Priest George Chistyakov:

About our church

People who hear about our hospital church for the first time usually want to ask several questions.

Why is a church necessary at a hospital? And, if it is a church, why is its life associated with fundraising, with working among children, with helping them in solution of various problems? How come that there is a computer class at a church? An art studio? Young people who sing with the children and play the guitar? In general, is it a church or a charitable society? A church or a room for classes and amusement? And so on.

The answer to these questions is simple. Everything becomes meaningful in our life when God enters it. More precisely, when we understand that God has entered it. In a hospital, among gravely ill children, it is indeed frightening to forget that there is God in our life, the life that is sometimes so hard and difficult.

Because everything breaks down when you forget! You see that not only children are ill but also their parents, that the doctors are actually ill, too. Each of us lives with his or her own diagnosis. You feel incredibly tired. You feel at a loss.

I think that a hospital is a kind of a model. A model of our society. Just as the Universe is reflected in a single drop of water, the events at a pediatric hospital (a thousand patients is a lot, of course, but this is only a tiny part of Mankind) reflect the world in a miniature form. There is so much pain in the world that everything begins to break down when we forget of God's presence in the Universe. Same here: there is so much pain in this hospital that forgetting about God here means leading people around you to a disaster.

So why is a church necessary at the hospital? Of course, one may ask this question, and other people may try to answer it on some theological and theoretical basis...

However, all of this becomes clear to me when I give communion to the children. When a mother brings her small child, sometimes just a baby, to take the Bread and Wine, and the child smiles and opens his or her mouth - well, I think this explains everything. I need no other answers to these questions. Sometimes a child is brought to the church for the first time and gets frightened, and doesn't want to receive communion. I always say, "Never mind, let's just wait." And, if the child's mother doesn't force him or her to take Eucharist (in general, it seems very strange to me when the joy of Eucharist is forced on somebody), this child will arrive here again in a week. Or in two, or in three weeks. But this time merry and radiant.

A shining smile of a child in front of the communion cup is the answer to the question that we heard in the beginning of our conversation.

And it is also important to remember another thing about the inhabitants of our hospital. They are not only children but also just human beings. I mean, children deserve tenderness and care, but I try to remind their parents and doctors that these children also need respect. Respect for their human individuality.