E.N. Pop (priest).

V.E. Yes. And even talking with people, who regret the former times, you will hear this. I remember a conversation with the deceased Fr. Sergie Boskinii, I said, “Say, Father, but do remember how you found the situation of the priest before 1917?” “Yes”, he said, “Do not, though, go out to the street. All the dogs will right away inundate him [the priest].” It thus happens that the religious sermon and the Christian sermon depend not only on the place and the time. They depend on the era in which we are at the present surviving. The Russian Church has gained a great experience of long-suffering. But already this itself says that the Lord prepared Her [the Church] for service for hundreds of years. It is needed to gather patience and not to hurry time. Of this relationship, some opinions we have are introduced to me with much naivity and boundaries that even if the Lord promised that the gates of Hades would not conquer the Church, it does not say anywhere to maintain the Russian Orthodox Church. That is naive. It is needed to have in sight that we all witnessed that the Lord saved us, those who are living and gathering treasures imperishable on this land, in startling, nevertheless, circumstances. Once the Lord cultivated the Russian Church with the skill for long-suffering, it was then destined to Her a long period of time. And thus this long period is given to us, and we need to have strength and to give thanks to God.