The collection includes lectures and conversations by Bishop Afanasy (Evtich), held in the fall of 2001 at the Moscow Sretensky Monastery, where the bishop came to meet with students and teachers of the Sretensky Theological School and the brethren of the monastery. Many questions of the existence of the Orthodox Church, illuminated by the greatest theologian of our time, have not lost their relevance even after twenty years.

The corrected and revised edition was conceived as a debt of memory to the bishop who died in 2021, who carried in his heart an ardent love for the Russian Church and spiritual tradition.