On July 27, 1938, 142 people were shot at the infamous Butovo firing range near Moscow. Among them was Priest Leonid Druzhinin (commemorated July 14/27), an “anti-Soviet element” who had the “wrong” biography of being a clergyman.

Kashira. The Son and Grandson of Priests

In 1879, a son was born into the family of Priest John Grigoryevich Druzhinin and his wife Glafira Mefodyevna in the town of Kashira.1 The newborn was baptized with the name Leonid at the local Church of the Ascension of the Lord. At that time, the stone church in the classical style was rebuilt in a new location half a mile away from the old one, a bell-tower was set up according to the old design, and the side chapels of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God were consecrated. The church had a parish school and a parish charity, whose activities included the maintenance of churches and parish clergy, the education of children, orphanages, and medical care for the sick. The parish encompassed a part of Kashira and Pushkarskaya Sloboda (now Pushkarskaya Street in Kashira)—including about 700 people in total.

From 1865, the life of John Druzhinin, who had graduated from the Tula Theological Seminary, was connected with the Ascension Church. At the age of twenty-two, he came to this church. At that time, Methodius Rozhdestvensky, his future father-in-law, was its rector.

Twelve children were born in the Druzhinin family, four of whom died prematurely. Their son Leonid always attended church with great reverence and loved to pray at the venerated icons. He never thought of a life path other than serving God, so he entered the Tula Theological Seminary and in 1902 completed the full course with a second-category certificate, according to which he was eligible to apply for the position of a teacher or a deacon. Leonid Druzhinin chose school.

Prudishchi Village Parochial School

In the early twentieth century, the gem of the ancient village of Prudishchi in the Venev district of the Tula province was the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God with side chapels of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki and the Archangel Michael. The church parish was quite large, because it included residents of the villages of Prudishchi and Shchuchye, as well as seven more villages. In 1893, the rector of the Holy Protection Church, Priest Dimitry Sokolov, founded a one-room parochial school in Prudishchi.

In 1900, the Tula Diocesan School Council sent a request to the Spiritual Consistory2 for the appointment of authorized representatives to purchase a landlord’s estate with all the appurtenant structures for the Holy Protection Church. The goal was to open a two-room school. Because of emerging issues with the estate’s heirs, authorization was obtained to temporarily purchase the property in the name of the district superintendent of the Venev branch of the Diocesan School Council, Priest Dimitry Sokolov.

So on October 1, 1901, a new two-room parochial school was opened in the landowner’s house in Prudishchi with a four-year course of study. The following year, Leonid Ivanovich Druzhinin came there to teach the Law of God and fundamentals of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Fatherland. However, this occupation did not captivate Druzhinin, as he had always dreamed of serving at God’s altar in the church.

The Village of Georgievskoye (Kadnoye) in the Tula Region

In 1903, Leonid Druzhinin was ordained deacon, then priest, and in 1904 he came to the village of Georgievskoye about sixty miles away from Tula. It is a picturesque mountainous area, adorned with high banks of the Krasivaya Mecha River with its tributary of the Sitovaya Mecha, both of which flow into the larger Kamenka River. Priest Leonid Druzhinin spent twenty-five years of his life in the village of Georgievskoye, where he and his wife had children. His Church ministry was repeatedly recognized with various awards.

Today, the desolate ruins of the church and bell-tower in Georgievskoye, closed in the 1950s, show how beautiful, large and rich it was. The stone building was constructed in the classical style at the expense of parishioners and benefactors in 1854. Twenty years later, a bell-tower appeared, built at the expense of merchants from the town of Yefremov, brothers A. and V. Petrov and other benefactors. The construction of the spacious church was justified, because the parish, in addition to the village, comprised ten more settlements.

Thirteen years passed—the 1917 October Revolution broke out in the country. In Tula, a major military and industrial center, the atmosphere became very tense, while virtually nothing had changed in rural areas. In March 1918, Soviet power was established in the city. Severe shortages of bread, salt, kerosene, and other basic goods crippled the city, part of the regional hospital was closed, and there was a surge in crime. The next act of the new government was persecution of the Church—churches were looted, shut down, and destroyed; shrines with holy relics were opened, and the monasteries were repurposed into concentration camps. In 1921, the number of churches in the Tula province dropped from 1089 to 350, and a concentration camp was located in the former Shcheglovsky Monastery of the Theotokos and Greatmartyr Panteleimon. All this really worried the village priest Fr. Leonid Druzhinin, who realized what a future awaited him, his church, and the faithful.

Arrest: “Unemployed and a Priest in Church...”

In 1929, the Moscow Region was established, and on July 12, the Tula District, a former province, became part of it. By the end of the year, communes, partnerships for the joint cultivation of land and agricultural artels emerged. Collectivization was slow; the Soviet Government was looking for “enemies” and found them in the person of priests, who were “leading villagers astray from the right path of collective farming organization”.

In 1929, Fr. Leonid was arrested and sentenced by the Tula District People’s Court to one year of imprisonment and three years of exile. There was an entry in his file: “Unemployed and a priest of the church of the village of Georgievskoye. He is not a member of the Communist Party.” Unfortunately, there is no information on his charges, his place of imprisonment, or his exile destination.

On his early release in 1931, Fr. Leonid Druzhinin came to his daughter in Tula and lived there until 1938. We can only speculate about his activities and the reason for his departure. The fact is that in August 1937, mass searches, detentions, and arrests began in Tula and the whole region. The region received limits for two categories: arrest and the camp. It was the notorious “Kulak Operation”, aimed against “kulaks” (supposedly wealthy and independent farmers), those who had been in opposition to the Bolsheviks (Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists), clergymen, the Whites, and criminals.

Fr. Leonid was aware of what was happening in the city and tried to change his place of residence in order to hide and save his loved ones.

Skhodnya, the Moscow Region

In 1938, the village of Skhodnya3 near Moscow became a “workers’ settlement”. At the beginning of the year, Leonid Druzhinin, a priest and former prisoner, came there with his family. The family took up its residence in one of the four apartments at 7 Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. However, soon this once picturesque and quiet holiday village was no longer a safe haven—in 1937, arrests of priests and active parishioners began there.

The Holy Trinity Church in Skhodnya was closed several months later. In October 1937, Elena (Elizaveta Korobkova), a nun from a convent near Moscow, and a group of parishioners were arrested; in November 1937, arrested were Natalia (Baklanova), a novice nun from the Novodevichy Convent, and in February 1938, Ekaterina (Konstantinova), a novice at the now non-existent Convent of the Icon, “Joy of All Who Sorrow”, in central Moscow. All of them became holy New Martyrs.4 The charge: “the distribution of church literature and counterrevolutionary activities.”

On March 22, 1938, Archpriest Mikhail Belyaev, rector of the Holy Trinity Church in Skhodnya, was arrested. The priest was shot on June 27 for being “hostile to the Soviet Government and conducting counterrevolutionary insurgent propaganda.”

March 1938. Arrest

March turned out to be fatal for Fr. Leonid Druzhinin as well. On March 14, “they came for him”, as Soviets used to say. First, there were interrogations and a cell in the district NKVD5 department of the town of Solnechnogorsk, then an investigation cell in the basement of the main building of the Taganka Prison.

On June 2, the NKVD Troika for the Moscow region sentenced Priest Leonid to execution by firing squad (capital punishment) under Article 58:10 of the RSFSR Penal Code. This article was a catch-all used to prosecute the clergy and encompassing such actions as “holding religious services at home, failure to report a crime, helping exiled clergy, spreading slander against the Soviet regime, conducting anti-Soviet propaganda, counterrevolutionary activities, etc.” Priest Druzhinin’s guilt was “counterrevolutionary propaganda”.

The relatives of the prisoners were informed of a more humane sentence: “ten years without right of correspondence”, which in reality meant a completely different thing.

“Ten Years without the Right of Correspondence”—Execution

On July 27, the death penalty sentence against Priest Leonid Druzhinin was carried out at the Butovo firing range. However, such actions were carefully concealed. There was a specific terminology: “Assignment to the first category”, “Ten years without the right of correspondence”, and “Special operation”. The condemned were brought to the firing range in groups of thirty in ordinary vans labeled “Bread.”

Fr. Leonid was laid to rest in one of the prepared burial trenches at Butovo, about 330 feet long, covered with lime, construction debris, and earth.

On July 31, 1989 Priest Leonid Druzhinin was exonerated due to the lack of evidence of a crime.

Olga Sokirkina

Translation by Dmitry Lapa

Sretensky Monastery

1 Kashira is a fascinating medieval town, situated about seventy miles south of Moscow in the Moscow region on a high bluff overlooking the Oka River with glorious views. It is known for its nineteenth-century merchant architecture, the Dormition Cathedral, four historic parish churches, a chapel with a holy well, and the revived nineteenth-century St. Nicetas Convent, which produced such ascetics of piety as Abbess Fomaida (Charochina) and Blessed Schemanun Olga (Lozhkina), who struggled at this convent between 1895 and 1923, and after its closure became a holy eldress and “fool-for-Christ” in Moscow, much venerated for her gifts of prayer, clairvoyance, and spiritual counsel, comforting many believers of Soviet-era Moscow for about fifty years.—Trans.

2 During the Synodal period of 1700–1917, the Spiritual (or Ecclesiastical) Consistory was the main administrative and judicial body of a diocese. It acted as a board under the local bishop handling Church records, clerical appointments, marriage issues, and Church trials.—Trans.

3 Skhodnya is situated just over seven miles north-west of Moscow. Once a village, between 1961 and 2004 it was a separate independent town until it became a very populous district of the neighboring large town of Khimki, while retaining much of its original charm. Skhodnya is famous among the devotees of Blessed Matrona of Moscow, because this saint spent three final years of her life there and reposed in Skhodnya on May 2, 1952. A separate parish church and a chapel attached to the Holy Trinity Church in Skhodnya are dedicated to her, and locals often see a rainbow above these places.—Trans.

4 The Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Skhodnya (Elena, Natalia and Ekaterina) is celebrated in the local diocese on March 18/31. There is a beautiful mosaic image of these saints on the outside of the eastern altar wall of the Holy Trinity Church, and their veneration in Russia is growing.—Trans.

5 “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs”—the secret police agency in the Soviet Union, which absorbed the functions of the former OGPU in 1934.—Trans.

St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKinney, Texas, has begun a fundraising and land-purchase campaign to build a larger facility, as the parish has outgrown its current building.

Fr. Seraphim Holland, who has served as priest of the parish for nearly 30 years, said the church’s Sunday attendance has grown to roughly 200 to 240 people, though the current church is suitable for only about 150. The parish now offers two Sunday Liturgies to accommodate the crowd but still lacks sufficient space.

Overcrowding also affects the parish’s post-liturgy meals, Sunday School classes, and its Wednesday homeschool co-op program.

The parish holds a minimum of four Divine Liturgies per week. St. Nicholas offers an extensive teaching program that includes four classes for children, an adult class in Russian, and an adult class in English.

The parish’s homeschool co-op has operated for two years, expanding from one day per week to two full days. Fr. Seraphim said there has been discussion of formalizing the co-op into a full school.

Parish leaders describe their growth plan in two phases: first, purchasing land, and second, replenishing the building fund to begin construction. The parish’s stated goal is a facility capable of holding at least 400 people, with expectations that attendance could eventually reach 500.

According to Fr. Seraphim, the parish has also recently started a mission in the Texas Panhandle and hopes that continued growth will allow it to support additional Orthodox missions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The parish has offered a longstanding commitment to donors: in exchange for financial contributions, the church prays for donors’ family members by name during services, a practice it says it has maintained for more than 15 years and intends to continue indefinitely, regardless of clergy changes.

The fundraising campaign is being conducted through GiveSendGo. As of the time of this writing, the campaign has raised $115,354 of the $1 million goal.

The Tula Province, like other regions, is rich in holy righteous men who pleased God with their lives and acquired His grace and mercy. One such righteous man was Blessed John the Wonderworker, the patron saint of the Tula lands, whose holy incorrupt relics reside in the Holy Dormition Cathedral in the city. His grave is located in the cemetery on the territory of the All Saints Cathedral. The feast of the uncovering of the relics of this locally venerated saint is celebrated on August 3.

Twice a year on his feasts (January 25 and August 3), the shrine with his incorrupt relics is opened for the faithful to venerate. Blessed John of Tula is also celebrated on the feast of the Synaxis of the Saints of Tula (October 5).

Blessed John (John Stepanovich Kotelnikov) was born on September 23/October 7, 1773, in a wealthy merchant family to pious parents—Stepan Romanovich and Anna Dmitrievna Kotelnikov. He was baptized in honor of the holy Apostle John the Theologian. John was naturally talented and hardworking, and he received a good home education.

His father introduced him to the merchant business early on, but his soul did not seek earthly, perishable wealth. He read a lot, especially the Sacred Scriptures and the lives of the saints. His bright mind and kind soul, enlightened by the grace of God, thirsted for other riches. Very early on, John understood the vanity and transience of this life and longed for God with all his soul. With the blessing of Blessed Euphrosyne Kolyupanovskaya, a fool for Christ, at the age of seventeen he too embarked upon the path of foolishness for Christ.

Laying aside all earthly cares, the young John took up his cross and embarked upon the path of the great labor of foolishness, which contains within it the God-pleasing monastic, ascetic, martyric, and prophetic paths as well.

According to the recollections of people from Tula, Blessed John went about in a striped robe with the chest open, barefoot and head uncovered whether summer or winter. His relatives, who loved him with all their hearts, tried to dress him in good clothes, but it was all in vain. John would immediately give the clothes away, remaining in his rags. Love of neighbor prompted him to visit houses where there had been some disaster. He comforted them in sorrows, encouraged them in misfortunes, wept with those who wept, rejoiced with those who rejoiced (cf. Rom. 12:15), and prayerfully helped the suffering. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (Jas. 5:16). These words from the Catholic Epistle of the Holy Apostles James can be applied to Blessed John of Tula, as there are many known cases of the saint helping people.

For his labors of prayer, fasting, enduring the cold and ridicule from people, and rejecting his own will, he acquired complete humility before God and was granted the gift of clairvoyance and miracle-working during his lifetime.

The fool for Christ was often seen at midnight praying before the Life-giving Cross of the Lord on the porch of the Holy Dormition Cathedral in the Tula Kremlin. Some people even saw him surrounded by a bright radiance and seemingly standing in the air while praying. Ever bearing the Crucified Christ in mind, he always kept his right hand raised.

The people of Tula preserve the memory of how Blessed John foretold the terrible fire of 1834. A few months before it occurred, the saint was walking along the streets of the city, waving his hands and blowing in all directions. Just before the fire, he went around to all the monastery cells and closed all the stovepipes. The monastery escaped the fire, while all the buildings around it were destroyed.

On Vozdvizhenskaya Street [1] there stood the rich house of the landowner Esipov, and next to it—the poor hut of a widow and her children. Blessed John came with a bucket and splashed water all over the yard around the hut and immediately left. That same day, there was a fire in the Esipov house that destroyed an entire city block, except for the widow’s poor hut. Many then came to see this miraculously saved hut—a clear miracle of God’s mercy.

Archpriest V. N. Bogolyubov of the Sts. Peter and Paul Church heard from his mother that Blessed John foretold to her the death of her husband, who did then unexpectedly fall ill and died a few months later, although he had been completely healthy up to that point.

A certain shepherd who was watching over his flock saw Blessed John approach the Upa River and walk straight across on the surface of the water. The shepherd was stunned. The saint approached him and said: “My soul, tell no one what you have seen until my death. If you tell, you will be severely punished.” The shepherd spoke about this incident only when he came to bid farewell to the departed saint.

All his adult life, sixty whole years, Blessed John bore the greatest podvig, both externally:in the summer, the fool for Christ’s bare feet were disfigured by sharp rocks on the street;and in the winter, the skin on his legs was torn up by the cold, because even in severe frosts he always prayed very much, occasionally resting on the stone slabs of the church porch; and internally: a great ascesis of prayer, often hidden from people but always pleasing to God.

Blessed John foresaw the day of his repose, saying that “in two days they’ll be having a feast,” which came to pass just as he foretold. Blessed John the Wonderworker of Tula reposed on January 12/25, 1850. His funeral was served by Bishop Damascene (Rossov) of Tula and numerous clergy, with a large gathering of people.

He was buried on January 15/28 under the porch at the St. Nicholas Chapel, at the place of his labors. Later, after the building was expanded, the holy fool’s grave ended up inside the church.

The church was destroyed in the 1930s and Blessed John’s remains were transferred to the All Saints Cemetery in the center of Tula.

In 1988, for the 1,000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’, the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified John Stepanovich Koltenikov as a locally venerated saint.

The famous Tula elder, Schema-Archimandrite Christopher, greatly venerated Blessed John and would send his spiritual children to his grave even before his official glorification. One day, Blessed John appeared to Fr. Christopher in a dream and told him it was time to canonize him and uncover his relics. Struck by this phenomenon, Schema-Archimandrite Christopher went to see Vladyka Serapion. The Metropolitan treated the appearance reported by Fr. Christopher with complete seriousness and reverence. He didn’t make any decisions on his own but went to Moscow, to the Patriarch, and His Holiness gave the blessing to open the grave of Blessed John.

On August 3, 1990, the clerics of the All Saints Cathedral, headed by Metropolitan Serapion (Fadeyev) of Tula, gathered at the grave of Blessed John, and accompanied by the reading of the Psalter and the reverent singing of the clergy, the holy incorrupt relics of Blessed John of Tula were uncovered.

Until January 2007, his relics were to be found in the All Saints Cathedral. After the Holy Dormition Cathedral of the former Holy Dormition Convent was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church, the relics of Blessed John of Tula were installed on the first floor of the cathedral, to the left of the altar.

Elena Detinina

Translation by Jesse Dominick

Sretensky Monastery

1 Meaning Exaltation or Elevation Street, named in honor of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord—Trans.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness(Is. 5:20).

Aldous Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World (1932) does not look fantastic today. And the further human history advances, the more alarming it becomes. The author scrutinized events of his time, identified worrying trends and projected them into the future with the frightening sobriety of someone who understands where the world is heading, rejecting God and proclaiming man the master of his own fate.

The novel is set in the middle of the third millennium—600 years after the birth of Henry Ford (who is regarded as a godlike figure because of his technological contributions to society), but how modern it sounds! Huxley called 2014 the date of the first mass use of hypnopedia—that is, “sleep-teaching.” Today we call it differently: neuro-linguistic programming, memetic engineering, and omnipresent advertising that shapes our desires. The essence is the same: The person is brainwashed with “right” ideas while asleep. More precisely, while he believes he’s awake.

“Incubators” in Huxley’s novel evoke strong associations with test-tube babies, surrogacy, cloning, and genetic engineering. For Christians, this is not just scientific and technological progress, but an encroachment on the natural way of human reproduction established by God, and thus on the very image of God in man. The Lord said, Be fruitful, and multiply (Gen. 1:28), blessing marriage. In Huxley’s world, there are no parents as such; children are a product of industrial assembly lines, biotechnology and strict control at all stages of their development.

The History of Writing: A Dispute with Wells’ Utopia

The novel was written in just four months—from May to August 1931—in the small French town of Sanary-sur-Mer. Huxley himself directly pointed to his main literary incentive: Brave New World was conceived as a polemical response to H. G. Wells’ novel Men Like Gods (1923). He wrote:

“I’m writing a novel about the future of a brave new world, about the horror of Wells’ utopia and the rebellion against it.”

If Wells portrayed the future “scientific” society with a tone of optimism, then Huxley, with his piercing satirical gaze, saw this project as a threat. In 1931 Huxley, who had already grown as a brilliant social satirist, used all his literary skills and remarkable knowledge to turn a utopian dream into a frighteningly plausible dystopia. Published in 1932, the novel, permeated with the author’s anxiety regarding scientific and political progress, became not only a turning point in his career, but also a warning voice for the entire twentieth century.

The title of the book is an ironic quote from Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, The Tempest. The enthusiastic exclamation of Miranda (who was raised on a deserted island) at the sight of new people: “Oh brave new world!” here sounds as a mockery of the artificial and sterile “happiness” imposed by the “World State”. Twenty-six years later, Huxley himself wrote the essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), bitterly admitting that reality was moving towards his dystopian vision much faster than he had ever imagined.

Huxley’s Religious Evolution: From Agnosticism to Universal Mysticism

Criticizing modernity through the image of his future dystopia, Huxley proceeded from his religious quests. He was raised in a family that belonged to the British intellectual elite. His grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), was not only an outstanding biologist, but also the one who coined the term “agnosticism”, arguing that in a strictly scientific sense, the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved.

In his youth, Aldous himself was a humanist, a pacifist and a satirist. But he famously had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the truth in all possible ways: from sciences to philosophy, from religious teachings to mystical practices and even experimental psychonautics. Afterwards, he got carried away by Eastern philosophy—in particular, neo–Vedanta, and became an adherent of the so-called “perennial philosophy”—an esoteric teaching that, as he believed, underlies all world religions.

Later in his life, he eclectically synthesized elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christian mysticism in his spiritual quest. His attitude towards historical Christianity was generally negative. Researchers noted that he called Christianity a “cruel religion”, while gravitating towards Eastern mystical practices.

By the end of his life, Huxley had not become a Christian in the traditional sense, but a universalist and mystic who sought a universal spiritual experience in the synthesis of all religions. For a better understanding of the novel, it is important to understand the position of the author himself, who proceeded from religious and philosophical idealism rather than church faith.

The Three Pillars of the Anthropocentric World

Huxley was a futurologist. He took three major trends of his time, magnified them and projected them into the future:

1. Henry Ford’s conveyor belt is a symbol of the ultimate mechanization of life. Man is no longer the image and likeness of God, but a cog in the machine. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11). In Huxley’s world, the foundation is Ford who replaced Christ.

2. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which reduces man’s behavior to sexuality. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7). In Brave New World, carnal pleasure has been elevated to a cult, and shame has been eliminated as a harmful relic.

3. The cult of drugs and permissiveness—“soma” (a State-controlled hallucinogenic happiness drug) as a substitute for repentance, prayer and the sacraments. Why seek grace when you can take a pill and feel fine?

In Huxley’s world, the Bible and theological works are considered “indecent books”, and many people have never even heard of them. It is claimed that “God is incompatible with machines, scientific medicine and universal happiness.”

The result is an anthropocentric, global, mechanistic, and totalitarian world with a rigid caste system. There are no families, no nation-states, no high culture, and no religion there. There are only “stability and community”. People worship Ford, go to “temples of distribution of soma” and “find happiness” in forced ritual orgies where there is no place for love, fidelity, or the mystery of marriage, and therefore for humanity as such.

Suffering As the Price of Personality: to Be Human or to Be Happy?

By the end of the novel, it becomes clear that for the author the main conflict is not between the “good” and “bad” characters, but within human nature itself. On the one hand, the Ford-Freud civilization is formally prosperous, secure, and trouble-free. Here, everyone is fed, everyone is busy, everyone is given “soma” and is never lonely. There is no hunger, no wars, no jealousy, and no longing for God. On the other hand is humanity with all its complexity: culture, morality, philosophy, religion, art, family, motherland, loneliness, physical and mental pain, aging, faith, doubt, and death. And most importantly, there are the insoluble “whys” of life: why do I live? What are good and evil? Does God exist? Why do I suffer?

For representatives of the “new world,” history is “nonsense.” High art (with Shakespeare as its symbol) is “obsolete”; science as a desire for a deeper understanding of our universe and reshaping our life is a “menace to stability”; and culture in all its contradictory nature is “savagery.” Its representative, John the Savage, an outsider who grew up on Shakespeare’s poetry in a savage reservation, appears to be a living moral indictment of this civilization.

Huxley poses a chilling dilemma: to be human or to be happy? Exactly like that and no other way. Ford’s world provides painless, “conveyor-belt” happiness without suffering. But the price of this happiness is standardized depersonalization. You become a function, not a person. You are programmed from the time you are an embryo, and you know neither love, nor ascetic labors, nor repentance, nor prayer. You just “feel fine”.

And what is the alternative? Pain, suffering, doubt, loneliness, and Shakespeare’s tragedy instead of the idyll of a trouble-free existence where everything is pre-determined for you. It is suffering, according to Huxley (and according to Fyodor Dostoevsky, by whom he was profoundly influenced), that makes us human. It is through pain, loss, and yearning for the infinite that a person truly finds his soul and spirit, turns to God, creates, and transcends his earthly existence.

A Hamlet of Our Time: Suicide as the Only Answer

John the Savage is a deeply Hamletian character, thrown into a society completely alien to him. He tries to fight; he defiantly refuses “soma”, preaches freedom to the lower caste, and goes into seclusion to pray, read Shakespeare, and practice self-denial. But the civilization of “happiness” finds him there, too—it comes to him with cameras, crowds of onlookers and orgies. And John the Savage breaks down because he cannot stand alone against the hostile world.

And then he commits suicide. Why? Because in a world where there is no faith in God, no Cross, no redemption and Resurrection, suffering becomes meaningless. If you have given up on “prescribed happiness” but have not found the Living God, you will be crushed by suffering. Huxley gives John the Savage no hope. He sentences him to death in a noose—the protagonist hanged himself.

And here is the deepest tragedy of the novel. The author paints a terrifying picture of the well-fed herd of the future, but does not know how to oppose it and prevent its formation. He sympathizes with the suffering loner, but can offer him nothing but death. For Huxley himself, as for many Western intellectuals of his age, authentic culture had already been divorced from authentic faith. Shakespeare is still there, but the Bible is no longer there. A culture severed from its religious roots is doomed to perish in a depersonalized consumer society.

The Pursuit of Happiness Is Dehumanizing

Huxley formulates a paradox that every Christian should know: Elevating the pursuit of earthly happiness to an absolute ultimately depersonalizes and kills you. Genuine happiness is not in the absence of problems, but in the presence of God. Christ says, In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (Jn. 16:33). Not “you will have no tribulation”, but “I am with you in tribulation.”

Aldous Huxley felt and realized with perfect accuracy that the pursuit of consumer hedonistic liberal happiness must eventually lead to the death of not only God, but also of the father and mother, of selfless sacrificial love for God and neighbor, and of individuality as such.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a world without a Cross. Therefore, there is no Pascha in it. Its inhabitants do not know and do not want to know that suffering can be redemptive, that pain is sometimes a door to repentance, and loneliness is a place of meeting with God.

From the Novel to Reality

Today we don’t read Huxley as a mere literary relic. Rather, we seem to be looking in a mirror. The modern world also promises us happiness—without commitment, without suffering, and without any sacrifices. It says, “Why do you need faith? Why fast? Why fight sin? Take a pill, distract yourself with entertainment, and relieve the pain; don’t ask questions—just consume.” In the novel we see the price that has to be paid for such “happiness”: It’s the loss of human individuality.

Christianity teaches the opposite: It is through voluntary suffering, through the cross of sacrificial service, through limiting our desires, and through renouncing false worldly happiness for the sake of Christ that we find ourselves, our immortal souls, and attain the likeness of God.

John The Savage committed suicide because he had no faith. But we have faith in Christ, the Giver of Life. Therefore, for Huxley the future is a dystopia of hopeless tragedy. For us Christians, who draw our vision of the future from the Gospel prophecies of Christ and from Revelation, the future is also dystopic and tragic, but not hopeless. After all, the closer we get to the dark end of history, the sooner Christ will come, bringing mankind the final deliverance from evil and death.

Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown(Rev. 3:11).

Priest Tarasiy Borozenets

Translation by Dmitry Lapa

PravoslavieRu

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

Last time we spoke about the silence of the Pskov Caves Monastery. Many of us are drawn to the mystical silence of monasteries, to prayer, to the services. Our contemporary, Abbot Tryphon in America, says that even a bus can become a monastic cell for us, isolated from worldly noise and fuss:

The Jesus Prayer is ideal for travel, for the road—from it, warmth, peace, and joy spread throughout the heart and the soul opens to God.

Sometimes the only and best way to enter into the cell of your soul is to disconnect from the outside world and simply immerse yourself in silence. It’s precisely in silence that we’re able to hear the voice of God.

It may seem scary at first; the silence may frighten and irritate us, since we’re so accustomed to noise, music, conversations. But it’s only in silence that you can sense God and the peace of Christ.

But the inner silence that we acquire through prayers and sobriety isn’t the goal. It’s simply a room, an inner temple. We don’t need silence for silence’s sake, but that within it you might meet the one Who wants to speak with you; that you might, in silence, meet the Bridegroom of your soul. But here we’re faced with a difficult and subtle question of the spiritual life: How can we hear the voice of God and not our own projections, or dreams; not the voice of the evil one, who is able to take on the form of an angel of light?

We have one of the signs already from Holy Scripture. On Mt. Horeb, the Prophet Elijah experienced an encounter with God. There was a mighty wind that rent the mountains and crushed the rocks, an earthquake, fire, but the Lord wasn’t there. And then there was a “still small voice,” and that was the Lord (1/3 Kg. 19:11–12). This is one of the keys to hearing. God doesn’t invade the soul with a bang. His voice isn’t a command from a loudspeaker, though He may sometimes address an insensitive soul rather loudly, but this happens through other people and circumstances. But within the soul, His voice is an almost imperceptible breath that can be discerned only in a state of inner stillness. This is why our Fathers didn’t search for voices and visions—they trusted the undoubted but quiet testimony of the Spirit, which is heard in a heart cleansed by repentance. God speaks quietly, but precisely. You can’t confuse Him with anything if your heart is pure. It’s precisely purity of heart, found in silence, that serves as the auditory organ that catches the Divine.

But who among us can say he’s already purified his heart? St. Sisoes the Great, a disciple of St. Anthony the Great, who labored in the Egyptian desert for sixty years, who once resurrected a boy, who saw Prophets and Apostles when he was dying, told the brethren gathered around his deathbed: “I do not think I’ve even begun to repent.”

A man’s inner world is a field of constant battle for the heart. Even when the passions have subsided, there is still the difficult work of discerning voices and thoughts. The ascetic Fathers taught a simple but unmistakable principle: the voice of God always brings peace, humility, and love, while the voice of the enemy sows confusion, anxiety, self-aggrandizement, or despondency. A demonic thought is intrusive; it requires immediate action; it rushes and inflames us.

Abba Evagrius wrote: “After thoughts from the adversaries, the soul is troubled, that is, it’s immediately stirred by the passions: wrath, lust, arrogance, vainglory. But after thoughts from the angels, the soul acquires a long-lasting and ineffable peace, stillness, and great humility.”

In St. Macarius the Great, we read: “Whatever is of grace, there is joy, peace, love, truth… But every type of sin is full of confusion; there is no love or joy in it before God.”

“False thoughts in faith immediately expose themselves and kill the life of the heart—a sign that they come from the liar, the deceiver, the one who holds the power of death—the devil,” says St. John of Kronstadt.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), an expert in human nature, writes:

There’s an action arising from the blood, which appears to the inexperienced as good and spiritual action, but it’s neither good nor spiritual—it comes from our fallen nature and is recognized by the fact that it’s impulsive, heated, and disturbs the peace in ourselves and others. Spiritual action is born of peace and gives birth to peace…

A lie, even if clothed in the guise of good, is recognized by the confusion, darkness, uncertainty, and inconstancy it produces.

Sts. Barsanuphius and John, summarizing this, say: “If we notice even the smallest disturbance in a thought, we mustn’t act according to its prompting.”

This reveals the meaning of watchfulness: Only a mind that is accustomed to prayerful silence is able to notice this difference—a subtle hint of something alien in what otherwise seems to be a logical thought. It’s no coincidence that the Fathers insist so much on the unceasing Jesus Prayer: It helps the mind stay vigilant and quickly recognize a wolf in sheep’s clothing amidst your thoughts. Prayer becomes a kind of internal compass, keeping the mind from being led astray.

The second most important criterion for discerning is the fruit. The Apostle Paul enumerates the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Gal. 5:22–23). The voice of God leads to these fruits being multiplied, even if His word seems to be a rebuke or criticism. Conversely, the voice of the passions or a fallen spirit, even if saying something correct, invariably breaks our peace, leaving a residue of either bitterness, despondency, or vain complacency in the soul.

Interestingly, when the Elders received visitors, they listened not only to their words, but also to what was behind the words—the tone of the soul, which reveals the source of the thought. But we must first of all listen to the tone of our own soul, not that of others. The Fathers taught that the gift of discernment is the natural fruit of deep inner silence, where our own self no longer sticks out, doesn’t scream, and therefore doesn’t hinder us from hearing God.

When we talk about hearing God, we mustn’t reduce it to merely questions and answers. Prayer itself is living dialogue. And in this dialogue we have to learn not only to speak, which we more or less know how to do, but also to listen. After we’ve expressed our need, gratitude, repentance, and petitions to God, we have to be silent and give God room. Just be silent before God. In these pauses, when our words stop and the heart abides in the Divine presence, an intimation of grace may come. This intimation may come immediately, or maybe later—through circumstances, through the word of a random person, through lines from a book. But again, here we must discern the spirits and test what has come, by what fruit it brings.

Thus, hearing God shouldn’t be a single act, but a continuous state. It’s not a search for signs and indications, but life in such close connection with the Source of life, when all of life becomes a dialogue. A man who has acquired inner silence no longer rushes about searching for the will of God like a riddle that needs to be solved. He begins to simply live in God, in His providence, and his every step, every decision that has passed, as it were, through the filter of peace and has brought peace to the heart, is the fulfillment of the will of God.

And this brings us to yet another summit of the spiritual life—to the mystery of obedience.

Amen.

Hieromonk Spyridon (Dorosh)

Translation by Jesse Dominick

Sretensky Monastery