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[MUSIC] [Music] We are now in one of the most sacred places of our Motherland. Here is the church of Sretenye in the new village of Pushkin,

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where Alexander's father was serving. Here is the grave of Alexander's father. Here is the land of Alexander's father. Alexander's father was born in the very center of Moscow, in Arbat.

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And he is a wonderful romantic friend of people who are now called the Sixties. But in this pleiad he was the star of the first magnitude. He was a man of planetary scale.

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And so, of course, he experienced more than others the hermeticism of totalitarianism, the hatred of the system and the envy of his false brothers. I would like to introduce you to one of the disciples of Father Alexander,

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his spiritual son, Father Vladimir Lapshin. In the last year of his life, Father Alexander has given many amazing lectures. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend one of them, but I will remember it for the rest of my life, It has a religious character, or in secular terms, a program character.

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It was called "Two understandings of Christianity". On the one hand, Christianity is open to everything that God created in nature, in man, encompassing all aspects of human life, filled with the light of Christ, the joy of His good news.

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On the other hand, the closed Christianity, trying to distance itself from the world, indifferent to the world and its problems, which in fact betrayed the world, and which betrayed the God's cause,

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because God loved the world so much that He gave His Son to save it. Father Alexander always believed in the spiritual revival of Russia. He believed that the time would come when we would return to our life [Russian translation]

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[Russian translation] I was afraid that when this moment came, the consciousness of people who were eager for spirituality, but were not enlightened, not prepared,

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would be soaked in the place of true Orthodox Christianity, the surrogate, the whole pile that had accumulated in Christianity over the centuries. And all my life, Father Alexander gave to the end to enlighten our people, our contemporaries,

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to their spiritual education. He himself only found the beginning of this moment, this moment is coming. Like Moses, who once brought people to the land of the dwellers,

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but he himself did not enter it. But his books remained with us, his lectures remained with us, amazing, wonderful, his preachings.

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The university remained with us, a universal, orthodox university, [ Foreign Language ] We are in the office of Father Alexander at the church.

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Here he worked with people, the work of a brilliant and kind pastor. Many outstanding figures of our culture were in these walls. Here were the convention of the famous writer Mark Popovsky, the father of Sergei Zheludkov. Here he baptized Alexander Gavrichy.

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(speaking in foreign language) and does not speak the word of the widow. His son Misha Mikhail Aleksandrovich and Mary Vitaly Tikhonina. Father Aleksandrov was a man who had time for everything

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and did a lot in his life. He had time to serve in the church, to confess people, to make all kinds of demands, and half of Moscow intelligentsia went to him,

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who craved to hear from him about faith. He had time to write books, he had time to read lectures, and, of course, he did not waste a second of his time. And now, after his death, the family, with the help of spiritual children,

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We organized a fund for the memory of Alexander Menin. We try to do what he did not have time to do. Our fund tries to publish all the books that Alexander's father wrote. There are already many published.

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The sixth volume has begun to be published, the first and the second volume have been published. Lectures of Father Alexander have also been published. - The sermons, the sermons. - The sermons have been published. And now a new book has been published, "It was morning".

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This is a memory of the spiritual children of Father Alexander. [Russian] It's a very big thing, and we'll do everything to publish it. Here is Maria Vital'ina Tepnina.

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She is a close friend of Alexander's family. For 40 years she shared all the troubles and joys of Alexander's family. [Russian translation] [Russian translation]

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(speaking in foreign language) [Russian translation] [Russian translation] Now we are working on them in the studio, clearing the noise.

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We are planning to release a record, which also unfortunately faces all kinds of difficulties, but we hope that soon people will see and hear this record. And also other tasks. The main task is to build a chapel, a chapel in the place of the death of Alexander the Great.

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A coffin and other things that will echoes the memory of Alexander the Great. [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [ Music ]

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When a person sets high ideals and big goals, he often forgets how short his life is. Many people with some kind of aggressive joy are now trying to find scientific arguments that do not refute the ancient teaching that the human spirit is indestructible.

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Meanwhile, this desire for destruction, this desire to deprive humanity of the most sacred, most spiritual, most ancient hope, ...is a bad thing to say under the slogan of science. Because all stages of civilization, all societies had this thought, this idea and this faith. (choral music)

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(singing in foreign language) [singing] [ Singing ] [ Music ]

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Life and death, torturous death. Father Alexander can ask such a question. After all, for every liturgy he prayed for a Christian, peaceful, painless end of life.

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[ Foreign Language ] Why did Alexander's father end up like this? Only God can answer this question. We are entering the secret of the Church,

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the secret of Russia. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) and it was a seed for new Christians.

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The same thing was repeated in the last 70 years. It is difficult to reconcile with human consciousness that our salvation is given so dearly. [ Foreign Language ]

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Faith is a wise man who never remains indifferent to the opportunities that open up for him to preach the Gospel. [Russian translation] Alexander, one of the last conversations with him, which I spoke about when singing "Father Alexander" and I will repeat again. I asked Father Alexander, "Now for the church,

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for the first time in these 70 years, the opportunity has been opened to be a people's deputy. I say, "If you were chosen, it would be very easy." And it was necessary to see the spiritual enlightenment of his face when he said, "Lord, our business is the preaching of the Gospel.

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We have no time to do this." (speaking in foreign language) [Russian] (speaking in foreign language)

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but there is no space in which the soul of a person is confined. The spirit of a person, invisible, weightless, is like a guest in this natural world, where everything can be weighed, measured or seen one way or another.

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And so, when the human thought approached the supreme revelation of the One God through the Bible teaching, it always, one way or another, testified to the reality of the indestructible Spirit. What should have been indestructible was what had nothing to do with the world of things. (dramatic music)

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(choral music) (choral music) (choral music) (choral music)

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(choral music) [choral singing] (singing) (choir singing)

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[Music] (choral music) [ Music ] [music]

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How much is embedded in the spirit and consciousness of a person things that he does not need to adapt to the environment. The aspiration to higher knowledge, the aspiration to selfless knowledge,

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the most diverse abilities, those inherent in the genius of man. They are not needed to survive people. Moreover, it is by possessing these gifts that a person often poses danger and even the threat of death.

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The axe of the killer cut the priest's head on the way to the temple. The priest who went to bring the bloodless sacrifice became a victim himself. It is recalled that he was so much burned by his non-Russian blood, the blood of the Old Testament patriarchs,

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and his blood spilled on the Russian land, (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) in the presence of the Holy Sergius,

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was mixed, but always mixed, with this land, which has absorbed the blood of so many priests. He was, as if sent, to a very wild tribe,

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to the Soviet intelligentsia. [Russian] [ Foreign Language ] You know, the French writer Bernard Nosse said,

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"Le prêtre c'est un homme mangé." "The priest is a man who is eaten alive." "He is eaten alive by his faithful and loving parishioners." "The priest is a man who gives himself to the end."

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[Russian] [ Foreign Language ] Those who didn't live then can't imagine it. In the 70s it was different.

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Back then it wasn't so fashionable to put believers in a mental hospital. But believers were treated quite sincerely as crazy. All the sad experience and all the human reason led to the fact that the impossible is impossible. And so, at first, a man started what seemed impossible.

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[Music] [Music] (choir vocalizing) (orchestral music)

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[Music] [ Music ] (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language)

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(speaking in foreign language) [Russian] [Russian] (speaking in foreign language)

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and not in the sleeping memory of centuries. He is here now, amidst the random hustle and bustle, in the stream of the murky life's anxieties, you are the master of all joyfully secret.

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Without much evil, we are eternal, God is with us. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) [Russian]

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[ Foreign Language ] From the ideology it seemed that Christ in the past, Father Alexander was not tired of conveying not only knowledge but also a feeling that Christ is here and now and that he is waiting for us in the future. that Christianity is not the past, but the good news, the news of the future, what we are going to.

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And he himself was going his own way, By ascending from the natural joy of life, which was in him a lot, to the joy not of this world,

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but of the joy of the joyous mystery. He knew, by the end he knew probably all the more clearly, that at the end, at the very top of the hill, there is a cross. The fact that his end was as it was,

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(speaking in foreign language) only because the human evil is terrible, the sin of murder committed by someone. But in the perspective of his own fate,

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his end is neither sad nor terrible. His end is bright. Light falls from his end on all the life he has lived. We must remember again and again that there was a time when,

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not only as a spiritual leader, but as a missionary, he was certainly the only one for the whole sixth part of the world. All religions and philosophies speak of the immortality of the spirit. But Christianity tells us about something more.

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It tells us about the life of the future century. Not just about the natural immortality of every human "I" in a different dimension, but about a new stage of cosmic evolution. This is a look that penetrates the veil of what the limited human mind can present today.

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We will all change. This is a transformation, a mutation, a new stage of evolution. But not for those who will come only after us, and we will no longer be needed. "And all the souls that were ever created in the world, we will all change," says the Apostle. And then we will again be restored to the physical being.

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But the physical being that was revealed to the disciples in the phenomenon of the Resurrection, the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the future century. Time is winning, the worlds are winning. Our fragile, small and pitiful soul

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is breaking out into the colossal freedom. And between it and the enormous unfolding that awaits it, there is the same gigantic distance as between the silent embryo in the womb of the mother

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and the geniuses, say, Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein, who developed from this embryo. Christianity says, "Yes, we leave our flesh, but in order to find a new one,

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because God created the universe not in vain, not only for us to suffer in it, but so that it would play with all the colors, harmonies, beauty and power,

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that the human spirit plays in it, forever creating, forever transforming, opening up new horizons for itself. Resurrection is the transformation of all nature,

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and we can be sure that all perfect and beautiful in nature and in art will also enter the Kingdom of God, [ Foreign Language ]

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[ Foreign Language ] (speaking in foreign language) I can't say for sure, but it was wonderful. I just want to say that it was what was supposed to sound for the child.

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And then the children had to leave, because their mother asked for consolation. As he began to speak, the mother began to cry and cry. He talked a lot about death, how strange it was for us. It was not strange, because all mothers understood that many children in our ward die, bleed very seriously.

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And every mother understands that the same fate can wait for her, her child. On that day, Father Alexander talked a lot about death, and that you need to be ready to leave at any moment, if they call. I said, "Maybe I'll pass away soon, but I pray and think about it." The meaning was, of course, that he spoke about the suffering of Christ.

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And here was a very strong moment when, I just remembered it now, and I am very sorry that I cannot convey it literally, When he spoke about the suffering of the Earth and of the life of Heaven, it was the leitmotif of all his preaching.

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And at the end of the sermon, there was a wonderful pacification. How much tension there was at first, and such a certain difficulty. So much peace and calm was at the end. And we left the game room. He looked at the clock, it was time for him to go.

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He was very tired. He was somewhere else in the morning. He was on duty or something. I don't know. And when he left, they told him, "Father Alexander, why don't you buy a car for yourself, why don't you get a driver?"

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He said, "I probably need a catafalque." Yes, so when we left the playhouse and went down our long corridor, we had a TV in the hall. [Russian translation]

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[VIDEO PLAYBACK] [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] [Russian] In fact, the fullness of the disclosure of the human "I",

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its bliss, is not at all in not having obstacles, but in overcoming obstacles, in being a winner, despite the black storm raging around, and being driven out of the truth for the sake of it,

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is not unhappiness, but the greatest honor. I do not believe in anything random and blind, because in such events there is always a higher meaning that opens only from a distance. Only from a distance.

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Blessed means happy. I must finish by talking about the Kingdom. Jesus Christ preached to us about the Kingdom of God. "For God does not reign in this world,

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for the Prince of this world is Satan," said the Lord Jesus. And we ourselves know perfectly well that in the world there are The blind destructive forces of nature and society, the evil passions, the decay of hatred.

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God does not reign, but the battlefield in which both good and evil participate, and the elements and the free will of man. The Kingdom of God is not just a futurology,

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Just words about the future. It is already here. That's why Jesus says, "The Kingdom of God is inside you, among you." Literally. It is growing into this world. Where perfection, power, beauty and love reign,

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[Russian] [Music] [Music] [ Silence ]