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Abstra ct (Article Summary)
An obituary for Andre Borisovich Bloom, who
died on Aug 4, 2003, is presented. Also known as Metropolitan
Anthony of Sourozh, the head of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal
Church in Great Britain was a remarkable man who changed many
lives through his writing, his preaching, and his personal
witness.
Metropolitan Anthony
of Sourozh, the head of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal Church
in Great Britain, died on August 4,2003. He was a remarkable man
who changed many lives, mine among them, through his writing (the
way I first encountered him), his preaching, and his personal
witness.
Born Andre Borisovich Bloom in Lausanne,
Switzerland, in 1914, he trained as a physician in France, and
while working as a doctor joined the Resistance against the
German occupation. He took secret monastic vows during that
period, and was professed as a monk in 1943. Ordained a priest
in 1948, he was sent to London to serve the emigre Russian
community, eventually becoming metropolitan, a rank in Russian
Orthodoxy second only to the patriarch. As exarch of Western
Europe, he served as the patriarch's representative. But when
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and
was denounced by a senior bishop of the Moscow patriarchate,
Metropolitan Anthony resigned as exarch and wrote a letter to
the London Times in which he praised Solzhenitsyn and said, "He
believes that a nation which cannot openly face its recent past,
cannot solve its problems in the present and in the future. In
his love and endeavor he does not stand alone in Russia or
abroad." Bloom held a service during which he prayed for the
rights of dissidents and, he told me, the phone was ringing when
he got back to his apartment. Moscow had heard of it already,
and church officials there were not happy.
Bloom and his mother lived as simply as they
could when he lived with her in Paris; they kept only what they
needed, and gave the rest away. When I visited him in London, I
noticed that there was nothing extra in his apartment. It wasn't
exactly ostentatiously ascetic, but it was a very spare place.
He was ascetic without making it dramatic; it was more a radical
simplicity, and as a good obituary in the Independent noted, he
believed that Orthodoxy was the simplest way. That obituary
mentioned his fondness for Evangelical Christians, and quoted
him as saying he never preached Orthodoxy, only Christ.
Some of his affection for Evangelicals might
have come from his own conversion experience. he was an atheist
as a teenager. When a priest addressed his youth group, he was
so irritated by the lecture that he wanted to refute him by
using the Bible itself. He asked his mother which Gospel was the
shortest, sat down with the New Testament, and began to read the
Gospel of Mark. After a few chapters he became so strongly aware
of Christ's presence that he said he never after that experience
doubted the existence of God.
He was the author of a number of good books
on prayer and the spiritual life, including Living Prayer, which
my father's company, Templegate, published in the United States.
That's how my wife Regina and I met Bloom. We were in England,
and I wanted to see if he might do another book for Templegate.
He suggested that another book might be in the offing, although
this was a little vague in the correspondence that preceded the
trip - I learned later that his books were generated by talks
and were transcribed by others; he never wrote anything for
publication - but he agreed to meet us. When we rang, he came to
the door himself-unusual for a bishop-and invited us upstairs.
His apartment, as I said, was spare. He
offered us tea, and there was a dish of candies for visitors.
What struck us most of all was his gaze-piercing, totally
focused. I can honestly say that I have never met a man whose
presence was so much like fire. It was as if my own life had
been thrown into relief, and revealed for the sloppy thing it
was and is; but instead of being discouraging, the experience
was encouraging: this is what we are called to, and it is
possible with God's help.
We got business out of the way early in the
conversation, and the rest of the afternoon shaded into dusk as
we talked. Bloom was not in any way a proselytizer, and when I
spoke of my interest in Orthodoxy he said that if that was where
God wanted me to be, it would become clear to me, but in God's
time and not my own. He counseled patience, and said, "Never
join a community that does not pray." He spoke of his own way of
receiving converts. Anyone interested in joining the Orthodox
community would be assigned to a family in the parish, and would
spend the liturgical year worshiping with them. It was
important, he believed, to make sure that people encountered
Orthodoxy as it is actually lived, at home and in the parish
church, rather than to have an idea of Orthodoxy. The people to
whom the potential convert was assigned must have been Orthodox
for at least five years. Asked why, he said, "I want them to
have lost their convert's enthusiasm."
When we left, one detail impressed me
greatly. It was November and cold outside. Regina had made a
grey cloak, lined, and as he was helping her into it
Metropolitan Anthony said, "This is beautiful work. Did you make
it yourself?" I liked the thought that a person so ascetic could
be at the same time so attentive and observant - a fruit of true
asceticism, perhaps.
An English Catholic theologian once told me
that he thought Metropolitan Anthony was a witch. When I asked
what he meant, he said, "Those eyes." I answered that what you
see in those eyes came from something true. I know only that
Regina and I were overwhelmed by what we met in him, and were
changed in some way. Andrew Walker's obituary in the Independent
quotes Metropolitan Anthony: "No one could turn toward eternity
if he had not seen in the eyes or in the face of one person the
shining of eternal life." I think that is what we saw there.
John Garvey. Commonweal. New York: Dec
5, 2003. Vol. 130, Iss. 21; pg. 6
ISSN: 00103330
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