E.N. What place do educational activities now occupy in your life?

V.E. I continue to lead the school and I feel that the Lord guides me with the strength necessary to support both the establishment of a catechism school and the establishment of spiritual education for laity. In my own time, when it [spiritual education] was practically closed, I maybe more than many felt not simply obvious inadequacy, but direct death of the Church body in many of its members. You know that the Orthodox Church does not partake of the Catholic division of the church community into priests and parishioners - “The Spirit blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8). Therefore religious education, full and well-rounded, is not only urgent and necessary for the laity but also for the priests. The laity should not be semi-literate with the Church for this often leads to ruinous consequences for the Church. In Catholicism, for example, many false presentations became fortified in the people; the hierarchy struggled as much as they could with them, but became exhausted. This happens in all cases when we violate the providence of the Head of the Church concerning Her Whole Body. The Lord established His Church, which, was gained with His Holy Blood and cleaning by the word of His mouth He proclaimed, “The Spirit blows where it pleases.” To place religious knowledge on the clergy, on the priesthood, and to deprive the church people with education is to try to bind the Holy Spirit. To do this is forbidden, but such an attempt does not pass unnoticed and it always has a negative consequence.