Theologian. Philosopher. Metropolitan.
(“Sourozhsky” indicates a title indicating that Metropolitan Anthony headed the Orthodox parishes of the Russian Church in England and Western Europe)
On June 6, 1914, Andrei Borisovich Bloom was born in Lausanne, into the family of an employee of the Russian diplomatic service. The ancestors of his father, Boris Eduardovich Bloom, being Scots, settled in Russia in the times of Peter the Great. Mother - Ksenia Nikolaevna Skryabina - is the sister of composer Alexander Scriabin, but the bishop preferred not to talk about this with others.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Freedom and slavery. Discipline and obedience
Freedom does not mean that a person can do whatever he wants, but that he can be himself in the truest sense of the word...
...to be born with the rights of a free person does not at all mean to be free or to remain free. If you were born with the rights of a free person, but became a slave to your passions in any form, then you can no longer talk about freedom...
...freedom... is inseparably linked with discipline: in order to remain so, having been born free, you must learn to control yourself, to be your own master.
...two concepts are immediately associated with the concept of freedom: the ability to control oneself, and the training that leads to this, which in essence is obedience.
...obedience is fundamentally about learning to...listen to what another is saying. And its goal is precisely to outgrow yourself thanks to the fact that you listen to the wisdom or experience of another person.
... when I talk about obedience, I’m not talking about slavishly following certain rules of life, but about listening. The word “obedience” comes from the word “listen.”
…obedience and freedom are inextricably linked; one is a condition of the other, like school. But the ultimate goal of such obedience, which begins with listening, listening to the thoughts, feelings, experiences of another person, is to teach us such detachment from our preconceived thoughts or feelings that control us that we can then listen to the will of God.
Emigration
Andrey spent his childhood in Iran, where his father worked as a consul, and in Russia. But after the revolution of 1917, the family had to leave for Europe, sharing the emigrant fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian families thrown out of Russia by the new government.
After several years of wandering, they settled in France in 1923, where he graduated from a workers' school on the outskirts of Paris. "Why? It was the cheapest, firstly, then, the only one at that time around Paris and in Paris itself, where I could live.”
So that children do not lose touch with Russia and do not forget the language and culture of the country, various organizations were created for boys and girls in Paris and other cities of France. So, for example, at the age of 9, Andrei ended up in a scout camp of an organization called “Young Russia”.
There the boys were taught courage, endurance and readiness for exploits and the rules of the Russian language and grammar. After the collapse of Young Russia, there was an organization of “knights”, which then began to form within the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM). The differences between the RSHD and the previous organization were the high cultural level and religiosity - during the organization there was a priest and a church in the camp.
Andrey Bloom (right) and father Georgy Shumkin at the Vityaz summer camp at the RSHD. From the archives of the Foundation “Spiritual Heritage of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh”
At the age of 14, Andrei Bloom, being an atheist, suddenly involuntarily heard a sermon by a Russian Orthodox priest (Father Sergius Bulgakov), who came to the RSHD summer camp to meet with young people. What the young man heard was disgusting to his own convictions: meekness, humility, obedience - slavish feelings.
To make sure that he was right once and for all, he decided to read the Gospel, choosing the shortest one that was at home. This is how Metropolitan Anthony Bloom himself recalls that moment:
“And so I sat down to read; and here you may take my word for it, because you can’t prove it. ... I was sitting, reading, and between the beginning of the first and the beginning of the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark, which I read slowly because the language was unusual, I suddenly felt that on the other side of the table, here, stood Christ.”
“As soon as I read the Gospel as a 14-year-old boy, I felt that there could be no other task in life than to share with others the life-transforming joy that was revealed to me in the knowledge of God and Christ.”
Sin and repentance
...The Savior asks: Do you want to be healed?.. It would seem that this question is not only unexpected, but simply incomprehensible: who does not want to be healed? But the word healing does not simply mean bodily recovery; to be healed means to be, as it were, created again, to become whole again, without flaw, in complete harmony between God and oneself, harmony between conscience, inner truth - and life. And the Savior Christ poses these two questions to everyone in one way or another. Each of us is ready to answer: Yes! I want wholeness! - but is it? Do we want the integrity of our entire nature and a mind healed of all darkness, and a heart cleansed from all impurity, and a will aimed only at harmony with the will of God, and a flesh free from all unclean attractions - do we want this? Do we want to be healed in such a way that there is nothing left in us that is not God’s, and that is not worthy of our human greatness and honor and dignity?
If it were so, we would have to be in the likeness of Christ with all our lives and our inner aspirations, and with all our actions and words.
The Path of Church Service
Bishop Anthony with his mother Ksenia Bloom and grandmother Olga Scriabina.
London, 1949 The first introduction to church activities occurred in 1931, when the future Bishop Anthony was ordained a surplice to serve in the church of the Three Hierarchs' Metochion, and from these early years he invariably remained faithful to the Russian Church.
After graduating from school, I entered the Sorbonne and graduated from two faculties - biology and medicine.
On September 10, 1939, having secretly taken monastic vows, he went to the front as an army surgeon. Then - the occupation and three years of work as a doctor in the French Resistance. And although in April 1943 Andrei Bloom was tonsured into a mantle with the name Anthony (in honor of St. Anthony of the Kiev-Pechersk), he continued to work as a doctor until October 1948, when Metropolitan Seraphim ordained him as a hierodeacon.
November 4, 1948
ordination by Metropolitan Seraphim as hieromonk and departure to Great Britain as the spiritual leader of the Anglo-Orthodox Commonwealth of St. Albanius and St. Sergius
Since September 1, 1950 - rector of the Patriarchal Church of the Holy Apostle Philip and St. Sergius in London.
January 7, 1954 - elevation to the rank of abbot. May 9 - elevation to the rank of archimandrite. December of the same year - appointment as rector of the Patriarchal Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints in London. And he remained in the position of rector of this temple, later the cathedral, until his death.
Vladyka Anthony. Paris, 1956
On November 29, 1957 - he was named, and on November 30, 1957 in London he was consecrated Bishop of Sergius, vicar of the Western European Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate with residence in London.
1962 - elevation to the rank of archbishop with the responsibility of caring for Russian Orthodox parishes in Great Britain and Ireland at the head of the Sourozh diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) established on October 10, 1962 in Great Britain.
December 3, 1965 - elevation to the rank of metropolitan and appointment as Patriarchal Exarch of Western Europe.
Literature
- JMP. 1958, No. 2, p. 10-15; No. 8, p. 19-20.
- -“-, 1959, No. 6, p. 33; No. 7, p. 4, 17; No. 9, p. 27, 30.
- -“-, 1960, No. 1, p. 18; No. 3, p. 5, 24; No. 4, p. 68-69; No. 8, p. 12, 69, 76-77; No. 10, p. 20, 22; No. 11, p. 6, 8, 21; No. 12, p. 7-8, 22.
- -“-, 1961, No. 1, p. 12, 15, 17-18; No. 2, p. 15, 19; No. 4, p. 32; No. 9, p. 68, 75.
- -“-, 1962, No. 11, p. 9, 12.
- -“-, 1966, No. 1, p. 3; No. 3, p. 4, 15-18, 36.
- -“-, 1967, No. 3, p. 75-76; No. 9, p. 73-79.
- -“-, 1968, No. 1, p. 73-74; No. 3, p. 58-73; No. 4, p. 65-73, No. 5, p. 56-64; No. 6, p. 71-73, No. 7, p. 31-33, 58-71; No. 8, p. 1, 33-35; No. 9, p. 34-35, 67-72; No. 12, p. 9, 42-44.
- -“-, 1969, No. 4, p. 6.
- -“-, 1971, No. 6, p. 2; No. 8, p. 46.
- -“-, 1972, No. 1, p. 22; No. 6, p. 43; No. 8, p. 33; No. 10, p. 11, 14, 16, 54.
- -“-, 1973, No. 8, p. 16.
- -“-, 1974, No. 2, p. 5; No. 6, p. 4; No. 11, p. 43.
- -“-, 1975, No. 6, p. 4.
- -“-, 1976, No. 1, p. 6.
- -“-, 1979, No. 10, p. 2.
- -“-, 1981, No. 7, p. 6; No. 9, p. 9.
- -“-, 1982, No. 2, p. 49; No. 3, p. 18-25; No. 5, p. 9.
- -“-, 1983, No. 1, p. 26; No. 6, p. 18; No. 7, p. 55.
- -“-, 1984, No. 8, p. 6; No. 12, p. 33.
- -“-, 1985, No. 2, p. 3.
Russia
From an early age, Anthony of Sourozhsky (even after leaving the country in 1917) retained a tender, reverent attitude towards Russia as his Motherland: “I am Russian myself, Russian culture, Russian beliefs, I feel that Russia is my Motherland.”
He never stopped praying for her, her well-being. Even the flock of the Diocese of Sourozh, which the Metropolitan founded in 1962, consisted mainly of those Russian emigrants who did not want to lose their Russian roots, their connection with Russia, where the church was in isolation.
Since 1960, the Metropolitan had the opportunity to come to the Soviet Union, conduct services, read sermons, and speak to students of the Theological Academy. But the most remarkable and memorable were the informal meetings in apartments (the so-called “kvartirniki”), chock-full of people eager to hear the word of God expressed in simple, accessible and understandable language.
Here is what Archpriest Nikolai Vedernikov, one of the organizers of the “apartments”, says about such conversations:
“He was the only person of such talent, sent by God’s providence to our world, to our country... He introduced us all to his highest spiritual experience. This communion was carried out through the simplest words.”
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (left) in the Moscow metro on his first visit to Russia. Oct. 1960. From the archive of the Foundation “Spiritual Heritage of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh”
Relationships between people. Love. Marriage
...we must realize... how important and precious all our human relationships are, how they can play a decisive role in the absolute events of our lives. How we need to perceive carefully, thoughtfully, and holistically all the relationships we have; because every relationship defines a situation that can blossom into a miracle—the miracle of meeting God.
...one of the most tragic things in the world is when two people or two groups of people cannot meet, not only do not have a common language, but do not even have a point of contact, when they, like two parallel lines, each go in their own direction, like two opposite infinities.
...it is not at all easy to learn to listen with the intention of hearing, it is very difficult to look with the intention of seeing.
I am very struck by the word meeting... it is jubilant joy, because everyone sees themselves in the other and at the same time recognizes this duality... this is the unity of the two.
To love means to stop seeing yourself as the center and purpose of existence.
Love is reflected in this: in a person we suddenly see something that no one has seen; a person who passed unnoticed, abandoned, discarded, a stranger, a person who was simply among the mass of humanity, is suddenly noticed by us, becomes significant, unique, and in this sense acquires final significance.
It is not because the Church, the individual person, is perceived and revered in this way that there is this purity and virtue, but because the person who is loved becomes something that he, perhaps, never was. He receives the quality of eternity.
Physical intercourse between a man and a woman is not sinful; lust is sinful, insensitive greed is sinful. Ideally, marriage or the mutual communication that leads to it begins with the fact that a person loves another, loves with his heart so much that they become united in spirit, united in soul; and it is quite natural that this love embraces the whole person, including his body. It’s simply amazing to think that our physicality also participates in the mystery of love - not possession, not lust, precisely that love that makes two people one...
The Kingdom of God has already come when two ceased to be two and became one...
Both the Old and New Testaments say that in marriage two people become one flesh, that is, one living being, one person in two persons; and of course, there can be no inherent sin in this...
...the sin is not in marriage, not in the union of two sins, but precisely in the fact that in such cases there is no union, in the fact that when there is no love that makes one, a single being out of two, then it is simply a communion of two separate ones, excluding each other , individuals who do not fully recognize each other. This is sin, this is adultery, this is uncleanness.
...freedom... is: a state when two people love each other so much, treat each other with such deep respect that they do not want to cut each other, change each other, they are mutually in a contemplative position...
What is Anthony of Sourozhsky remembered for?
The individuality of the Vladyka’s works lies in the fact that he did not write anything: Anthony of Sourozh’s sermons appeared as an oral appeal to the listener, not to the faceless mass, but to every person in need of a living word about God, to every heart.
As a result of this, publications were printed from tape recordings (these included radio conversations in Russian BBC programs, and extra-liturgical conversations in Moscow apartments and in a London parish) and conveyed the sound of a living text. For the first time, his books about prayer and spiritual life were published in British back in the 1960s and translated into almost all languages of the world.
And during the lifetime of Vladika Anthony, the first work to be published was “Prayer and Life,” which touches on topics about whether a person can still pray in our time and how prayer differs from meditation.
In his books and sermons, Anthony of Sourozh touches not only on problems of spirituality and public morality, but also on the themes of fidelity, family and marriage, revealing in them the mystery of love. Every word of his, every letter written by him is deeply thought out, suffered through, and comes from a pure heart. Here are just a few of these statements:
good and evil
You can know good and grow beyond your measure, but you cannot know evil and not be destroyed...
...only from within communion with God can one understand what good is and what evil is. Adam made a mistake: he decided to find out in a created way what good is and what evil is. He decided to plunge into the material world outside of God and see: is it possible to live in it or not?..
...from the Bible it is absolutely clear that it [sin] is committed at the moment when a person decides to independently cognize everything created, all creatureliness, everything that exists, not from within God, Who knows everything to the very depths, but by searching his own mind and experience. At this moment, a person seems to turn his back to God in order to turn his face to the world around him. As one Protestant pastor in France said even before the war, a person who has turned away from God and stands with his back to Him has no God; and the only source of life is God; such a person can only die. This is both sin and the consequence of sin - not as a punishment, but as an inevitable consequence: you cannot tear yourself away from Life and remain alive.
About love
“Love always costs a lot; because to truly love means to treat another in such a way that your life is no longer dear to you - his life is dear, his soul is dear, his destiny is dear.”
Photo of Anthony Surozhsky at a meeting in one of the apartments
“We all think we know what love is and know how to love. In fact, very often we only know how to feast on human relationships. We think that we love a person because we have an affectionate feeling towards him, because we feel good with him; but love is something much greater, more demanding and, at times, tragic.”
“The secret of love for a person begins at the moment when we look at him without the desire to possess him, without the desire to rule over him, without the desire to take advantage of his gifts or his personality in any way - we just look and are amazed at the beauty that we opened."
About marriage and family
“Marriage is a miracle on earth. In a world where everything and everyone is in disarray, marriage is a place where two people, thanks to the fact that they love each other, become united, a place where discord ends, where the realization of a single life begins. And this is the greatest miracle of human relations: two people suddenly become one person...”
“Many people view marriage from a purely social and state point of view. In this case, the family becomes nothing more than a piece, a very small piece of the national apparatus, which imposes a great burden on it, and this burden sometimes turns out to be unbearable.”
About miscellaneous
“Every person is an icon that needs to be restored in order to see the Face of God.”
“We don’t always trust that God believes in us; and therefore we are not always able to believe in ourselves.”
“When you are praised, you do two things. First: remember why you are praised, and try to become one. And secondly, never try to dissuade people, because the more you dissuade, the more people will see in you humility, which you don’t have at all...”
The biography of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh is unique; he is one of the most prominent personalities of the 20th century. His word is addressed to the very depths of the human soul, and at the same time, it is alive, understandable to one and all, open, and invariably resonates with readers, regardless of their convictions, beliefs, education and cultural roots.
45 years of serving God as a bishop
Metropolitan Anthony died on August 4, 2003 in London, and the funeral service took place on August 13 at the London Cathedral of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All Saints. Such a large difference between the date of death and funeral is common in the British.
Burial
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God and man. Christ and salvation
We do not find the Savior and we do not discover the Gospel if it is not proclaimed, if it is not preached, if the news of it does not reach us. But proclamation as such is not enough; It is not enough for us to hear a word that has more meaning and wisdom than our previous unbelief or ignorance. The word came to us when it penetrated into our hiding places, when it became light for our mind, when our hearts caught fire with this word, and we were inspired to live in accordance with this word, heard from someone.
... our faith in Christ, in the Gospel is not a worldview; this is life opening up to us, this is a new intensity, a new depth of life. And if this is not so, then we are not students, we are only hearers; because to be a disciple means to hear the message, to receive it and to live according to this gospel...
...the first feature we find in faith: the ability to believe God...
Communion with the tree of life is communion with God.
...there is no such thing - except rotten words and bad deeds - in which all of God's love could not be embodied.
God is at the heart of history, God is with everyone who suffers...
...Christ came to save the lost. He came to save sinners, not the righteous. He came to bring peace to people who were at enmity with God.
...a meeting with Christ, or, if you prefer, with God in Christ; This is the meeting that we see constantly, it runs like a red thread throughout the entire Gospel.
[Freedom] This is the relationship of mutual love, when God does not “invade” our lives, when He does not “seduce” us with promises, when He does not enslave us with orders, but tells us: This is the path of eternal life; I am the way. If you follow this path, you will reach the fullness of your being, and then you will become yourself in the full sense of the word, a God-man, you will join the Divine nature, as the Apostle Peter says about this (2 Pet. 1, 4).
...Christ the Savior is not only God who became man, He is Man in the fullest, only sense. Only insofar as a person communes with God is he fully human.
As a man, He entered into human labor; as God, He completed it with this eighth day, when everything is new, when eternity really begins now.
The divine scale of man is that every person is called to become a partaker of the Divine nature, as the Apostle Peter says.
The Gospel is the only thing that established the absolute significance, the absolute value of the individual. The ancient world did not know this.
...one of the most inspiring moments of the Gospel: we are shown not only the love of God - we are shown the greatness of man, it is shown that man can grow to the extent of Divinity and through this become capable of bringing everything created by God to the fullness to which it is called.
...man is not called to be just one of the animal creatures, even the most wonderful; man is called to outgrow his creatureliness through communication with God...
We have something to say about a person, we have something to say that can inspire another, not destroy him; it is not a question of giving the unbeliever a picture of a person that would destroy his picture; we are talking about telling him something more about a person than what he thinks, showing him that a person is infinitely greater in size and depth than what an unbeliever thinks about him, that he himself is much more significant than what he thinks imagines himself.
...we must learn to grow to the extent of our Christian humanity - which we have not achieved; we are below our own level, despite the enormous gifts we receive.
...we must believe in man with the same faith that we believe in God, the same absolute, decisive, passionate, and we must learn to see in man the image of God, the shrine that we are called to bring back to life and glory, just like the restorer called upon to return to glory the damaged, trampled, bullet-ridden icon that is given to him. It starts with ourselves, but it must also reach out to others; and to other Christians whom we so easily judge, and to our closest and dearest. And to dissenters.
...man is the only... meeting point between the complete atheist and the conscious believer.
...the human will, like a pendulum, oscillates between the will of God, which calls it, and the will of the demons, which tempts it.
... not a single word is said that people will be judged by what their theological beliefs were; the only question is: were you human or less than human? If you were a man, the divine path is open to you; if you were not even human, then do not demand heavenly things.
...were you humane or not? If not, then how can you expect that Divinity can flow into your inhumanity? How can you outgrow your creatureliness in communion with the Divine nature? How can you commune with God if you are not even human?.. The question is not raised about whether you believe or what you believe; the most basic question, like the soil, the foundation on which you can build: are you human or not?
Anthony was a vicar, rector, became a professor of theology and a member of monarchical organizations
After the transfer, the archimandrite begins to regularly change his title and, accordingly, his place of service:
- Bishop of Cheboksary;
- Bishop of Chistopol;
- Bishop of Ufa and Menzelinsky;
- Bishop of Volyn and Zhitomir.
Finally, in May 1906, Anthony became archbishop.
In 1912, the Trinity Cathedral, which Anthony had built a little earlier in the Pochaev Dormition Lavra, was consecrated. Over the past years, the bishop has been a vicar, rector, member of the Russian Assembly (a society of monarchists) and the State Council.
Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern) recalls it this way:
“Antony lived with his deeply thought-out, though already outdated, Slavophile naive faith in the Orthodox kingdom as an integral part of his entire Orthodox system of philosophy.
And the “well done” (note: members of the “Union” and “Assembly”) hid behind the convenient authority of Anthony, a preacher, ideologist, bishop, theologian, and under this guise they organized their small affairs, made their faulty career in the spheres with which Anthony had nothing to do with it."
Cyprian
archimandrite
The archbishop's monarchical sympathies are caused by the fact that for him the tsar has always remained a church figure, not a state figure.
In 1908, Archbishop Anthony made an enemy in the person of Bishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky), who, on his initiative, was removed from his post at the Kyiv Theological Academy. Archbishop Anthony conducted an audit there, which, as contemporaries note, was not impartial.
In 1911, Archbishop Anthony received the degree of Doctor of Theology for his literary works.
A year later, Archbishop Anthony became a member of the Holy Synod.
Since 1914 he has been Archbishop of Kharkov and Akhtyrsky.
Alexey Khrapovitsky, at the behest of his father, graduated from high school, but after that he went to the theological academy
Alexey Pavlovich Khrapovitsky was born on March 19 (22), 1863 in the village of Vatagino.
He had a noble origin - from the nobility. The father was a general, the family lived prosperously and moved to St. Petersburg.
March 19, 1863
on this day Alexey Pavlovich Khrapovitsky was born in the village of Vatagino
His mother was the first person to push young Alexei on the path of serving God. With her approval, her son began to take part in bishop's services. However, his parents did not consider this a sufficient reason to send him to a theological school.
When the boy turned five, he was sent to a gymnasium.
Anthony Khrapovitsky
But Alexei’s interest in the spiritual sphere did not fade away. The experience of Christian worship and the knowledge that the son received from his mother reminded him of himself, and a fifth-grader at the St. Petersburg gymnasium wrote a service to Cyril and Methodius.
Years later they actually began to carry it out. Alexey Khrapovitsky had prospects, but a worldly career did not interest him.
Having become a gold medalist, Alexey repaid his debt to his father, but no longer allowed him to decide for himself.
In 1881 he entered the Theological Academy. It was a difficult step. After all, he was not limited to just opposing his parents’ will.
Alexey Khrapovitsky is a hereditary nobleman and a graduate of the gymnasium. We didn’t meet such people at the Theological Academy.
Church
…The church is a meeting place—a meeting between God and man.
...I was struck by the exact and very amazed consonance between the simplicity, integrity, transparency, freedom of the Gospel and Orthodoxy.
…the renewal of the Church begins with each of us; transformations, when they concern the forms of prayer, when they concern external structures, this is not yet a return to the origins, to the original source. There is one source of light from which the water of eternal life gushes: the Gospel itself, which is a revelation to each of us and to all of us of what Man and human relationships are.
As for the Moscow Patriarchate, we were then a very small group of people who made this decision on a very simple basis: as long as the Church does not profess heresy, we do not separate from it; such a church approach. Another approach: The Church, which is in a tragic situation, should not be abandoned by its children. It was not simply a different or irrelevant approach. We, of course, could not do anything for the Russian Church: there were about fifty of us in Western Europe, we had no significance at all. But we felt: with this we testify that the Russian Church is the Church - holy, ours, Christ's - and that was enough...
People went to the Patriarchal Church not because they had this or that social or political conviction; they walked because she is the Russian Church, she has not changed Christ in any way, and we want to stand next to her or be in her. We had the feeling that she was holding us and carrying us in her arms (and we still have this feeling)…
I believe that those who in the twenties and thirties departed from the Patriarchal Church in this order betrayed some kind of church and human truth.
Archbishop Anthony was the main candidate for the patriarchal throne, but the lot chose Tikhon
Soon, Archbishop Anthony was elected to the All-Russian Local Council on August 15, 1917, where he became the representative of the monastics. However, his role quickly changed, and within a day the bishop was restored to the see of Kharkov.
Archbishop Anthony became the main candidate for the throne of the patriarch. The votes were distributed as follows:
- Archbishop Anthony - 309;
- Archbishop of Novgorod Arseny (Stadnitsky) - 159;
- Metropolitan of Moscow Tikhon (Bellavin) - 148.
309
votes supported Antony's candidacy for the patriarchal throne, 2 times more than rivals
Archbishop Anthony spoke in favor of the patriarchate, and his speeches made a great impression on the public. But Tikhon was chosen by lot as patriarch, who immediately noted Anthony’s merits.
Further, at the end of autumn 1917, Anthony becomes Metropolitan of Kharkov and Akhtyrka. In 1918 he became Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia.
