On Saturday of the Third Week after Pascha, 02.05.26, after the Divine Liturgy, a pastoral talk will take place in the lower hall with the rector of our parish, Archpriest Vadim Zakrevsky.
In connection with this, we would like to share some responses, impressions, and knowledge received from parishioners regarding the previous talks:
“…which, to a certain extent, is also a response of the soul and mind to those talks of the priest, the rector of the parish, at which I tried to be present quite regularly. I will not single out the moments that are conditionally formal, although in such talks there are no formal things, but these are moments which, nevertheless, are very interesting, at least for me. This concerns the difference between the clergy and the church servers, and the hierarchy in the Church. By the way, for me it was an interesting point that the service can also be performed by a deacon in the absence of a priest, but without the celebration of the sacraments and without the reading of the Gospel, that is, without that which pertains to the actions of the priest. Moreover, a great impression was made on me by that point about which I, perhaps, had not reflected, or rather, I imagined it somewhat differently. It is commonly known that after death the soul passes through toll-houses, and on the fortieth day it is determined where the soul goes — to paradise or to hell. I, as it were, considered this process absolutely complete, while the Last Judgment seemed to me to concern, if one may say so, those people who at that moment are alive. Indeed, this came into a certain contradiction with what is written in several places and with the well-known thesis that ‘the saints also shall stand before the Last Judgment.’ After one of the talks of the rector, devoted, among other things, to this question, I understood that at the Last Judgment there is possible, conditionally speaking, a reconsideration of the determination of the soul which it received after a person’s death, probably in both directions, since saints, recognized as saints on earth, it is apparently assumed that their souls are in paradise. And if they will be subject to reconsideration, then one may conclude that, evidently, reconsideration is possible in one direction and in the other. Besides this, a certain revelation for me were a number of questions which parishioners asked at these talks, and among those that remained in my soul were questions connected with the responsibility of figures of culture and art both before God and before people in the context of responsibility before God. Somehow I had not reflected on such a formulation of the question before…”