Met ANTHONY of Sourozh

[Reader Nilus]

I ask that everyone remember Met ANTHONY in their prayers as he is near death from cancer. He is receiving palliative care at a hospice in South London.
Lord and Lover of humankind! Save and have mercy on Your servant,
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Remember his bishopric in Your heavenly kingdom. Be a physician to him. Station your guardian angel at his bedside to watch over him. Bless the facilities, equipment, personnel and means used to treat him. Relieve his pain. Heal his injuries. Expedite his recovery. Forgive all his sins. Keep him from all evil and harm. Deliver him from oppressive spirits. Give him peace of mind, strength and patience to bear whatever crosses life and infirmity have laid upon his shoulders. Let the afflictions of his mortal body work to the benefit of his immortal soul, to Your glory and for his salvation, now and ever, and for ages and ages. Amen.

All-holy Lady Mary, ever-virgin Birthgiver of God, the living gateway of our salvation! Joy of all who sorrow, advocate of the injured, nourisher of the hungry, shelter of the homeless, attendant of the sick, staff of the elderly, and consolation of the widowed and orphaned! Help the sick and suffering servant of God, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, by presenting our prayers for him at the heavenly throne of your divine-human Son. Add your holy and powerful maternal intercessions to our own feeble words on his behalf. Plead for his health and salvation, for we earnestly turn to you --the woman whom all generations call blessed -- as an intercessor before our Lord Jesus Christ, conceived and born of you! Amen.

Holy and wonderworking Father Nectarios, shining star among bishops who arose in Greece in these latter days of ours! Because you patiently and humbly bore the crosses of unjust persecution and slander, the Lord revealed you as a vessel of His power and wisdom, a healer of souls and bodies even after you fell asleep in death. By means of your intercessions, you have cured many of cancer and other illnesses. With this in mind, we turn to you and beg: pray with us for your brother bishop, the sick and suffering servant of God, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, so he too may receive His grace and good will through your God-pleasing prayers -- for we know that God is wondrous in His saints! Amen.

Holy Angel of the Lord, assigned as a guardian and guide to His servant,
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh! Join our prayers on his behalf with your heavenly intercessions. Keep watch over him in his infirmity. Shelter him beneath your wings, shielding him from all evil and harm -- for the Lord has given you to him as a protector of his body and a defender of his soul forever. Amen.
Jeff the Finn

 

[Oblio]

Oh dear !

I had no idea. I have been recently reading some of his Journal of Orthodox Thought. He is the one who wrote Beginning to pray ?

Gospodi pomilui !

 

[Reader Nilus]

Yes, Met ANTHONY is a giant among contempory Orthodox. His books include Living Prayer, Courage to Pray, Between God and Man, Beginning to Pray and Meditations. His books helped me into Orthodoxy.
Jeff the Finn

 

[Reader Nilus]

MEMORY ETERNAL TO THE NEWLY DEPARTED METROPOLITAN ANTONIY OF SUROZH
Is the headline now on Orthodox and World News Daily
A true saint, O Our Father Among the Saints pray for us!
Jeff the Finn

 

[Reader Nilus]

REPOSE OF METROPOLITAN ANTHONY OF SOUROZH As announced on the Diocese of Sourozh web site.

Jeff the Finn

 

[Oblio]

A K A T H I S T for the R E P O S E of Those Who have FALLEN ASLEEP

From Fr. John Whiteford's Akathist page

 

[Philip]

O Lord of unutterable Love, remember Thy servant who has fallen asleep.

 

[Reader Nilus]

I feel real loss at his repose. I never had the chance to meet him, but he nevertheless had a huge impact on my life. It was Met. ANTHONY's books on prayer that I learned to pray from. And it was that universe that he opened up for me that lead me to the Holy Church and Her living tradition of prayer.
Jeff the Finn

 

[MariaRegina]

Yes, Jeff

I read almost all of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's books and they were wonderful. He was indeed a man of prayer.

 

[MariaRegina]

From a parish bulletin:

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh


(Filed: 06/08/2003)

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who died on Monday aged 89, was the senior Russian Orthodox archbishop in Western Europe, and the best known Orthodox cleric in Britain.

In London he had a congregation of about 2,000 at his cathedral of the Dormition and All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, and he was responsible for at least 20 parishes around the country. A gifted linguist endowed with a beautiful voice, he was also the author several best-selling books of devotion, an admired broadcaster and a moving preacher in other Christian churches, though he cared little for the soft sell of ecumenism; for him, unity always seemed to be on the horizon.

During the long years of Soviet rule Anthony played an important part in keeping alive the faith of his homeland, a role complicated by the fact that his church owed spiritual allegiance to the Patriarch in Moscow but remained politically opposed to the Soviet regime. This involved him in occasional friction, when he said things that his fellow Orthodox clergy behind the Iron Curtain could not.

Perhaps more influential was the celebration of the beautiful Easter services at his cathedral. As matins began, he would emerge from the behind the ikonostasis to encourage the congregation, as they stood waiting in the dark, to speak up with their responses - which the BBC were to broadcast in the only service that many in the Soviet Union would hear.

Andre Borisovich Bloom was born at Lausanne on June 19 1914. His father was a member of the Russian Imperial Diplomatic Service, and his mother a half-sister of the composer Alexander Scriabin; Molotov, Stalin's comrade, was also a relative.

Andre spent his earliest years in Persia, where the memory of shepherds - "minute against the hostile backcloth of the vast Persian plain" as they protected their flocks - made him a vivid preacher on the Good Shepherd. After the Russian Revolution, the family set out through Kurdistan and Iraq. When they sailed for Britain in a leaking ship, he hoped to be shipwrecked because he was reading Robinson Crusoe. Instead, he was put ashore at Gibraltar where the family's luggage was mislaid; some 14 years later it was returned with a bill for £1.

The family finally settled in Paris, where the father became a labourer and the son went to a rough school. Andre evinced an early suspicion of Roman Catholicism, which prompted him to turn down a place at one excellent school when the priest in charge there hinted that the boy might convert.

But he was an unbeliever until he was persuaded to attend a lecture by an Orthodox priest in which the vision of Christanity so affronted him that he decided to check the Gospels for himself, choosing St Mark's because it was the shortest. It was while reading that he suddenly became aware of someone standing opposite him, and realised it was Christ. The resulting certainty never left him.

After starting to study Medicine at the Sorbonne, Bloom enlisted in the French Medical Corps in 1939. He remained in France throughout the war, serving partly with the Maquis. On one occasion, he was arrested by some Germans and subjected to a long interrogation in which he was asked what he thought of National Socialism.

"I assumed that I was going to be be carted off to a camp anyway," he recalled many years later. "So I decided to tell the truth. I told them that I hated their system, and it would soon be overthrown by their enemies." After a long pause his interrogator replied: "Quickly, out through that door. It isn't guarded." So he escaped.

At the end of the war Bloom found himself accompanying de Gaulle's bodyguard in the triumphal entry into Paris; he remembered taking cover from snipers as the General ignored them.

Despite the rigours of war, Bloom soon realised that the military life was a good environment for ascetic training. In 1943, he completed his medical studies and secretly became a monk. He made his vows before Athanasius, a monk of the Valamo monastery in Finland, and was given the name in religion of Anthony. But since it was impractical for him to enter a monastery he was told to spend eight hours a day in prayer while continuing his medical work. When he asked about obedience, he was told to obey his mother.

In 1948 Father Anthony was ordained priest, and the following year he came to London as chaplain to the Anglican/Orthodox Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. Two years later he was appointed vicar of the Russian church of St Philip. In 1953, he was appointed hegumen; in 1956 archimandrite and in 1977 an assistant bishop. He then became a diocesan bishop for Great Britain and and eventually Metropolitan of Sourozh, a nominal see in the Crimea, and acting Exarch of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in Western Europe.

In 1974 he was deprived of the latter position for having written to the Times, in his own name and that of the clergy and believers, disowning criticism of Alexander Solzhenitsyn by a senior bishop of the Moscow patriarchate. Nevertheless, there was no attempt to prevent him continuing with the visits to Russia he had begun to make in the early 1960s.

At the same time he started to make a series of broadcasts on BBC Television's late night Epilogue. The Corporation was not entirely confident at first: it feared that the combination of his Russian-French accent, issuing from behind a generous beard, and his refusal to use a script would lead to problems. But his transparent spiritual qualities and ability to speak fluently for a set number of minutes, made him an instant success.

His first book, Living Prayer, became a best seller and was translated into 10 languages. He also took part in a memorable series of broadcast discussions with the atheist Marghanita Laski, in which he said that her use of the word "belief" was misleading. "It gives an impression of something optional, which is within our power to choose or not. . . I know that God exists, and I'm puzzled to know how you can manage not to know."

Anthony soon found himself in great demand, spending much of his time preaching in non-Orthodox churches, taking retreats, giving talks and acting as confessor. He regularly spoke in hospitals, particularly about death, drawing on his experience as a cancer specialist. He received honorary doctorates from Cambridge and from the Moscow Theological Academy.

But although open to all, Anthony retained a deep suspicion of the Catholic Church, likening Pope John Paul II to a weed because of his constant travelling. When the Pope visited Britain in 1982, Anthony was seen on television being embraced by him, but on returning home afterwards he symbolically brushed the experience off his sleeve. Yet when Cardinal Hume died he delivered a moving obituary of him on the BBC's Russian service.

Although a loner and difficult to work with at times, Anthony was never aloof. Like all Orthodox bishops he was easily accessible to his flock, and this could have comical results. When one parishioner rang to say that "Peter" had died and asked for prayers, the Arhchbishop immediately complied, later asking when the funeral would be. "Oh, there won't be one," he was told. "We flushed Peter down the loo." Peter turned out to be a budgerigar.

Inscrutability was also part of his make-up. When one parishioner pressed him on the question of whether God was as much Mother as Father he said: "I don't know. The last time I spoke to Him, She didn't tell me."

Anthony loved going to children's camps, allowing himself to be drilled and taking part in playlets, usually as a surgeon, dressed always in monastic garb. "I always wear black when I operate," he would say with a chuckle.
As a monk, he was expected not to laugh, but he would look amused as he explained that he was quite prepared to be told he was a crackpot. He would then go on, "Even if I am a crackpot, I'm a lot steadier and more normal than some people you might call normal. I've been a doctor and a priest without showing much sign of mental derangement."

 

[MariaRegina]

Latest update with all kinds of biographical data:

http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/eng/