "It is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God; rather, a camel will enter the eye of a needle." And everyone was rich, each of us drags some sacks on himself. And he cannot get through this hole. "The gates are narrow, and the way is narrow," He says, that is, it turns out to be difficult. "

“For some newly converted Christians, the Church is a manifestation of a dear and beautiful past. Some even want this past - Byzantine, Old Russian, early Christian - to be anything to return. Meanwhile, Christianity is an arrow aimed at the future, and in the past there were only its first steps. Once I was looking through a World History. The book about the Middle Ages is the “era of faith”. Then there were volumes: the era of reason, the era of revolution, etc. It turns out that Christianity is some kind of medieval phenomenon, which was once, but now disappearing and doomed. No, and a thousand times no. What does Christianity have in common with what we see in the Middle Ages? Narrowness, intolerance, persecution of dissidents, a static perception of the world, quite pagan: that is, the world exists as a hierarchy - the Creator is above, then the angels, below the pope or the king, then the feudal lords, then the peasants, etc., then the animal world, flora, like in a gothic cathedral. And all this is worth, and then God will appear and - the end. There will be a Last Judgment to dismantle this entire building. This static view is contrary to the Bible. Biblical revelation initially offers us a non-stationary model of world history. World history is dynamics, movement, and the whole space is movement, and everything is movement. The Kingdom of God, according to the concepts of the Old and New Testaments, is the coming triumph of the light and plans of God amid the darkness and imperfection of the world. This is what the Kingdom of God is. "

"Narrowness, intolerance, persecution of dissidents, static perception of the world. This point of view is contrary to the Bible."

“Over the past decades, the bulk of the people who formed the general church consciousness were conservatives, elderly people, people who did not at all strive [for live communication, the modern word]. We didn’t strive for what many people are looking for now - a new language. The Church Fathers have always been "modernists." The Apostle Paul was the most radical modernist reformer. Almost every great saint of Christianity was a spiritual revolutionary who brought about a certain revolution ... Even Marxist historians spoke of the "revolutionary poison of the Gospel." [Christ] constantly made itself felt in the form of various opposition movements. "

“Stalinism has raised a generation of conformists who are panicky afraid to have their own opinion. He played on the semi-biological instinct of "submission to the leader", on the psychology of a slave, a thirsty Master, a firm hand. This psychology is far from obsolete and sometimes takes on aggressive features. We owe her the portraits of Stalin, which appear here and there on the windshield ... The process of "squeezing out a slave in oneself" is slow. It has been going on for a third century. We have long been accustomed to books and films where loners, a kind of Don Quixotes, often from among young people, wage a vain and unequal struggle with the sclerotic and bone apparatus. Their fate inspires few. Readers and viewers alike find here confirmation of what they often see in life. A psychology such as "my house is on the edge", "why do I need this?" Young people are deeply disappointed in the effectiveness of an honest civil position, in the expediency of fighting for justice. Hence - her indifference to public issues, a fairly widespread tendency to hide from them. The decline in genuine civic activity (I, of course, do not mean tenacious careerism) is the second reason for crime. The social energy of a young man or girl, without a healthy use, is often channeled through channels that lead to delinquency.

"Stalinism raised a generation of conformists who are panicky afraid to have their own opinion."

“Sometimes church people, believers attack the mind. This comes from a misunderstanding. Reason is the greatest gift of God. All sins and all crimes of the human race were committed when the mind was asleep, when the mind was suppressed. Goya has an etching entitled "The Sleep of Reason Begins Monsters," and this is absolutely true. Take any terrible situation from the history of the world or from your own biography. When some disgusting, shameful thing happened to us, when something vile happened in society, can we say that reason triumphed at that time? In no case! Madness triumphs, the irrational, the blind, the evil triumphs. "

“I am sure that the growth in crime does not stem from the weakness of the law enforcement agencies, although many well-founded claims are made against them. Even if the number of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is doubled, even if the methods of investigation, legal proceedings are improved, and laws are tightened, the root cause of crime will not be eliminated. An increase in living standards will not destroy it (everyone knows that often offenders are children of wealthy families). It is not enough for a person to “honor the criminal code”. If the spirit of humanity does not live and develop in him himself, sooner or later he will become a “consumer”, a cynic, a philistine, a misanthrope, and will make selfish interests his symbol of faith. And from this to the crime - one step. If the moral foundations of life are an illusion, a convention, then the fear of punishment can hardly become a reliable dam against the will of human evil. That is why it was important for Father Brown, the hero of G.K. Chesterton's detective stories, not only to expose the criminal, to catch him, but to awaken his conscience. Father Brown remembered well the words of Christ about the joy in heaven for every sinner who converted. "

“The real goal - the Divine goal of human movement forward - is the development of personality and the conditions that allow it to develop. Everything that contributes to this is the work of Christ, for Christ sanctified the human person, incarnating precisely in the human person, and not in some abstract symbol. This immediately poses before us the main problem in life. What's most important? The most important thing is to strengthen, develop and affirm the personal principle. "

"The older generation must revive in themselves a sense of civic responsibility and only then will they have the right to ask young people."

“A person has several states of being. There is a state close to such, when the personal principle is minimized. This is what the modern language has come to call "the masses." The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset published a book in the 1920s called The Rise of the Masses. In our age, as he shows, the masses have begun to play an important role. But Ortega was wrong: these masses are very easy to manipulate. They play a role because they were given the opportunity to go outside, but they could be very cleverly directed, made to shout "Sieg heil!" or something like that - and they did it with great enthusiasm. When a person becomes a "mass", this state is the lowest. There is another state: when a person is an anonymous collaborator of the work of God - the work of God in a very broad sense of the word. For example, Mahatma Gandhi was not a Christian, but fulfilled the work of Christ on earth, when he preached non-violence, when he tried to introduce humane principles into political life, when, having come to power in the state, he continued to lead his usual ascetic life. There are people who are unwitting accomplices of negative principles. Much is written about this in literature and [is shown] in films: for example, during the Nazi era there were people who were not Nazis by conviction, but by their indifference they involuntarily joined this circle. And, finally, there are two poles to which active people can belong - the pole of good or the pole of evil. The pole of Christ is where a person is respected, honored and where much and important things are done for him ... Where a person is suppressed, where he becomes humiliated, as if unnecessary, and is looked at with contempt - this is, of course, the anti-Christian pole ... If we want to get involved in God's plan, we must develop our own personality and contribute as much as we can to the world around us ... The real human personality is a self-governing organism, self-governing. This must be accompanied by [prayer], and then the Lord helps a person to become such. It is, of course, difficult, but very important for everyone. You see, you then enter the state present... Not some gloomy, twilight creature that does not give an account of its actions, which sometimes lives semi-consciously. "

“Good is what is beautiful, what creates, what moves forward, what fills. This is life. Do you understand? And evil is death, that which hinders development, that which perverts, leads aside, that which dehumanizes a person, that which makes him no longer a person. Evil is sin, it is grotesque. "

The Voice of Living Christianity

An active civic position, responsibility, the struggle for justice, selflessness and selflessness, respect for the individual and mercy as an antithesis to totalitarianism in any of its manifestations ... And today, in a relatively “vegetarian” time, Father Alexander Me would probably be written as a “renegade”, "Agents", "double-dealing" - there is no shortage of labels. What can we say about the late 1990s, when the punitive Soviet system was still in "full combat readiness."

According to the version stated in the book by Vladimir Ilyushenko “Father Alexander Men. Life, death, immortality ", the perpetrators of the murder of the priest were professional killers, the organizers were special services, and the inspirers, customers were the state-nationalist, conservative wing of the Church, including some hierarchs and ideologists of" Orthodox anti-Semitism "," those who belonged to the highest church hierarchy , however, created an atmosphere of intolerance towards everything that deviated from the medieval model of Orthodoxy, those who stood on the positions of aggressive nationalism. "

"The development of the personality and the conditions that allow it to develop, everything that contributes to this is the work of Christ."

Ilyushenko tells how “at the funeral of Fr. Alexandra, a tall man in a monk's skoufie, with dull eyes the color of bottle glass, declared from the church porch that the priest had been killed by “their own”. “Ours” means Jews, Zionists. It turned out that the Jew Alexander Men is another “tortured by the Jews”. The prosecutor's office, according to Ilyushenko, turned the "Zionist" version in its own way: they say, "the hidden Jew" Men destroyed the ROC and the "Russian State" itself, and paid for that. “These people, in essence, are hostile to Christianity, which is permeated with the spirit of truth, love and freedom. For them, Orthodoxy is a Russian ethnographic reserve, protected by the state, and, moreover, a religion of hatred for a common enemy - a heterodox, a foreigner, a dissenter. People are incompetent, they were full of fierce hatred and envy towards Fr. Alexander, gifted from above beyond any measure, ”says Vladimir Ilyushenko. It is significant that after the death of Me he was arbitrarily declared a heretic, his books were forbidden to be distributed in churches and monasteries, and even burned - such was, for example, the order of the odious Nikon, in the 1990s - the bishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhotursk.

In the end, without arresting the murderer, the investigators “calmed down” on the “everyday life”, this conclusion was later confirmed, in particular, by Sergei Stepashin. Although in reality everything could be much more mysterious, dense. According to the recollections of General Alexander Lebed, in those September days of 1990, a state (according to Ilyushenko's formulation, military-fascist, Black-Hundred) coup was being prepared and almost carried out: the armed divisions of the Airborne Forces were already standing near Moscow. For some reason, the coup was postponed (until August 1991), Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov assured the public that the paratroopers had arrived to help the local population in harvesting potatoes. The only victim of the then faltering putschists was Alexander Men. “He was the main spiritual obstacle on the way of these plans, so it was necessary to eliminate him first of all,” Ilyushenko believes.

Tomb of Alexander Men, New Village

“He, like no one else, was aware of the deep perversion of human nature, resulting from the trampling on the spiritual principle. At the social level, this manifested itself, in particular, in the slavish subordination of the Church to the state. This perversion, cultivated in Russia for several centuries, eventually led to a grave crisis of Christianity and was, perhaps, the main reason for the victory of totalitarianism in our country, which, in turn, continued and brought to a dangerous line the process of de-Christianization of Russia - writes Vladimir Ilyushenko. - The Russian Orthodox Church as a whole is characterized by a closed model of Christianity based on traditionalist values, xenophobia and chauvinism. Aggressive nationalism in the Orthodox guise is a new paganism, anti-Christian in its essence. For the protective-conservative variety of Orthodoxy, what can be called spiritual and cultural narcissism is extremely characteristic - self-admiration, self-adoration, idealization of oneself and one's past. These clerical circles, as Fr. Alexander, "delighted with myself." And he, two days before his death, in an interview with a Spanish journalist pointed out the new reality of our time: "There has been a combination of Russian fascism with Russian clericalism and church nostalgia." He said that this is a very dangerous tendency, because people come to the Church to preach goodness, but they encounter isolationism, anti-Semitism, etc. He bitterly stated: “... society expected to find some kind of support in us, but support is received for the fascists ". Indeed, many priests take extremely chauvinistic positions, while others even become ideologues of Nazism. In turn, the extremist forces hope to receive from the Church some kind of sacred sanction to pursue a pogrom, xenophobic policy. Both are striving to turn Orthodoxy into an ethnic religion, into an element of "national-religious ideology." Both are transforming Christianity from a religion of love into an ideology of hatred. "

Quotes - from the conversations of Alexander Men "Why is it difficult for us to believe in God?", "About good and evil", "Youth and ideals", "A man is a person", as well as from the book by Vladimir Ilyushenko "Father Alexander Men. Life, death, immortality ”, publishing house“ Eksmo ”, 2013

Orthodox Christian, Archpriest Alexander Men is not the mind and pride of Orthodoxy in the 20th century.

Yes, Father Alexander was and died an Orthodox priest (ROC MP). Nobody excommunicated him from the Church. Many of his spiritual children still serve as priests in the churches of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (but some have gone into schism). For example, the temple of the holy unrebringers Cosma and Damian (near Tverskaya street). His books are also sold there and the Fr. Alexandra Men.

Every year, two members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (Metropolitan Yuvenaly, if I am not mistaken) serve the Liturgy and pray in the church in which Fr. Alexander.

Another thing is that the theological views of Fr.A. The ROC-MP recognizes me as not entirely Orthodox. In other words, oh. Alexander Men was mistaken (and all the errors are from the devil) in some matters. That is why the majority of Orthodox Christians have a cool attitude to his books.

In general, Men was not an Orthodox theologian (he falls short to put it mildly), he is a typical biblical scholar. In this sense, the Orthodox can be proud of him, but no more. In the context of world culture, he is one in a thousand. The 19th and 20th centuries gave the world a huge number of biblical scholars. Of course, here in Russia, he is the only one from this point of view. Therefore, it is not clear why the Orthodox should be proud of the display of a mediocre mind.

But the holy fathers (Father Herma, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian), or the Orthodox dogmatists of the 19th century (St. Milaret of Moscow, Met. Makary Bulgakov), or the holy martyrs of the 20th century (Holy Martyr Ilarion Troitsky, etc.) - there are very few of them in the world. These saints and theologians are the pride of all Orthodox Christians.

Precisely because Men "looked at some questions in a new way," he cannot be an accurate exponent of Truth. "Glory in the Church in Christ Jesus to all generations from century to century"(Eph. 3:21).

Another stereotype. It is often said: "Alexander Men is a person and a person with a capital letter. A true Christian." By this most often they mean his virtuous life. But in this case, Buddha, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi can be declared "real Christians". They, too, were "individuals and people with a capital letter." Some people do something like this, but then the entire Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition and, most importantly, the Church, "as a pillar and confirmation of truth" are excluded from the brackets.

Is the MP involved in killing Me?

Remember Men has been awarded church awards Moscow Patriarchateand wore the rank of archpriest, which is difficult to obtain, but which can be easily lost. Men, as a minister of the Moscow Patriarchate, in this sense, suited the Patriarchate itself.

Alexander Vladimirovich Men
1.
Father Alexander was born in Moscow on January 22, 1935.
The Soviet government at this time trumpeted its victories. The Congress of the Communist Party the year before had been called the "Congress of the Winners." Under the leadership of the Communist Party and its illustrious leader J.V. Stalin, the Soviet people perform heroic deeds, the soldiers vigilantly guard the borders, the NKVD exterminates the enemies of the people, the pilots fly higher than anyone else, farther and faster, the Stakhanovites break performance records. At the same time, the GULAG, where there were already millions of people, did not stop growing. Atheism reigned. They thought that only uneducated old women could believe in God. More than 95% of churches were closed. Not a single monastery, not a single seminary already existed. In 1935, the Church seemed to be ousted from society. Indeed, the visible life of the Church did not exist, but it did not go out, but continued widely everywhere, but secretly - it became a catacomb. Catacombs of the 20th century! The faith of little Alexander was awakened in their depths.

Solovki 1937

2. Childhood about. Alexandra
The parents of Alexander Men belonged to a generation that, on the whole, had no doubts about the correctness of the chosen path and built the future society without posing metaphysical questions. His father studied at a technical institute and then devoted himself entirely to his job as a textile engineer. Any religion was alien to him, but he was tolerant of it.

But Alexander's mother, Elena, was deeply religious. Born, like her father, into a Jewish family, she was raised in love for God. “When I first heard the words about the fear of God,” she recalls, “I asked my mother in bewilderment:“ We love God, how can we be afraid of him? ”Mom answered me:“ We must be afraid to upset him with some bad deed "This answer satisfied me completely.

In addition, Elena was greatly influenced by her grandmother. The family, not without pride, told how she was healed by John of Kronstadt himself near the Annunciation Cathedral in Kharkov. In 1890, left a widow with seven children, she fell ill. The doctors were unable to cure her. One day a neighbor told her that a famous preacher was passing through the city and persuaded her to go to him. The cathedral and the area around it were crowded with people, but they managed to get through to Fr. John. Looking at her, he said: "I know that you are Jewish, but I see deep faith in God in you. Let us pray together to the Lord, and He will heal you from your illness." A month later, she was completely healthy.

3. Baptism
The 1917-1918 Council of the Orthodox Church set itself, among other things, the goal of rebuilding parishes in the form of "small churches" in the image of the first Christian communities. After the revolution, the laity began to unite in brotherhoods around some priests, talented and strong people.

In Moscow, there were two, especially active, directly related communities. The first was formed around the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker on Maroseyka, where father Alexei Mechev served, and then his son - Fr. Sergiy Mechev. The second arose in the parish of Sts. Cyrus and John, where Father Seraphim Batyukov served.

Alexander with his mother

On September 3, 1935, Vera's friend, Elena's sister, brought her with little Alik by train to Zagorsk and brought her to Father Seraphim. He was already waiting for them. Here, in a small house, he baptized both - both mother and son. Vera was baptized at the same time. When Elena's second son, Paul, was born, Vera became the godmother. Elena and Vera regularly traveled from Moscow to Zagorsk for services that were held in secret. Father Seraphim became their spiritual father.

Father Seraphim died at the end of 1942. He was secretly buried in a dungeon. Some time before that, anticipating his death, he confessed Alik for the first time, although he was not yet seven years old. "I felt with my grandfather so, - said the child, - as if I was in heaven with God, and at the same time he spoke to me as simply as we talk to each other."

As for Father Seraphim, he already predicted to two sisters a long time ago: "For your suffering and thanks to your upbringing, your Alik will be a great man."

After the death of Fr. Seraphima, abbess of the underground nunnery, Mother Maria continued to strengthen young Alexander and helped him to form spiritually.
- “An ascetic and a prayer woman, she was completely devoid of the traits of hypocrisy, old belief and narrowness, which are often found among persons of her rank,” Fr. Alexander later recalled. problems, their search, openness to the world. For my whole life I have been thinking not to stop the dialogue between the Church and society, begun by Optina Hermitage, and to participate in it with my weak forces. "

4. Adolescence and student life
During the war, Stalin was forced to reconsider his policy towards the Church. The Soviet government, in order to mobilize the population against the aggressor, began to appeal more to national feelings and talk less about defending the ideals of communism. But the Russian national identity is closely related to Christianity. Therefore, and also in order to look better in the eyes of the allies, certain concessions were made for the Church. The theological academy and the seminary were restored in Moscow, and the publication of the "Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate" became possible again. It was allowed to conduct divine services, but besides this, any form of the Church's activities in society remained prohibited. The Church was treated approximately the same as the Indians' reservations - they were not destroyed, provided that they did not cross the marked line. A special body was created under the Council of Ministers of the USSR: the Council for the Affairs of the Orthodox Church. While in Moscow, he had representatives in each region who constantly monitored the activities of the Church.

However, for all that, the Church was able to rise. The revival of the Church was especially sensitive in Moscow. Here not only many churches were opened, here believers could listen to talented preachers, and in some churches - cycles of lectures on religious topics. The old parishioners of the two Mechev fathers gathered at Boris Vasiliev's. He and his wife gave lectures on culture and religion in their apartment. In addition, the New Testament was read there together.

The connections between the old spiritual children of the Mechevs' fathers and Father Seraphim were very close. Vera and Elena were friends with the Vasilievs, Alik, of course, was always a welcome guest with them. The meetings with all these Christian intellectuals greatly enriched him, and then, in them he saw an example of a close-knit parish community that preserved spiritual unity even many years after the death of its pastors and despite the vicissitudes of the era.

Alik was an early matured and unusually gifted child with a thirst for knowledge. When he was ten years old, Vera explained to him that what he did not have time in childhood then you will never catch up. Therefore, it is necessary, without delay, to set serious tasks for ourselves and try to solve them as early as possible. Like many Moscow families, Alik's family lived in a communal apartment at that time. Bored in one room five of us lived: parents, two boys and Vera. Alik fenced off his bed and his bedside table, which was packed with books, with a screen. In the evening he prepared for himself what he decided to do in the morning, and went to bed at nine o'clock, no matter what guests or interesting radio programs would tempt him; he got up early in the morning and read while everyone was asleep. During these morning classes, he pounced on compositions that were truly difficult for a child of his age. Kant, for example, he read at thirteen.

From his studies at school, he retained a rather gloomy impression. Although among the students who studied at the same time there were several strong personalities - poet A. Voznesensky, cinematographer A. Tarkovsky and Alexander Borisov - one of his closest friends. Subsequently, Borisov also became a priest. Now he is the rector of a parish in the very center of Moscow, everyone knows him as one of the most active servants of the Church.

Despite his talent, Alik was not an excellent student, withdrawn and unable to communicate. He participated in the life of the class and, like books, was surrounded by friends. He had the broadest interests, he loved literature, poetry, music, painting. Later, he himself began to paint and draw. He also painted icons. I went to the zoo to draw animals.

“I went to the forest or to the paleontological museum as if to a temple,” he wrote.

At first Alik thought that he would fulfill his Christian mission by doing science or art. Meanwhile, little by little, a different vocation was ripening in him. For it to become apparent, a personal meeting with Christ was needed. He heard this personal call at the age of twelve and decided that he should serve God as a priest. Mother Mary blessed him for this.

He went to the seminary, the inspector of which said that he would be happy to add him to the lists as soon as Alik came of age.

Alexander, as far as possible, continued to educate himself. I read great philosophers. Accidentally discovered the works of Russian religious thinkers of the first half of the century, expelled from the country by order of Lenin, and which were then forgotten, such as N.A. Berdyaev, S.N.Bulgakov, N.O. Lossky, S.L. Frank ... He had a period of passion for Khomyakov.

At the age of about fifteen, one day at a flea market, among nails, old shoes and locks, he discovered the volume of Vladimir Soloviev, a thinker who was truly the pioneer of Russian religious thought in the twentieth century. He eagerly swallowed this volume, and later obtained others. This was a discovery for him. Alexandra was attracted by the main idea that dynamism operates in the center of reality, uniting nature, man and God himself into a single process.

Once a week, Alexander replenished his stock of books with professor-chemist Nikolai Pestov. Once on his desk, Alexander saw a photograph of Teresa of Lisieux. Images of Catholic saints hung on the walls. It seems that Pestov came to a meeting with Catholicism from contacts with Baptists. It was he who helped Alexander to know Western Christianity. To better understand the Bible, Alexander also studied Roman antiquity, but mainly the Ancient East. At the same age, he already began to serve at the altar in the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in Presnya. There he read and sang in the choir.

Alexander began to write very early. By the age of twelve he wrote an article on nature and a play about St. Francis of Assisi. And only at the age of fifteen his first theological essay. It was still a purely student's work, but at the same time it contained a kind of framework for his later works.

In 1953, after graduating from school, having independently mastered the seminary program, Alexander decided to enter the Moscow Fur and Fur Institute, since his origin became an obstacle to entering the University.

As a student, he continued to study theology, but now at the level of the program of the theological academy. I started writing a short history of the Church, but then switched to my first book and finished it: "What the Bible says and what it teaches." In the first year of study at the institute, during boring lectures, Alexander read a huge work of Father P. Florensky about the Church, and so that it would not be noticeable, he cut it into pieces of paper. Alexander was always a good friend and always took part in the activities of the group, so his fellow practitioners did not see anything wrong with the fact that he was interested in "high matters". In his sophomore year, he began to share his thoughts with some of the students. In his third year, everyone already knew that he was Orthodox.

At this time, he became close to Father Nikolai Golubtsov, a sociable and democratic man, able to conduct a dialogue with non-believers. For Alexander, he represented the same ideal of a priest as Father Seraphim, as he saw him from the stories of his mother and aunt. Alexander chose Fr. Nicholas to his spiritual fathers.

In 1955, the institute was closed and the students were transferred to the corresponding institute in Irkutsk. Alexander lived there for three years. He met the bishop and began to carry out various assignments for him. He constantly had to run from the institute to the church, which was just opposite. His comrades were calm about this. Remembering this, Father Alexander will say later: "Imagine what would have happened if on the first day after entering the institute I had been demonstratively baptized! I had to bring them to the understanding that one of them could be a believer."

In the first year of his life in Irkutsk, Alexander shared a small apartment with Gleb Yakunin, who would later become one of the major figures in the struggle for religious freedom.

In 1956, Alexander married a student Natalia Grigorenko.

This was the time when a new page in the history of the country was opened.

5. The beginning of the ministry
In February 1956, the XX Congress of the Communist Party was held, during which Khrushchev, behind closed doors, read his famous report on Stalin's crimes. The result rocked the country. The one whom the people mourned three years ago as the greatest genius of all times and peoples, was, as it turned out, just a scoundrel. Millions of men and women have been freed from the Gulag. The censorship unclenched its arms. Contacts with the outside world were restored ... This period went down in history as the Thaw.

The believers also felt the results of de-Stalinization - many clerics began to return. However, unlike the rest of society, the Church did not enjoy the thaw for long. In 1958, the Communist Party decided to start a large anti-religious campaign. Khrushchev declared that by the time a communist society was built — twenty years from now — religion should have disappeared. An avalanche of anti-religious propaganda hit the country. The Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church demanded that the Church harmonize its Statutes with civil law. As a result, in 1961, a resolution of the Bishops' Council was adopted, which was held in violation of all the rules of the Church, on the transfer of the leadership of the parishes to the authority of a body consisting of three secular persons, and the priests were supposed to engage exclusively in divine services. Thus, they were relegated to the position of wage earners for temple services.

When the attack on religion began, Alexander Men was finishing his studies in Irkutsk. He knew that for three years after graduation he would have to work in his specialty, and then he would enter the Zagorsk seminary. Meanwhile, at the moment when the last examination session began, he was unexpectedly expelled from the institute. The administration became aware of his ties with the diocese. I had to leave without receiving a diploma.

In this he saw a sign of providence and realized that this time the time had come to fulfill his calling. Returning to Moscow, he received Fr. Nikolai Golubtsov and on July 1, 1958, on Trinity in the church where Father Nikolai served, Alexander was ordained deacon, despite the fact that he did not graduate from seminary. In the parish near the Odintsovo station near Moscow, where he was sent, Father Alexander served for two years. Material conditions were difficult, and wages were poor. With his wife and one-year-old daughter, they settled him in a dilapidated house. There were usually few believers. For the rector, a former accountant, the Liturgy consisted primarily of the most scrupulous execution of the Rite. However, it was in this church that young Father Alexander began a series of talks about the life of Christ.

During these years he studied in absentia at the Leningrad Seminary. On September 1, 1960, he was ordained a priest. The ordination took place at the Donskoy Monastery. Alexander was appointed second priest in Alabino, 50 kilometers from Moscow; a year later, he replaced the abbot of the temple.

With his ability to build relationships with people, Alexander managed to find a common language with the city authorities, the parish and the council lived in peace. The temple was in a very bad condition, the iconostasis and wall paintings are very bad. Father Alexander has developed a whole program for restoration and repair. A candle box was moved from the church to the vestibule so that during the service the parishioners would not be disturbed by the ringing of coins. Around the church there was a plot of land with a small house, where they equipped a room for visitors and a dwelling for the priest, and it sheltered the family of Father Alexander, who recently had a son. In his free time, my father settled down in the garden, where he wrote his books. Thanks to Anatoly Vedernikov, he published about 20 articles in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. Therefore, a devastating article appeared in the journal Science and Religion.

Every Saturday, Father Alexander explained the creed, the meaning of the main prayers and liturgy. Several young people who recently converted have become his friends for many years. Thus, a small community of active Christians began to form.

Father Alexander knew how to take advantage of the circumstances: someone died in the presence of a district official and, due to an exceptional case, Father Alexander was given permission to serve a requiem outside the church, which was prohibited. Based on this fact, the next time he asked for the renewal of the permit, and so on two hundred and fifty more times!

At this time, the anti-religious wave began to gradually subside. Khrushchev's authority in the ranks of the party became more and more doubtful, his opponents secretly prepared a replacement for him.

In 1964, the Plenipotentiary of the Council for Orthodox Church Affairs in the Moscow Region summoned Father Alexander and demanded that he leave Alabino.

With the help of the secretary of the diocesan council, he found the vacant position of the second priest in Tarasovka, north of Moscow, and was immediately appointed there. However, he never again had such favorable conditions as in Alabin. In Tarasovka, he did not even have a place where he could receive parishioners; he had to talk to them either in church or on the train.

The period while Father Alexander served in Alabino was also marked by the creation of a circle of young priests in Moscow and its environs, just as ardently as he wanted to work on the renewal of the Church. Father Alexander suggested that they meet regularly and improve their theological education, exchange priestly experience with each other, and try to solve the problems they faced in pastoral work. In November 1965 G. Yakunin and N. Eshliman, members of this group, signed two long letters exposing countless cases of state interference in church affairs, and addressed them: one to Patriarch Alexy I, and the second to the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This demarche caused a sensation among the clergy and was welcomed by many priests. They also made a big impact abroad, where a campaign was launched in support of the Christians of Russia. Many thought that the letters were written by Alexander, as a result of which he began to seem dangerous to the authorities. In fact, he admired the two priests and highly appreciated the moral significance of their speech, but he believed that his calling as a priest lay elsewhere. He focused on work among the parishioners, on evangelism, on pastoral work in communities among believers and among those who were looking for faith. He believed that his calling was to respond to spiritual requests that appeared in society. Just at this time, in 1966, many young and not especially young people began to flock to him.

6. The end of the Khrushchev era
Khrushchev was overthrown by a palace coup. Brezhnev became the spokesman for the caste, whose name is the nomenclature. They stopped denouncing Stalin's crimes, but they rehabilitated him only half. The abandonment of the policy of de-Stalinization and the occupation of Czechoslovakia put an end to the hopes for change that the 20th Congress had generated. A long period of stagnation began. Vague discontent, passive but massive, began to grow in the country. The population has begun in a latent form, but to abandon the official ideological models. People stopped believing in the construction of paradise on earth. Personality began to be appreciated more than the team. Suddenly, an interest arose in ancient Russian art, in icons and church architecture. At this time, outside of the official culture, a whole parallel culture developed, of course, in narrow circles - with its own "mass media" "samizdat", then "tamizdat" (this was the name of books in Russian published abroad and secretly imported into Russia ), "magnitizdat". This also includes exhibitions of artists in private apartments, concerts and screenings of films for their own.

In the years since the fall of Khrushchev, people's attitude to religion has changed markedly. Having abandoned the project of a collective future, the individual closed in on himself, he was mainly concerned about his career and personal comfort, but many of this led to thoughts about the purpose and meaning of existence. Contempt and mockery of the Church, religion and faith gave way to curiosity, even respect. Many have shown an increasing interest in yoga, parapsychology, astrology, in everything that is a surrogate for faith. It became obvious that not only old women attend church, religion is no longer the property of the old and uneducated. Those who came to the faith without receiving a religious education at home and often against the will of the family made up about a third of those attending services in Moscow and Leningrad, where church attendance was not as dangerous as in smaller cities. Young men and women, who until recently did not think about any religion, became Christians, and their conversion, for the most part, was done spontaneously.

However, there were very few priests who knew how to converse with new converts, yearning for a living word that would directly correspond to their personal experience. The main difficulty in the life of the neophytes was their isolation. There was practically no communal life in the Church.

Sandr Riga, a Latvian who lived in Moscow, at first led a hectic life, faith came to him suddenly. After baptism, he very soon felt the pernicious division of Christians. And so, starting from 1971, around him, a Catholic, newly converted Christians of different confessions began to meet regularly in small groups in apartments. This movement began to be called "ecumene". They tried to focus mainly on common prayer, mutual assistance, and deeds of mercy. In this way, Sandr Rīga and his friends contributed to the disclosure of the meaning and importance of community life for Christians.

After the removal of Khrushchev, frontal and massive attacks on the Church stopped, but the persecution continued in a more covert form, preferring administrative pressure. In the years after Brezhnev's death, repressions along the entire azimuth intensified. Until 1987, there was no lull for believers.

7. Service in the New Village
After his appointment to Tarasovka, the conditions in which Father Alexander carried out his apostolic ministry no longer changed for about twenty years, until 1988. He decided to pursue his mission modestly, keeping a low profile and avoiding confrontation with civilian authorities as much as possible. He set himself the goal of being accessible to a new generation of Soviet youth, the one who began to free itself from the illusions of communist ideology and was looking for new ways, to answer their questions, to lead them to Christ. The number of people looking for a meeting with him was constantly growing. The rumor about him was passed from mouth to mouth. All this fuss around him began to excite the abbot, who closely followed him. It ended with the fact that he sent a denunciation to the KGB. Father Alexander turned to Vladyka Pimen with a request to transfer him to another parish. But the parishioners did not want to let him go, and he had to serve for another year with the informer.

One fine day, the rector of a neighboring church suggested that the rector of the church in Tarasovka exchange a second priest with him. The castling took place in the summer of 1970, Fr. Alexander left Tarasovka almost secretly. In the New Village, where Fr. Alexander got into these days, he will serve until his death, almost all the time as a second priest. I had to wait for 1989 until he was appointed abbot.

At this time, Fr. Alexander and his family settled in Semkhoz, a small village, in a wooden house with a garden and became very attached to him. The doors of this house were always wide open for friends, parishioners and even strangers who were looking for a meeting with him. Dostoevsky wrote that everyone should know that they are waiting for him somewhere. Well! Semkhoz was just such a place where everyone was expected at any moment.

"If I was asked how a soul feels when it has gone to heaven," says one of his friends, "I would answer: exactly like in the house of Alexander's father. Nothing special, just good. Like never before. Free. Light. Warmth. Nothing superfluous. Magic harmony, breathed by the owner, emanated from every corner and object. "

But mostly he received people in his parish. Semkhoz is more than an hour and a half drive from Moscow. He enjoyed a certain peace there, it was there that he wrote his books and therefore he often repeated that he could not write all his books if he lived in Moscow.

about. Alexander with his family

Everything in this house was simple, but impeccable order reigned. For Fr. Alexandra, even behind small things, is based on the habit of creative work inherent in every Christian. To help his wife in some way, he did not neglect his homework, often went shopping. All the hard household work and the vegetable garden lay on it. He believed that today in the life of a married couple there should be no responsibilities that lie only with the wife, and knew how to cook. When Natalya Fedorovna for some reason was not at home, and he had visitors, he himself prepared food for them, laughing, humming, reading poetry.

As in all village churches, the parishioners of the new village church were mainly old women. With the arrival of Fr. Alexandra, the composition of the parish has been renewed. New faces began to appear: intelligentsia, youth, Muscovites. Many did not know how to behave in the temple, how to be baptized. There were always grandmothers who taught young people about girls' trousers, bare heads, etc. However, with patience and a kind attitude towards both, Fr. Alexander managed to ensure that both groups accepted each other, despite all the differences.

Although Father Alexander is often called the priest of the intelligentsia, he by no means neglected ordinary people: parishioners from his village and its environs. They themselves respected him and believed in the power of his prayer. He went from house to house, visited almost every family: he gave communion to the sick, unleashed the dying, and blessed houses. Everyone has experienced his sociability and warmth.

There was a wooden house next to the church, in which Father Alexander had a small study, where there was a sofa so that he could sleep there. Most often, it was there that people came to him. If only these walls could speak! How many men and women who no longer believed in anything found the meaning of life there! How many of those who lost hope left here with renewed vigor! How many of them, talking at length about their past, first confessed their sins there! How many secretly baptized themselves and for the first time crossed themselves with a heavy and tense hand, as if overcoming some kind of physical resistance!

Father Alexander was not content with accepting new or future believers in Novaya Derevnya. For those who feared to be seen in Novaya Derevnya, he made appointments at the apartments of his friends. He often baptized both adults and children at home, because baptism in the church at that time attracted attention and promised serious trouble.

Friendship meetings and conversations with people seeking the meaning of life have always been an occasion for Father Alexander to give an informal lesson in the basics of faith. “As a priest, I strove to unite the parish, to make it a community, and not a bunch of random strangers. I tried to help each other, pray together, commune together,” wrote Father Alexander.

To everyone who turned to him, he provided help, both spiritual, moral and material. If he baptized someone, then in the future he regularly confessed him, gave communion, baptized his children, consecrated his apartment; gave advice on how to build a married and family life, relationships at work, helped in scientific studies, found the address of the right doctor, connected people who were able to provide others with this or that service; on occasion he helped financially - he did it unnoticed, for example, putting money in a book lying on the table. From his thick, always jam-packed portfolio, he often pulled out small gifts, and he always managed to find just what you needed. It was another sign of attention that was shown to everyone.

In the summer, many of his friends rented dachas around Novaya Derevnya. A small Novoderevensky community every day strengthened the bonds of friendship.

At first it was just a group of people. Father Alexander relied on them, and especially on his mother, to help the converts. By the end of the sixties, this circle could no longer answer the inquiries of everyone who passed through the hands of Father Alexander, for there were more and more of them. Then he began to create small groups so that they met regularly, usually once a week. All groups were focused on common prayer and mutual assistance, but each had its own face. One was specially intended for the catechesis of those preparing for baptism, the other was devoted to theology and history of the Church, etc.

Father Alexander attached great importance to the sacrament of baptism and believed that one should prepare for it. He said: "Wait! When you are really ready, I will feel it and I will set the date of baptism myself." Fr. Alexander recommended that members of small groups go to confession and receive communion at least once a month. He was one of those who today, in the bosom of the Orthodox Church, advocated a return to frequent communion. Before confession, Fr. Alexander was not content with a simple enumeration of sins and always preached a sermon, helping believers to understand themselves. Here his talent as a preacher, experience of spiritual life and a sensitive attitude to the state of the soul of every parishioner were manifested simultaneously. It is no coincidence that many in these moments were seized by the feeling that the words spoken by the father were directed personally to them.

Father Alexander also believed that believers cannot get by with one general confession, but must necessarily alternate it with an individual confession, during which a true personal contact can be established between a priest and a parishioner, and he insisted on this very much. The church, Father Alexander reminded, compares a confessor to a doctor. He himself was just such a doctor, a patient doctor who first listens, encourages, instills great hope. He healed with abundant love.

Father Alexander wanted to lead everyone to make their own decisions. He didn't want to order, insist. He compared his role to an obstetrician who only helps a mother to give birth to a child. He also constantly reminded that prayer is inseparable from the Christian life, that prayer feeds on faith. He wrote a small practical guide to prayer, typed it on a typewriter, and gave it to his spiritual children to read. "In ancient mythology, the giant Antaeus is told, he gained strength by touching the ground," said Father Alexander, "on the contrary, in order to gain strength, we must touch the sky for a moment."

All his friends testify to the power of his prayer. It would be necessary to collect the testimonies of all who claim to have been healed through his prayer. All who knew him were amazed at his reserve of strength. He never refused to meet anyone, and it was possible to come to him without warning. And he dropped everything to listen to you, unless he served. He possessed an unusually powerful capacity for work, a powerful memory and a rare ability to focus. From childhood, he learned not to waste time. As soon as there was free space in the train, he sat down, took out a cardboard folder from his briefcase, put a sheet of paper on it and began to write ... When Fr. Alexander was once asked how he manages to keep up with everything, he pointed with his eyes to the icon and answered with a smile: "And I have a contract. I give everything that I have and all my time, and I, too, is given time to do everything as much as possible."

The scope of Father Alexander's activities, of course, cannot be measured in numbers, but if it comes to that, you can cite the following: in the seventies there were dozens of groups and around each of them, in its orbit, there were often dozens of people. The father baptized an average of fifty people a month, mostly adults. Thanks to his spiritual openness, encyclopedic knowledge, love of literature, art, interest in science, he was an ideal interlocutor for intellectuals, whose questions he never got rid of with general phrases. How many famous people: scientists, writers, artists were they turned to the Gospel?

From all this, Father Alexander in no way derived glory for himself. He was not at all turned towards himself. He always remained extremely humble, he liked to present himself as a simple rural priest. "Well, I did this and that," he said, "well, with one more book. What is this in comparison with the immensity of tasks?"

8. Christian in the modern world
Everything that Father Alexander taught was focused on Jesus Christ. One of his spiritual children recalls: "Father Alexander could endlessly talk about Christ as a close person, each time finding new living features in him."

Christianity, he repeated, is not the sum of dogmas and moral commandments, first of all it is Jesus Christ himself. “Note,” he said in his last lecture, “Christ did not leave us a single written line, did not leave tablets, did not dictate the Koran, did not form an order, but He said to his disciples:“ I remain with you all the days until the end of the age. .. "All the deepest experience of Christianity is built on this."

"True Christianity," he said, "is, if you will, an expedition. The expedition is unusually difficult and dangerous. By adopting Christianity, we accept the risk. We do not get guaranteed mental states at all." He taught his listeners to discover the presence of God in the world. Everything that is beautiful and good in people, everything that is good that they do - all this is from God, even if they do not suspect it. We must never reject good, even if it is done by an unbeliever. On the contrary, we should be happy about it.

He did not want his spiritual children, from among the converts, to cut themselves off from life, stifle their aspirations, and stop engaging in their professional or social activities, which is often very tempting. "A Christian in the modern world" - he believed that these words contained a whole program.

Father Alexander paid special attention to culture. Among his friends and spiritual children, there were many people from the art world. He believed that in true creativity man realizes God's gift.

Inviting to see everything beautiful and good in the world, he by no means looked at him through rose-colored glasses, he knew perfectly well how much evil there was in the world.

Father Alexander urged not to confuse Tradition with "legends" and reminded that the forms of worship have changed over the centuries and that they cannot remain absolutely unchanged. He said that tradition should not become an end in itself and did not approve of those Orthodox, for whom the main concern during fasting is to make a list of foods that are allowed and prohibited.

It is known that with the coming to power of the Communists, the Orthodox Church could not successfully complete the reformatory work begun in the early years of the twentieth century, even the very idea of \u200b\u200breform was compromised for a long time by the collusion between the "renovationists" and the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, the emergence of a new generation of believers, without the slightest Christian culture, in an environment completely devoid of Christian faith, again raises the question of reform very sharply, primarily of liturgical reform. In particular, the language used in divine services is poorly understood. This position could not satisfy Father Alexander. And, nevertheless, he did not allow himself to act with "partisan" methods and take on a personal initiative not consistent with the prescriptions of the Church. In addition, he was wary of any excesses and believed that here the right path lies somewhere in the middle.

Father Alexander was open towards other Christian denominations, in particular, towards Catholicism. Undoubtedly, the works of Soloviev had a definite influence on his ecumenical convictions. He loved to quote the words of Vladyka Plato, Metropolitan of Kiev, who said that "our earthly partitions do not reach God." He explained the division of the Church by political and national, ethnopsychological, and cultural reasons. "I came to the conviction that the Church is essentially one, and that what divided Christians mainly was their narrowness, narrowness and sins." Father Alexander believed that this division would be overcome in the spirit of brotherly love. "If members of different communities know each other better, it will bear fruit over time."

Father Alexander knew Father Jacques Lev, who came to Moscow and, with the greatest precautions, conducted Bible seminars in apartments. Father Alexander knew that Father Jacques did not think about converting people to Catholicism. On the contrary, he encouraged new converts to live the full life of their own Orthodox tradition - the inalienable wealth of the one Church. In addition, Father Alexander met with the French nun Sister Magdalene, who, following the path of Charles de Foucault, founded the Brotherhood of Jesus' Little Sisters. The ideal of life for this community is the years of obscurity that Jesus lived in Nazareth, in a simple workshop. Carrying a word of love to everyone, Sister Magdalena traveled around the world in a truck. She was in Russia several times. She met Father Alexander on the way. We must also mention the ecumenical community in Teze, founded by the Protestant pastor Roger Schütz. Father Alexander personally paid attention to Teze's experience, both in the matter of reconciling Christians and in working with young people.

Among the spiritual children of Father Alexander, there were many Jews. As a result of an atheistic upbringing, religion was no longer conditioned by nationality as it was in the past. Just as Russians were not born Orthodox, the word Jew was not synonymous with an adherent of Judaism. Before the revolution, a baptized Jew automatically became Russian, now this was not the case. Meanwhile, many baptized Jews were uncomfortable in Russian Orthodoxy because of the frequent confusion of Orthodoxy with Russianness, as well as the anti-Semitism of some of the clergy. Some found a way out in Catholicism. Father Alexander, undoubtedly, both in his general orientation and in origin, was closer to them than any other. He loved his Church, country, Russian culture to the highest degree, but at the same time he fully recognized his belonging to the Jewish people and even saw in this an "undeserved gift."

"For a Christian - a Jew, kinship in the flesh with the prophets, the Virgin Mary and the Savior himself is a great honor and a sign of double responsibility" - he said. In his opinion, a Christian Jew does not cease to be a Jew, but begins to realize even deeper the spiritual vocation of his people.

9. Books
"We preach Christ, admonishing and teaching every person all wisdom ..." - said the Apostle Paul. This will to discipleship was at the center of Father Alexander's ministry. Tirelessly instructed in sermons, countless conversations and conversations with everyone who came to him, and during regular meetings with his parishioners. Most importantly, he continued his oral instructions in writing, and they were just as abundant. The book was one of the forms of his ministry. "A book is like an arrow fired from a bow," he said, "while you rest, it works for you." In truth, Father Alexander hardly rested, but, nevertheless, he sent many arrows, and these arrows continue his work to this day.

His goal was to break down the barriers that prevent people from receiving the Word of God. "In my books, I try to help aspiring Christians, trying to reveal in modern language the main aspects of the gospel understanding and teaching."

His first book, entitled "The Son of Man" - a book about Jesus Christ, was born of conversations with neophytes, conversations begun immediately after his ordination. He began to write this book in his adolescence. But now I realized that it is necessary, because for most of his contemporaries, deprived of any religious culture, the text of the Gospel is too difficult and without a key to its understanding is not available. Father Alexander wanted to tell today's people about the earthly life of Jesus Christ so that they feel like witnesses of it. To achieve this, he relied on all the available data of history, archeology, biblical criticism, but always kept a lively and accessible style for the reader as wide as possible. The full text of the book remained in the typewritten manuscript for more than ten years until, in 1966. about. Alexander did not meet Asya Durova, a French woman of Russian descent who worked in Moscow. Asya secretly brought to the Union books published abroad in Russian thanks to the works of Irina Posnova, another Russian emigrant living in Belgium.

Irina Posnova founded the publishing house "Life with God" in Brussels, which published brochures corresponding to the atheistic mentality of Russians who had just been liberated from German camps, who began to ask themselves many questions of spiritual content. In 1958, she realized that from now on she must assign her publications to those who live in the USSR. Without hiding its belonging to Catholicism, the publishing house "Life with God", nevertheless, diligently engaged in the publication of books that met the needs of the Orthodox.

With the mediation of Asya Durova, Father Alexander began to receive books from Brussels, and then entered into correspondence with Irina Posnova. Upon learning of the existence of his manuscript about Christ, she offered to publish it. It was decided to publish it under a pseudonym. And finally, in 1968, the "Son of Man" was released.

Later, the publishing house "Life with God" published books recommended by him or prepared under his supervision. Only among the people whom he personally knew, hundreds received spiritual food thanks to the Brussels publishing house, and they needed it so much, they will say later. One of his parishioners will say with humor about this, in the form of a riddle:
"Question: Where are spirit children born?
- Answer: "In cabbage ... Brussels sprouts."

The Son of Man book hit right on target. For many, this was the very key that revealed to them the meaning of the Gospel. The next book by Father Alexander, published by the same publishing house in 1969, was called "Heaven on Earth" and was dedicated to the Orthodox liturgy.

Meanwhile, he began a new work: a large history of the religions of mankind from six volumes under the general title "In Search of the Way, Truth and Life." He was inspired by this idea from Vladimir Soloviev. When Christ appeared to people, they had already come a long way. Great religions and ancient thought constituted a kind of prelude to the New Testament and prepared the world for the acceptance of the Gospel. Father Alexander saw a similarity between the spiritual searches of his contemporaries and the path of our ancestors towards God. He offers the reader a continuous story of a spiritual human "epic", on the paths of mankind to the Truth, now moving forward, now retreating, now going astray and reaching a dead end, in the image of the people of Israel in their relationship with God.

Father Alexander was convinced that Christianity was only taking its first steps, that the Church was just beginning its path, and that it would take a long time for all the dough to grow from the gospel leaven.

At the end of the sixties, Father Alexander completed the first five volumes, and they appeared in Brussels in the early seventies. In those same years, he compiled a guide to reading the Old Testament, "How to Read the Bible," published in 1981.

Father Alexander attached great importance to the knowledge of the Bible. His history of religions should be read in direct comparison with the Bible. He never stopped working on the Bible, in this area he was a pioneer in his country, introducing modern biblical studies.

The last big work, for which he still had enough time before his death, was a seven-volume dictionary of bibliology. It includes articles on Bible commentators from Philo of Alexandria to modern authors, on major schools and trends in interpretation, on methods of interpretation, history of translations and editions of the Bible, etc. In this way, he hoped to provide a textbook capable of serving to renew biblical science in Russia.

Father Alexander did not forget the children, for them he prepared an illustrated album "Where did all this come from?", Published in Italy. With the help of friends, he prepared various film strips and cassettes. The greatest success fell on the film strip "In the footsteps of Jesus". One Frenchman even replicated it in thousands of copies for distribution throughout the Soviet Union and this filmstrip opened the way to God for many.

Father Alexander was very fond of cinema. He often, laughing, repeated to his wife that a major filmmaker had died in him. He planned to make a film based on the Bible, both documentary and fiction.

10. The beginning of the 80s
Father Alexander tried not to commit careless acts that could compromise his spiritual children and question his pastoral activities. However, whatever precautions he took, it still could not spare him the attention of the police apparatus. In 1964. he narrowly escaped prison. He was always under surveillance. At certain intervals, the KGB found an excuse to limit its activity, although they probably did not know its true scope. In the church environment, they also looked askance at him. His talent was capable of causing envy. Throughout his ministry, Father Alexander received threatening anonymous letters. Denunciations were regularly written against him.

However, despite the responsibility he bore to so many lives, to the KGB threats, to troubles, Fr. Alexander always remained calmly joyful. One of his friends, speaking of him, recalled the reflections of Nietzsche, who found that Christians were not convincing by their very appearance. Looking at them, one does not get the impression that Christ really redeemed and set them free. Well! - continued the friend, - he could not say this about Father Alexander. No, his Christianity was not dull. He even wanted to write a sketch about the humor of Christ. He owed his cheerfulness not only to his character. Although in childhood he is said to have been prone to bouts of melancholy. His cheerfulness was the result of his work on himself, it was nourished by deep faith, personal relationship with Jesus Christ and made him forget in what conditions he carries out his ministry.

“It seemed that in the mighty music of his life,” says one doctor with whom he became friends, “there is no self-effort, no overcoming. But it was not like that ... Few people knew that his physical health was far from ideal. it was not clear what he was holding on to. His inexhaustibility only seemed corporeal, earthly. It was a charge of another nature. "

The years following Brezhnev's death began with the widespread tightening of screws. Yu. Andropov was a great specialist in these matters. He decided to settle the country's problems with drastic measures. The repressive arsenal was reinforced. Clouds also thickened over Father Alexander. In 1983, one of his former spiritual children was arrested, who could not stand it in the ominous Lefortovo prison and compromised many relatives of Alexander's father and himself.

After interrogation

Father began to be summoned for daily interrogations, where he went to work. Searches were carried out several times in Novaya Derevnya and Semkhoz. The father was forced to stop all activities. It was then that he harnessed himself to an encyclopedia - a dictionary of bibliology. Many of those close to him asked themselves if he should leave the country. But he never approved of those who were tempted by the emigration. He deeply believed in Providence. He has spiritual children here and he cannot leave them!

In the end, Father Alexander sent letters of explanation, one to the church hierarchs, and the other to the Council for Religious Affairs.

11. The beginning of change
In March 1985, M.S. Gorbachev. At first he seemed to want to improve the health of the country by strengthening discipline. However, in the field of religion, domestic politics remained the same. Thus, in September 1986, Pravda devoted an editorial to intensifying atheist propaganda, as it did every year.

For Father Alexander, the trials were not over. In 1984, another of his former spiritual children was arrested. At the trial, he behaved very courageously, and only in the camp he could not resist. In early 1986, he appeared on television with a shaved head and admitted that he was engaged in "political activities that are civic and harmful to the Church." But before he sent his father a long letter, clearly inspired by people in uniform, denouncing the organization of small groups and the use of cassettes for catechesis as contrary to the teachings of the Church. Following this, in April 1986, the Trud newspaper published a long article accusing several Orthodox Christians: Alexander Ogorodnikov, Fr. Gleb Yakunin and Fr. I. Meyendorf - Rector of the Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York. Father Alexander was also not ignored in her.

Meanwhile, all this hassle was coming to an end. And no matter what one thinks today about the position of the Orthodox episcopate in its relations with the authorities, Father Alexander was grateful for the support he found in the person of his bishop, Vladyka Yuvenaly, Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomensky, who governed the parishes of the Moscow region.

At this time, on April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl disaster occurred, which opened the eyes of the ruling circles to the state of devastation in the country. In December of the same year, the famous dissident Anatoly Marchenko died in prison. Before him, after Gorbachev came to power, six people died. This latest event had a huge resonance throughout and marked the end of the post-Brezhnev winter. A week after the death of Marchenko, academician A.D. Gorbachev called Sakharov, who was under surveillance in Gorky. Their conversation marked the beginning of the release of the first political prisoners. However, it was necessary to wait for the end of 1987 for the Soviet authorities to take the first step towards the Orthodox Church. The return of two monasteries was announced, one of them - Optina Hermitage.

The change in Soviet policy towards religion began in 1988, when the Orthodox Church celebrated the millennium of the Baptism of Rus.

For Father Alexander, this meant getting out of the tunnel. For the first time in his life, he was allowed to go abroad, to Poland, at the invitation of his Orthodox friends.

He gave his first public lecture at the House of Culture of the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys on May 11, 1988. on the theme of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus. After the lecture, he answered a whole series of questions about the course of the celebrations, the canonization of saints, about the structure of the Orthodox Church, about its place in society.
Unprecedented business! The priest addresses a hall full of students and teachers in a government office!

At this time, temples and fragments of divine services began to appear more and more often on TV screens. Soon, clergy began to be invited to participate in programs where it was said about "spirituality."

In the summer of 1988. one of Alexander's father's friends asked him what he thought about perestroika: he replied that he assessed it very positively, because while the hunters hunt each other, the bunny can jump free.

In the fall, Father Alexander began a cycle of lectures in one of the clubs in Moscow, on Krasnaya Presnya, on the topic: "Christianity, history, culture", and on October 19 an even more unheard-of event took place: he was invited to the capital's school N67 to talk with schoolchildren. Even Izvestia reported this. From now on, the rhythm of his public speaking increased continuously. For two years he gave about two hundred lectures, among them many cycles devoted to the Bible, the history of the Church, world religions in the life of mankind, Russian religious thinkers, commentaries on the Symbol of Faith.

He usually performed in a black cassock with a pectoral cross on his chest. The trials had thickly silvered his hair and beard, but his face remained youthful and unusually beautiful, with a stamp of tenderness. Kindness and intelligence were simultaneously read in his black sparkling eyes. He spoke - and his voice was soft - without any notes or papers, moving through the small halls or on the stage with a microphone in his hand. His face was amazingly expressive, all the time in motion, sometimes serious, sometimes illuminated by a smile, and his smile was now gentle, now playful, now charming. He seemed to be conducting a dialogue with the audience, this was always his tone. He answered the questions, which were written on pieces of paper and passed along the rows, thoroughly, even if there was little time. When asked a personal question, he was able to find a special personal answer. Here is how one journalist testifies to this: “That evening the listeners asked questions themselves, going on stage one by one. A thin woman came out and began to talk about the troubles she had experienced. Father Alexander begins to answer her, and I don’t hear One of his words. What a miracle, what acoustic riddle to explain: what the priest says, only one person understands. The one to whom his speech is directed. "

Once Father Alexander gave a series of lectures on the history of religion at the House of Culture of the Hammer and Sickle plant, and once appeared on the stage where a poster with the slogan "Lenin's business will live on forever!" Was extended from end to end. Twice Father Alexander participated in disputes with atheistic propagandists, but they were so colorless, insignificant and absurd that no one else dared to repeat this experience. 1989 - 1990 nearly thirty articles have been published in a wide variety of press, including high-circulation magazines.

And yet, during his lifetime, none of his books were published in Russia.

Some wondered why this priest was invited to perform everywhere, why did he become so popular? In the past, Fr. Alexander many times repeated the words of Father Sergiy Zheludkov: “The most difficult moment will come for the Church when everything will be allowed to us. Then we will be ashamed, because we will not be ready to“ testify. ”We are preparing badly for this.” When we have something to say “God will give us a tribune and even television,” he once said. But he was just ready. “We must hurry!” He repeated when he saw on TV blue domes, golden vestments, banners, clergy uttering unctuous phrases, pompous and rhetorical, from the 19th century - to bring people the true word of Christ, and not some kind of ersatz for the poor. , thank you for that. Who would have thought that we would live to see this ... And yet, this is unlikely to have anything to do with religion. The state is confused. With the help of the Church, it wants to establish at least some moral standards.

Meanwhile, perestroika was going on in a zigzag manner. In the spring of 1989, a new Parliament of the Soviet Union was elected, the first session of which was very stormy. Some MPs openly blamed the communist system. However, in matters of religion, the authorities hesitated. The law on freedom of conscience will be adopted only in October 1990.

On Easter, Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, was on an official visit to the USSR. On the way to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, he insisted that they stop at Novaya Derevnya, and he himself was able to talk face to face with Father Alexander.

“Having met Father Alexander,” the cardinal recalls, “from the first moments I felt as if I had always known him as a brother, as a friend, and I realized that from now on he would become close to me forever. Meanwhile, we talked for only ten minutes. I got the impression that his life is more saturated with the Gospel than mine. As the grace of God, I regard this unusual, short meeting - it is a presentiment in the present tense of the already present fullness of times, which are coming. "

At the end of October 1989, father Alexander spent several days with his daughter, she recently lived in Italy. There he visited Rome at the funeral of Jesus' little sister, Magdalena.

In December 1989. Sakharov's death plunged the country into mourning, crowds of people came to see him off. In January 1990, tanks entered Baku, and a state of siege began. Then - again a leap towards democracy, there were impressive demonstrations in Moscow and other big cities. Metropolitan Juvenaly once asked Father Alexander why he, a well-known and popular person, did not stand as a candidate for elections to the republican and local Soviets. "Lord!" He answered him, "when should we engage in politics? Today we have the opportunity to preach the Word of God day and night, and I completely gave myself to this."

Patriarch Pimen died in May. A Council was convened, at which Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad was elected patriarch by secret ballot. In an interview given to a Spanish journalist four days before his death, Father Alexander, having outlined, without any condescension, the picture of the state of the Orthodox Church, again stressed that there is no other alternative but to remain in the bowels of the Moscow Patriarchate. On the eve of his death, he said to one of his spiritual daughter: “Trust no one who will say that our Church is not holy. The fact that the Church is over was crushed back in the IV century. The Church is alive not by us, but by our Lord Jesus Christ. always here with us in His Church. Here is the continuation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ in history, here is His Kingdom. "

In the spring and summer of 1990, a period of intense activity began for Father Alexander. From the very beginning of the year, he took part, along with other Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants in the creation of the Russian Bible Society. Later he took up the founding of the Orthodox University with evening classes. He also created the Cultural Revival Society, which pursues both educational and humanitarian goals. This society organized conferences, various meetings. A group of parishioners from Novaya Derevnya took care of seriously ill children at the Children's Republican Clinical Hospital in Moscow. Father Alexander himself visited this hospital, talked with children, consoled parents.

In Novaya Derevnya, where he was finally appointed rector, he began construction of a building, which, according to his original plan, was to simultaneously serve as both a baptismal and a hall for various parish affairs. And finally, to teach the catechism of the village children, he opened a "Sunday school".

On the occasion of Easter 1990, the Baptists gathered in the capital's huge Olympic stadium. The patriarchy declined to participate, but Father Alexander accepted the challenge. He appeared before a multitude of people in a white cassock and talked about the Last Supper of Christ and about the last conversation with the apostles on the eve of his passion.

One journalist even gave him a series of religious radio programs for children. He took part in several television programs, and shortly before his death, he was offered to conduct weekly programs on one of the channels. They managed to write only four, they were supposed to start up at the beginning of the school year. And after his death, they found that the tapes were demagnetized.

In May, Father Alexander again abroad - in Germany, where he was invited to participate in several congresses. From there, he briefly stopped in Brussels to meet personally with Irina Posnova for the first time.

Some of Father Alexander's friends and spiritual children believed that he had taken too much upon himself, and were afraid that he would not exhaust his physical strength. But he finally felt the opportunity to give himself to the fullest extent of his strength.

“It's not so easy,” he wrote to one friend, “to understand someone who has been put on a short chain for decades (I don’t murmur - and on this chain God gave the opportunity to do something.)”

"I have always systematically communicated with people in this way. Only the quantitative ratio has changed. I am not preparing specifically, I say what God will put on my soul."

"And now, like the sower from the parable, I got a unique opportunity to scatter seeds. Yes, most of them will fall on stony soil, there will be no seedlings ... But if after my speech at least a few people, even one, awaken, is that not enough? You know, it feels like everything will be over soon, at least for me ... "

12.September 9
As usual on Sunday, September 9, 1990, Father Alexander got up very early and went to celebrate the Liturgy in a small village church, thirty kilometers from home. With the eternal briefcase in hand, he pushed open the garden gate and walked, as usual, at a brisk pace to the railway station to board the commuter train to Moscow. In the morning fog, he walked along a narrow road among the trees. There was a long day ahead - confession, liturgy, christening, funeral service. Surely he will be busy all morning. Then he will need to hurry up to continue towards Moscow in order to read the second part of the lecture on Christianity at the House of Culture on Volkhonka.

Recently he seemed alarmed, which was somehow completely unusual for him. He was very fond of nature, and a few minutes of the road along the forest, where autumn colors played under the first rays of the sun, undoubtedly should have given him strength. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this landscape, and yet it was special. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra towered a few kilometers from here. The Monk Sergius of Radonezh was born in a village not far from here and walked along the very road along which Father Alexander was now walking ...

A little later, his wife, who remained at home, opened the window and heard groans: rushing into the garden, she saw a man lying in a bloody puddle behind the gate. She returned, urgently called an ambulance, then the police. When I got out again, the ambulance was already there.

Why aren't you doing anything? she asked the doctors. Finally she came. There was a lot of blood. She still did not dare to look at the murdered man. She asked herself: "And my husband? Did he make it safely to the temple?"

Someone said: "Was he wearing a black hat?"

Found a hat with a large, sharp notch. Later, witnesses appeared, they saw Father Alexander: he was returning back, walking towards the house, bleeding to death. The wide wound on the back of the head was clearly from an ax blow.

The circumstances of the crime, the precision with which the blow was struck, make one think that this murder was carefully prepared and committed by professionals.

At the moment when Father Alexander was killed, the pounding of boots was already heard in Moscow, and the mechanism that was supposed to lead to the 1991 putsch was just starting to work. Considering that the ranks of the old communist apparatus often used chauvinism, moreover the most aggressive, in attempts to maintain or restore their power, and that the first groups of Russian ultranationalists, which emerged in 1987-1988, were for the most part clearly manipulated by the KGB, it is reasonable to assume that that it was they who played this card. However, there are several versions of the murder of Fr. Alexandra.

The death of Alexander's father was widely reported in the Soviet press. Three days later, the Izvestia newspaper paid tribute to his memory. The author of the article was threatened by telephone. A woman called and asked with irritation: "Why didn't his God help him?" Did she know that these very words were spoken two thousand years ago at the foot of the cross: "I trusted in God, let him now deliver Him if He is pleasing to him."

The thought of death was close to Father Alexander. He often reminded us that we are only travelers in this world, “came from mystery to return to mystery”. This should not terrify us, and on the contrary, through it we should realize the meaning of life. "The memory that they will come for us should be encouraging, strengthening us, preventing us from relaxing, falling into despondency, idleness, pettiness, insignificance." Since he was able to open it, he seemed to be in a hurry. Many of his friends think that he had a premonition of death. He more and more often returned to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe fragility of life. "We are always on the brink of death ... You yourself know how little a person needs to cut the thread of his life."

On Sunday, a week before the murder, he inaugurated a Sunday school in his parish for the village children. What event! A catechism lesson - and completely legal in the Soviet Union! You can imagine his joy, he dreamed about it so much. And, nevertheless, on this truly festive day, to the surprise of all those present, he began like this: "Dear children, you know that one day you will die ..."

Once, when he was trying to hail a taxi, and the person accompanying him became worried that he had to wait a long time, he said: "I need a hearse, not a taxi ..."

At the service on Wednesday, he bluntly said: "On Tuesday we will have a holiday ... death ...." They tell him: "The beheading of John the Baptist," and he: "... yes ... death ... John the Baptist ".

Only after the tragedy, the whole country discovered Father Alexander and was able to appreciate his significance: they appreciated everything, up to the highest political spheres. The President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev expressed "ardent regret", Boris Yeltsin asked the Supreme Soviet of Russia to remember the memory of Father Alexander with a minute of silence and sent a wreath to the grave. The mystery of this death was emphasized by Patriarch Alexy in his letter after the assassination of his father Alesandr, as well as in what Metropolitan of Krutitsky and Kolomna Yuvenaly