Biography of Konstantin Ostrovsky

Leonid Vinogradov Julia Makovychuk why the communities are falling apart, is it difficult to serve with his sons and what spirituality in which the immortal is telling Archpriest Konstantin Ostrovsky about his life. The rector of the Assumption Church of the city of Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region, Archpriest Konstantin Ostrovsky, told Pravmir about his life, the coming to God, the family and the priestly ministry.

Archpriest Konstantin Ostrovsky was born in Moscow. In the year he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering. He worked as a programmer. He took baptism in the year. He worked as an altar at the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist on Presnya. Ordained in the year. He served in the Far East for two and a half years. Since the year, the rector of the Assumption Temple in Krasnogorsk.

Dean of the Churches of the Krasnogorsk District. Chairman of the Diocesan Department for Restoration and Construction. Married, has four sons. One of them is a bishop, two - priests, serve in the Krasnogorsk deanery. About God, all my information was limited to the works of Mayakovsky, where terrible priests. Then we were all baptized and churched, and my mother was baptized before me, but she was shredded later, and my grandmother was baptized later.

Then, like most Soviet people, we did not know anything about God and never said at home on this topic. The teachers were respected by my mother and grandmother were simple people-the grandmother worked with a medical statistical, mother taught somewhere or in vocational schools-but they were engaged in my upbringing and education. Therefore, in the 9th grade, I ended up in the famous second mathematical school at that time.

Mom read about her in Izvestia and persuaded me to try to go there. I creak, but I acted, with a creak I finished it in the year and never regretted it - the school was really wonderful, I had the warmest memories of it. Did it seem like that too? However, in the year she was still dispersed: the director and almost all leading teachers were fired. Moreover, for a long time the second school was due to the fact that its founder and director, Vladimir Fedorovich Ovchinnikov, was a member of the CPSU city committee, most teachers were also members of the party, but many are anti -Soviet, and although they openly scolded Soviet power, their mood was transferred to students.

As a boy from a simple family, I just did not understand this, but intuitively felt that the atmosphere at school was special, noble. I remember that in a chemistry lesson I was sitting about something, and at the same time I torn Linoleum on the table, the teacher, of course, did not like it, she sent me to the director. I waited for the fork, and he just told me to fix the table.

It shocked me. Another amazing story ... The class teacher, Natalya Vasilievna, called her mother to school, because I gloomed a lot, while I had enough arrogance to ask her not to tell my mother that I was walking. And she did not say. If you look at the matter formally, it did wrong-because it was because of my systematic absenteeism that she called her mother! But her “wrong” act has become for me a lesson in nobility for life!

The attitude of teachers towards students is perhaps the main thing that distinguished the second mathematical school. Teachers respected us, even when our actions did not deserve respect. Naturally, they did not call black white and did not say that we were doing the right thing, but they saw a person in each child, believed that he could explain everything humanly, without screams and threats.

And such an attitude, along with brilliant teaching, had fruit. All studied well, many entered the MHCAT MSU, in MEFU and Fizteh, well, and the middle peasants like me easily entered good technical universities. I graduated from school at 16, because after the first grade my parents transferred me to the third at once. Well, at the age of 16, few are ready to make a conscious choice.

I thought about the physical education, since I was engaged in the classical struggle so then Greco-Roman was called and once even became the champion of Moscow among the young men, but decided that physical education is unsalued, and entered the medical one. In the first six months, anatomy, histology, embryology passed, but for some reason I perceived all this as an introduction and waited for the science to study!

I passed the exams for the first semester and bored in mathematics, and on friends. He abandoned the medical one - this decision seemed unreasonable to many, but initially it was not worth it to act there for the same reasons: without calling, just instead of a physical education. In principle, I believe that it is normal when a young man is looking for himself, leaves one institute to enter another.

He began to prepare hard and prepared well, but the requirements were still increased on the Mehmat-theoretically could have acted, but did not do it. And he entered Miem and finished it. We had a good company. I was irritated, of course, but not hooligated. They drunk cheerfully, played cards, while talking a lot on serious topics. We are tired of drunk to the fourth to get drunk.Not that they completely stopped, but drunkenness ceased to be the core of our communication, they tried to study well between fun.

Between occultism and baptism, our company also included friends-spokes in my cousin. She is a journalist, then she worked at the Moscow Komsomolets in the last years before retirement was the editor -in -chief of the Udmurt Radio. We were all friends together and after the institute continued to communicate, and many of us were in spiritual search. Some, however, quickly preferred occultism to everything.

At first I became interested in the moralism of Tolstoy and Schweitzer, but it became bored, and also moved to Eastern mysticism, I liked it, but, fortunately, not for long, and I did not enter it deeply. Later, I realized how God kept me and did not even lead me, but carried in his arms through great dangers. Once we were in St. Petersburg with friends, lying nearby on the floor with one occultist, whom I really respected and even read for the Sufi sheikh.

And for some reason friends were baptized for some reason, and I consulted with him if I was also baptized. He began to dissuade me, I agreed with everything and ... firmly decided to be baptized. And really baptized. After some time, he talked with another occultist, which I also liked very much, but did not take me as a student, said that I would be a priest. Bathing in the sea, I lost the cross, and he suggested to me: "Come on, I will cut you a cross." But I firmly refused, said that I would buy in the church.

I bought it, soon after that my wife was baptized, then he was baptized with his son alone, and soon I went to church to work. He wanted a watchman, but they didn’t take it anywhere, but they took the altar to the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist on Presnya. Altar, paired with Valery Mishin, who still serves in that temple, but already a priest. I had a churching.

After that, relations with friends somehow came to naught. One of his friends-Sergey Zhigalkin-became a rather famous Nietzschean, even translated something from Nitsche. Two more - Nikolai Mikhailovich and Galina Vasilievna Novikov - found me in many years, when they themselves were still choking, and even helped me make my first books. They are professionals: Nikolai Mikhailovich-a polygraph artist, at different times was the main artist in the Ogok and Literary, Galina Vasilievna worked as a journalist for many years.

So I published the first books with their direct participation. Then Nikolai Mikhailovich, with the help of Galina Vasilievna, began to publish his books - the famous series “Jesus's Prayer: the experience of two millennia”. There were no catechization - that is, you were not baptized not quite consciously and began to be churching not immediately after baptism? Therefore, he wanted to be baptized.

Not completely without catechesis was baptized, because Valery Mishin was in our company, at that time an Orthodox Christian and an altar. We met him, talked, he answered some of my questions, gave primary instructions and brought to be baptized. After baptism, I even took communion. But, of course, then I still understood little, but I was churching, already being an altar. I am now skeptical of a solid installation for a large catechesis.

Many of my peers, like me, first came to church without any catechesis, and only then churched. If they demanded to go from me to ten lectures, and the lectures would be boring, which is quite likely, I could just leave, deciding that everything was boring in the church. Therefore, it is good that in my case there were without catechesis. That is, there was catechesis, but already in the process of church life.

Altar, talked with people, communed, Father Georgy Breev became my confessor, and gradually everything fell into place. He worked for the first three years by distribution - you can’t get anywhere here. Then there were a search for lively work, I wanted to work with people, and I went to the vocational school. He worked there for two months - with his free -style communication did not fit into the teaching environment at all and had no desire to adapt.

He left without any conflict, he simply felt that I was a stranger there, and then one of the classmates suggested a job, which could also not be going on. It suited me - I was engaged in my business, and suddenly a year later they said that now we had to go to work. It was a shock for me, and I decided that I would go to church - I heard that you could get a watchman. They didn’t take me, and then I tried to go to the singers, and not even somewhere, but to the Elokhov Cathedral.

I still do not know how to sing, but now at least I know that I don’t know how, and then I did not know and once trampled there in the left choir. I really liked everything, in the service the singers were treated to candies, sandwiches, but the regent said: "You do not know how to sing at all." They didn’t take the Cathedral to the Elokhov Cathedral, and then the altar was entered the seminary on Presnya, the place was freed, and Valera Mishin offered me.

As I remember now, I came on Sunday on the eve of the Assumption, I see, Father George consumes holy gifts. But now I understand that he consumed gifts, and then I thought: “From what beautiful dishes of the priests breakfast! Imagine what was the level of my churchness?