E.N. Tell me about your activities concerning the Chistii pereylok.

V.E. Since1983, I worked in the publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate, but in 1990, already during the troubles concerning the Chernigovskii Skit, they [Chistii pereylok] invited me to cross over to service at the Trinity-Sergiev Lavra. It was not promised to me any benefits, not any so to say of a fresh life, but they simply said to be sure, it is obvious, such needed is God’s will. And I noticed about myself that it really was how the Lord ordered. So be it. In the present, the Lord never let go of any of my activities in the various sections of church education. There were periods of great fame and there were periods when I was somewhat in the shadows when it was simply proposed to me to sit “like a mouse in a burrow.” But in any event, I, at all times, felt myself in this work. I was trained from childhood that an intellectual should at all times have some work in one’s hands in order for the head to be always busy, and, in general, one needs to work never putting down the hand and not raising the head. This experience has evidently stayed in me.