E.N. I hear your astonishingly interesting story and I have formed an impression that for you the question of the choice of service never stood still. They [the services] were always abundant for you. Which of your services do you consider to be more important and current for the modern day Church?

V.E. This work changes for me. It changes simply with time. Besides, this [change] is not my decision: if you like, I simply feel irresistible grace, like when I have one service which strongly begins to lessen and then at the same time another [service] develops. Sometimes, especially in 1991 and after that in 1993-1994, all my time was swallowed up by the Lavra. My service was practically solely bureaucratic. My papa, for instance, called it by the former [tsarist] appointment, “the bureaucrat for special missions.” Indeed, there was a discussion going on about the registration of the documents of that time, about the transmission of the new churches in the Lavra, former cloisters, and about the opening of the Lavra museum founded by the wife of Trotsky by the decree of Lenin. In any case, then, I did not wish for anything else for myself. Now I am staying at the Lavra, but there already is no abundance of this bureaucratic work.