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Metropolitan Anthony is
"a Christian leader respected far beyond his own congregation",
says the Archbishop of Canterbury. How has this Russian Orthodox
patriarch affected the lives of his adherents here?
You expect magnificence, incense,
embroidered robes, gilded icons. At the very least an acolyte or
two to open the door of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal
Cathedral on behalf of its present incumbent, Metropolitan
Anthony of Sourozh. The Cathedral itself looks like some faded
relic of Byzantium, a piece of 19th century baroque tucked
discreetly into a Knightsbridge backwater between Hyde Park and
a cluster of Middle Eastern embassies. It was originally built
for Anglican worship. It is now entirely Russian, leased to the
Orthodox church after the last war and recently sold after a
massive fund-raising effort by the Russian Orthodox community.
If you have been brought up in the
traditions of the Church of England, the Russian Orthodox Church
sounds faintly outlandish, a foreign branch of Christianity
encrusted with onion domes and the gaudy ornament of ancient and
outdated ritual. Certainly, in terms of sartorial glory at
least, its archbishops look a cut above our own. And few
Archbishops of Canterbury have made more visual or spiritual
impression on the people of Britain over the past 30
years than this grey-bearded, mellifluous Russian who had never
before visited England, and knew no English, when at the age of
35 he was appointed as a recently ordained
priest of some 300 Russian emigrés in
London.
The present Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, believes that Metropolitan
Anthony's influence goes far beyond his own Church. "People who
live in this country — Christians, doubters and unbelievers
— owe an immense spiritual debt to Metropolitan
Anthony", he says. "He represents the great Orthodox tradition,
and particularly its Russian faith.
"These are days when Christians in
the West are tempted to be mentally restless, and eager to
express their social relevance. The Russian Church has a steady
sense of the eternal truth that cannot be shaken. Its liturgy
does not put before us ideas. It puts us in touch with God.
Especially in his broadcasts, Metropolitan Anthony communicates
the Christian faith with a directness which inspires the
believer and challenges the enquirer.
"As well as being a personal friend
of successive Archbishops of Canterbury, he has worked
untiringly for closer understanding between Christians of the
East and West, and brought the writings of the Orthodox mystics,
particularly those of Holy Russia, to readers in this country.
"Metropolitan Anthony is a
Christian leader respected far beyond his own congregation".
Today Metropolitan Anthony's lucid
English prose in books like Living Prayer and
Meditations on a Theme has reached thousands. He is the
best-selling spiritual author in Britain and his books have been
translated into ten languages. The measured cadences of his
speech, his simple but profound convictions, have made him a
natural broadcaster. That original exiled community of Russians
has grown into a parish of some 1,000
people in Greater London alone, with another eight parishes
which include Bristol, Devon, Sussex and Norfolk. In one of them
the parish priest estimates that half his parishioners are
English converts to Russian Orthodoxy-including himself and his
wife.
The differences between the western
churches and the Orthodox of the eastern
Roman Empire go back a long way. By the sixth century,
the religion of Christianity recognised by the Emperor
Constantine two centuries earlier was polarising already on the
crumbled and disparate western Empire and the wealthy, more
stable civilisation based on Constantinople. The power of the
Pope in Rome was increasing, and relations between the Pope and
the Patriarchs in Constantinople came to a hasty, acrimonious
and formal end when the Papal envoys and Patriarchs parted
company in Constantinople in 1054.
The western world put its faith in
the authority and infallibility of a single man in Rome: the
loose hierarchy of Orthodox bishops and patriarchs, or
archbishops, remained true to their principle of corporate
decision. Other differences are variously profound and trivial,
but this fundamental schism is unlikely ever to be bridged, at
least between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. As
late as 1848 the Eastern Patriarchs wrote
to the Pope: "Among us neither Patriarchs nor Councils could
ever introduce new teaching for the guardian of religion is the
very body of the Church, that is, the people themselves".
Yet the Russian Orthodox Church in
particular has in recent years played a major role in bringing
Christians of all denominations together, particularly as it is
not a proselytising church out for converts. And curiously
enough, despite its carefully maintained rituals and traditions,
it has also retained a directness and simplicity in its approach
to the teachings of Jesus. Many of those who attend the monthly
English services at the Russian Cathedral in Ennismore
Gardens, London SW7, do so, simply because they
prefer their form and liturgy to
those of their own Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.
There are no pews, no ordered
responses, no prayerbooks to follow, although everyone is free
to join in the formal chanted worship or
unaccompanied singing if they wish. People enter quietly through
the service, buying white candles to
light with a private prayer before a
special icon. It is part of the essential paradox of the
Orthodox church that icons of Christ, the Virgin or a
great number of saints, signify God's intimacy with man, whereas
the painted icon screen that divides the sacred area of the
altar from the body of the church is a reminder of the
separation of God and man. The ministers emerge from doors in
the screen to speak and give the communion wine and bread to the
congregation-babies first. Children play on the polished floor.
You wonder if this is how it was under the czars: the people
standing in humble and indeed silent worship before that gilded
screen. One or two elderly worshippers nearby suddenly prostrate
themselves on the floor. Yet in this ancient liturgy, with its
spacious candlelit richness, you feel a curious freedom.
"It's an odd thing", observed one
English convert, John Palmer, a teacher in Bridgwater. "You
don't take part in the service, but you have a real sense of
participation — it's not just an intellectual activity, thinking
of the words, but you bring the whole of yourself, mind, body,
into it. Children feel at home in it, but so do very
intellectual and very simple people. It has great simplicity,
and great depth". Which is perhaps what characterises
Metropolitan Anthony himself, and why an average of 50
people, many of hem young, sceptical and certainly agnostic,
attend the talks be gives three times a month at the Russian
cathedral.
You do not get magnificence from
him. He is a small man, but broad and strongly built, dressed in
black. The hem of his cassock brushes the floor. He is wearing a
black knitted jumper. In the darkness of the porch, which smells
mustily of incense, you notice the dull gleam of his crucifix,
the grey symmetry of his beard, the kindly but peculiarly
penetrating quality of his dark eyes. You scent shyness,
overcome. He is courteous and welcoming, but it is curiously
difficult to make the usual conversational moves, and you are
conscious that he is a monk by vow and inclination, without the
urbanity of more worldly primates. You have the curious feeling
that he could both offer comfort in a knitted embrace and at the
same time bring down a thunderbolt with a glance. He is at once
as cosy as a lady in the Women's Institute and as frightening as
some elemental force like the wind, or a quiescent volcano.
It is reassuring to be led mildly
through the dark space of the Cathedral to a brightly lit vestry
beyond, where he adjusts an electric fire for your benefit and
then sits down on an upright chair to await your questions in
smiling and attentive silence. Nevertheless you cannot forget
that this man once said that the realm of God is dangerous: that
"you must enter into it and not just seek information about it".
Danger was a part of his childhood
from the beginning. At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution
his father, a diplomat with the czarist government, was serving
in Persia, and even that was not safe in 1917.
The Bloom family escaped over the mountains of Khurdistan and by
barge down the Tigris and Euphrates to find a ship bound for
India. Not until 1923 did they finally
settle in France. Anthony was then nine years old. His father,
out of a bitter sense of responsibility, as he saw it, for the
tragic developments in Russia, chose to become an unskilled
workman. Anthony, his only son, remained stateless until he took
French nationality at the age of 23; he
is still a French citizen. It was not a comfortable time for any
of them. The family had nowhere permanent to live and the young
Anthony was boarded out at a school in the slums of Paris.
"My experience in childhood was
that life was violent, brutal, heartless, that men were to one
another adversaries and causes of suffering. One had to fight,
to overcome in order to survive".
Curiously it was not during this
time, but when he was about 14, and the
Bloom family managed to settle happily under one roof in the
suburbs, that he faced his first real crisis.
"I was confronted with the sheer
problem of perfect happiness. I discovered that it was worse
than all the difficulties I had encountered before. Surrounded
by hardships in life, at least you can do something about them;
being happy meant that suddenly there was no challenge, no
purpose, no reason for living. It was like eating sweet cream
without any other food for the rest of my life".
It was perhaps the beginning of a
search, not unlike that of many adolescents, for some meaning in
life. For him there was no question of turning to the church.
"My parents were believers, but they believed more in integrity
and truth than in 'churchianity'. And I soon found that I could
escape going to church at all. If I inhaled the incense deeply
enough I could make myself faint, so I never got further than
three paces . . .".
Reluctantly he was persuaded, as a
courteous gesture, to attend a lecture given by a priest to his
local youth club. He found the vision of Christianity presented
in this way a considerable affront, and describes it as
"profoundly repulsive to me". Nevertheless, being of an
analytical mind, he decided to confirm
this first impression — which indeed it
was: he knew nothing of the gospels
before this, and had to ask his mother if she had a copy of the
New Testament he might see. He was not expecting to like it. He
chose what appeared to be the shortest of the four gospels, St
Mark, and began to read.
He has often described, but never
embroidered, the moment when he became aware that on the other
side of his desk there was a presence, and that he knew that it
was Christ standing there. For him the certainty was so strong
that it has never left him. For him Christ was alive, and he had
been in his presence: he could say with
absolute certainty that the centurion was right when he said,
"Truly he is the Son of God".
"The Gospel did not unfold for me
as a story which one can believe or disbelieve. It began as an
event that left all problems of disbelief behind because it was
a direct and personal experience".
In conversation with Marghanita
Laski, Metropolitan Anthony countered her belief in no God with
his, own, as he said, knowledge: "... it
seems to me that the word 'belief’ is misleading. It gives an
impression of something optional, which is
within our powers to choose or not. What I feel
very strongly about it, is that I believe because I know that
God exists, and I'm puzzled how you can manage not to know". The
dark eyes look faintly amused. "I'm quite prepared to be told d
I'm a crackpot, that I had a sort of brain wave. But the fact is
I am quite sure of what happened. And even if I am a crackpot,
I'm a lot steadier and more normal than some other people you
might call normal. I've been a doctor for ten years and a priest
for 32, without showing much sign of
mental derangement".
He qualified as a doctor in
1939, having previously taken classics at school
and graduated from the Sorbonne in physics, chemistry and
biology. To pay for books and tuition he had, since the age of
12, taught these same subjects to younger
students in the evenings. In the September of 1939
he was called up by the French army, and spent the rest of the
war working both as a surgeon and with the French Resistance.
One vivid recollection of that time is of a German soldier
brought into the hospital with a smashed finger. Amputation
seemed the simple and obvious decision, but Anthony could speak
German, and found that the man was a watchmaker. To remove the
finger would mean the end of his skill. The finger was not
amputated, and he says: "From this I learned that the fact that
he was a watchmaker was as important as anything else. I would
say that I learned to put human concerns first".
"He has a vision of a personed God,
and of people as vital and important individuals", says Father
Benedict Ramsden, an English convert and Russian Orthodox priest
in Exeter. "It can be very attractive, that quality, but it can
make people try to turn him into a kind of guru. He is
incredibly self-effacing, but he's often not allowed to be. He
simply wants people to be special in themselves".
Metropolitan Anthony remains above
all a contemplative monk. "I am a loner. The more lonely I can
manage to be, the better. From this aloneness one can go out and
do more, but I need a great deal of aloneness".
He took his monastic vows secretly
in 1943, when to have revealed them would
have meant he could not practise as a doctor. Nor did he reveal
them until he was ordained priest in 1948.
There was no opportunity for him to follow the purely
contemplative path, in the tradition of Orthodox monks, which
goes back to the time of the Emperor Constantine. Priests were
needed. He was appointed to London, and consecrated bishop nine
years later. It is one of the paradoxes of the Orthodox church
that priests are usually married, but bishops are chosen only
from among the monks. And as bishop, there is little chance for
solitude.
Metropolitan Anthony now has two
priests to help him, Father Michael Fortounatto and John Lee,
and they have taken over the task of visiting; but some six
hours of his day is spent in seeing people who come to him: he
is extremely accessible. He also maintains meticulous
correspondence with those who write to him —
he receives some 2,000 letters a year,
and prefers to write a letter rather than talk to a person. He
has to prepare his thrice-monthly talks, and finds this a
considerable effort: he once said, "I speak with all the
conviction and belief which is in me. I stake my life on what I
am saying".
In addition, he has a great many
official and ecumenical duties to carry out. Yet somehow he
manages to retain some kind of seclusion. The Cathedral is not
only spiritually, but physically, his home. He lives in a room
rather smaller than the vestry, with a bathroom along the
corridor.
"Fortunately there is all the night
to be alone. I'm something between the vicar, the bishop and the
verger. It is wonderful to walk out of one's room into the
church, into the quietness. I try to finish the day between
eight and nine, and no one usually calls before nine in the
morning, so I have about 12 hours to be
alone, to think and read. I do my own cleaning and cooking, and
very little shopping, because there is a parishioner I can ask
to bring me this or that. On Sundays a number of people bring
food for me, cheese, salads, on which I can live for most of the
week. And I'm richer now than I used to be —
my stipend was £1,000 a year, but I'm an
old age pensioner now".
He returns to Russia every year to
report to his Patriarch in Moscow, to preach and talk. The
church in Russia has been criticised for its acquiescence to the
Soviet state, but then the history of the Russian Orthodox
Church has always been one of surviving fracture, pressure and
persecution. One of its strengths perhaps lies in its tough hold
on tradition, which has nevertheless been flexible enough to
accommodate state intervention, whether under the Czar or the
Kremlin. It has been fortunate, too, that since the ninth
century, Slavonic, the language of the people, has been the
language of the liturgy, unlike the Latin of the Roman Catholic
church. Yet perhaps most important has been the curiously
intangible quality of Orthodox belief. Father Sergei Hackel,
vicar-general of the Russian church in Britain, says:
"The Orthodox Church has not gone
out of its way to draw up long lists of carefully numbered and
officially approved beliefs. There are a number of things of
which the Church is well aware, without needing to speak
about them in detail. In any case, human speech is rarely subtle
enough for mysteries".
For Metropolitan Anthony words can
be dangerous, and never more so than in defence of dissidents in
the Soviet Union. He himself has spoken out more than once, but
he does not believe it to be the best way of helping people
within Russia. "In Russia you can try to be a hero and make
tremendous statements — or you can be a very ordinary parish
priest, teach the Gospel, look after the living and the dying
and perhaps do more in the end. There is a very humble way of
serving people which is in the long run more important than
making political statements. There are millions in Russia who
will receive communion and learn of the Gospel, who will live
and die long before history has done anything about them".
And today the churches in the
Soviet Union are full, despite continued persecution of
individuals and increased repression since the invasion of
Afghanistan. In Britain Russian Orthodoxy now not only gains
converts, but has a powerful ecumenical influence.
Father Sergei Hackel suggests that
this may be in part a negative attraction: "Many people who feel
there is an impoverishment of Christianity in western churches
find in the Orthodox an unreformed, undiluted richness of
liturgical and spiritual life, a lack of ambiguity, a curious
mixture of authority and freedom".
Metropolitan Anthony says
cautiously: "I think it is considered almost a virtue now to
question without answering. A number of people have come to us
who feel they can't live with a question mark all the time. Yet
there is so much that we know from God. We think we have some
answers".
Telegraph. Sunday magazine.
N. 238, April 19, 1981. Pp. 32-33,35,48,41, photos.
Published with the permission of
Diana Winsor
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