Once I had the opportunity to ask the same question to two ascetics — Father John (Krestyankin) and Father Nikolai Guryanov: Father John answered immediately — “Unbelief!” "How so? — I was amazed. — What about the priests? And he answered again: “And the priests have unbelief!” And then I came to Father Nikolai Guryanov — and he told me completely independently of Fr. John said the same thing — unbelief.

— And disbelief becomes cynicism?

People stop noticing that they have lost faith. Cynics have entered the Church, live in it, are used to it, and don’t really want to leave it, because everything is already familiar. And how will they look at it from the outside? Very often, cynicism is a disease of professional Orthodoxy.

The Temple of God at all times is always eternity, in it lives and abides everything that was from the beginning, from the creation of the world, and what will still be until the very second and glorious coming of the Lord. In the Temple of God, everything is always alive — the past, the present, and the future. And there are no secrets in life that the Temple of God — the Holy Church — does not know.

But why don’t the living know these mysteries, why even those who stay in the temple remain both deaf and blind to them, why are there so few sighted and hearing people?

Why did the first Jerusalem temple perish along with its great shrine — the Ark of the Old Testament? Why did the great shrine of the second Temple of Jerusalem, consecrated by the presence in it of the Ark of the New Testament — the Blessed Virgin Mary — and the appearance in it of the Savior and God — Christ, left us only the Western Wall as a memory of itself? Why did the “New Israel” — Great Russia — which over the course of nine centuries created the House of God within itself, have to, like the Old Testament Israel, endure seventy years of captivity among its own people and the abomination of desolation in a holy place — many and many destroyed temples of God and monasteries?

To answer to all our bitter “why?” again, we need to look in the Temple and in the Holy Scriptures, which the Temple keeps. He keeps the shrines, he keeps the truths, but woe to us who live, for these open repositories, these prophecies fulfilled before us, turn out to be for us, because of our negligence, bitterness and unbelief, a secret sealed with seven seals.

This is what the Lord of hosts said at the time when the first Old Testament temple was just being consecrated and rejoicing in its shrine.

Listen to these words, my dears, they were spoken by the Lord to all mankind as a warning: “But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them: Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; … And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house? And they shall answer, Because they forsook the LORD their God, … and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath the LORD brought upon them all this evil” (1 King 9:6-9).

Those to whom they were addressed did not hear these words. Shall we not hear them when we see them fulfilled?

Departure from God is the cause of all troubles at all times.

The Jewish kings and people retreated from God and worshiped alien gods. The Lord punished Israel with war and, in anticipation of repentance, sent the prophet Jeremiah to the apostates preaching repentance and correction. But they did not listen to the prophet, just as they did not listen to the Lord Himself. And Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Temple of Solomon fell, and the Ark of the Covenant perished. And the seventy-year Babylonian captivity became the lot of sinful Israel.

The second Jerusalem temple, built after the return from the Babylonian captivity, was smaller and not so magnificent, but the prophets Haggai and Zechariah predicted its glory more than the first, for the Ark of the New Testament would grow in it. The fate of this temple and the end of the Old Testament sacrifice were predicted by the prophet Daniel long before this happened. And the last prophecy about the second Temple of Jerusalem came from the lips of the Savior Himself. The Lord Jesus Christ wept on the day of His entry into Jerusalem and, foreseeing the approaching Golgotha, predicted the destruction of the temple: “and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:44).

He rejected, again rejected the Israel of God and accepted humanity, rejected Christ the Savior, condemning Him to death and asking for Barabbas the murderer. And the last cry, the groan about the blindness of the chosen people, is heard by the world: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt 23:37-38).

“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” — terrible words that happened, because people again did not want to be God’s.

At the same time, the Temple of Jerusalem raised She Who is the greatest Holy of Holies and followers of Christ, but in it (lived their lives far from God) those who killed the high priest Zechariah between the temple and the altar, who killed the Forerunner of Christ John, who crucified Christ the Savior.

Don’t we see that man becomes either a co-worker with God or a destroyer of what the Lord creates? Look, my dears, how dangerous we are walking. You can be in the temple, but without God. And God punishes people for disrespecting Himself, for rejecting the temple. God's saving punishments to people last for decades, designed to return the human heart to God. And as a final warning to us, the words of the parable of the vinedressers sound: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt 21:43).

Let us be especially attentive, my dears, while we are now creating and restoring a large number of man-made temples, let us not forget the main New Testament temple of God — our heart, called to serve God in Spirit and truth. Let us not forget that we are returning from captivity among foreigners and fellow tribesmen who are fighting against us and our Orthodox faith, sick, crippled, spiritually exhausted. That we have been without God for a long, very long time and now we are just standing on the threshold of the Temple, which will sanctify us, but on one condition: if we want it ourselves.

Question: Do you seem to feel that modern culture is becoming unchristian?

Answer: I will not talk about the social side of the matter, but I see that the Church is becoming non-Christian. It seems to me that pastors adapt too much to the world, and there are many non-believers in the flock. Christ did not tell us: “Go into the world and tell it that it is right.” The whole spirit of the Gospel is different, it is opposed to the world.