RHETORIC AND HOMILETICS IN AN INTERVIEW WITH HIS HOLINESS PATRIARCH KIRILL ON THE CONNECTION OF RUSSIAN PROBLEMS WITH GLOBAL PROBLEMS

The Holy Patriarch’s interview and commentarys on it reveal the growing role of the Russian Orthodox Church and its Primate in the public life of Russia and assess its activities abroad. We will learn how the ROC evaluates such moral norms as conscience, justice, Western European moral duty, Orthodox prayer, the role of the ROC in the middle East, etc. Among the countless speeches of the Metropolitan, and after the enthronement of the Patriarch he has delivered over the decades, the epideictic or encomium is a smaller part of them, among them more missionary speeches intended for the widest audience, warning or preventive, in which the Holy Patriarch acts as a spiritual pastor, calling on believers and non-believers, the people as a whole to live according to the laws of Evangelical morality. Of the many thoughts and feelings in such speeches, the concern of His Holiness in the context of the relationship between Church and society, Church and state is most often seen. As a rule, his Holiness Patriarch’s missionary speeches are devoted to revealing the basic truths of the Gospel, and most often they raise issues of human conscience. Such speeches include the “Christmas interview of his Holiness Patriarch Kirill” to one of the prominent journalists from the Rossiya TV channel on January 7, 2018. The major spiritual problems worthy of clarification and explanation during the Christmas holidays are in most cases global problems, in the context of which Russia plays the role of a defender of the truth in the world today, which is especially clear for objective people, for example, in international relations. In this interview, his Holiness touches on the problem of Russia’s national identity, the degree of danger for Russia in overcoming risks, the reality of the global Apocalypse, the canonization of the family of Emperor Nicholas II, the Ukrainian issue — the end of the civil war; the interview touches on neighboring problemsSyria as a hot spot, where even in the 21th century there is still a danger of the destruction of Christians by radical forces, the election of the President of Russia, opportunities for building a digital economy in Russia, property stratification, as a blatant phenomenon in our society.