nirusen's book of the day

Excerpts from the introduction; an interview by Timothy Wilson

T.W.: What was your nationality?
Bloom: Up until 1937 I was stateless, but in 1937 I applied for French nationality and I have kept it right until now. So technically I am French, but I belong to that generation which is Russian at heart. By education, culture and so on I can't feel that I belong completely to one side or the other. In Russia I feel Russian because it's my language, it's my country - yet I don't belong to it because I am an émigré. Abroad I am much too Russian to be able to melt completely into the milieu around me.
T.W.: When did you become a Christian? Was there any particular turning point?
Bloom: It came in several stages. Up to my middle teens I was an unbeliever and very aggressively anti-church. I knew no God; I wasn't interested and hated everything that connected with the idea of God.
T.W.: In spite of your father?
Bloom: Yes, because up to the age of 15 life had been very hard, we had no common roof and I was at boarding school which was rough and violent. All the members of my family lived in different corners of Paris. It was only when I was about 14 that we all gathered under a common roof and that was real happiness and bliss - it is odd to think that in a suburban house in Paris one could discover perfect happiness but it was so. This was the first time that we had had a home since the revolution. But before that I ought to say that I had met something which puzzled me a great deal. I was sent to a boy's summer camp when I was about eleven years old and there I met a priest who must have been about thirty. Something about him struck me - he had love to spare for everyone and his love wasn't conditioned on whether we were good and it never changed when we were bad. It was an unconditional ability to love. I had never met this in my life before. I had been loved at home, but I found it natural. I had friends too and that was natural, but I had never met this kind of love. At the time I didn't trace it to anything, I just found this man extremely puzzling and extremely lovable. Only years later, when I had already discovered the Gospel, did it occur to me that he loved with a love that was beyond him. He shared out divine love to us, or if you prefer, his human love was of such depth and had such scope and scale that he could include all of us, either through joy or pain, but still within one love. This experience I think was the first deep spiritual experience I had.
T.W.: What happened after this?
Bloom: Nothing. I went back to boarding school and every­thing went on as before until we all found ourselves under the same roof. When I found myself confronted with per­fect happiness, a quite unexpected thing happened. I suddenly discovered that if happiness is aimless, it's unbear­able. I could not accept aimless happiness. Hardships and suffering had to be overcome, there was always something beyond them. But because it had no further meaning and because I believed in nothing, happiness seemed to be stale. So I decided I would give myself a year to see whether life had any meaning. If in the course of that year I could not find any meaning, I decided I would not live, I would commit suicide.
T.W.: How did you get out of this aimless happiness?
Bloom: I began to look for a meaning in life other than what I could find through purposefulness. Studying and making oneself useful for life didn't convince me at all. All my life up to now had been concentrated on immediate goals, and suddenly these became empty. I felt something immensely dramatic inside myself, and everything around me seemed small and meaningless.
Months passed and no meaning appeared on the horizon. One day - it was during Lent, and I was then a member of one of the Russian youth organisations in Paris - one of the leaders came up to me and said, 'We have invited a priest to talk to you, come.' I answered with violent indig­nation that I would not. I had no use for the Church. I did not believe in God. I did not want to waste any of my time. The leader was subtle - he explained that everyone who belonged to my group had reacted in exactly the same way, and if no one came we would all be put to shame because the priest had come and we would be disgraced if no one attended his talk. 'Don't listen' the leader said, 'I don't care, but just sit and be a physical presence.' That much loyalty I was prepared to give to my youth organisation, so I sat through the lecture. I didn't intend to listen. But my ears pricked up. I became more and more indignant. I saw a vision of Christ and Christianity that was profoundly repulsive to me. When the lecture was over I hurried home in order to check the truth of what he had been saying. I asked my mother whether she had a book of the Gospel, because I wanted to know whether the Gospel would support the mon­strous impression I had derived from his talk. I expected nothing good from my reading, so I counted the chapters of the four Gospels to be sure I read the shortest, not to waste time unnecessarily. I started to read St. Mark's Gospel.
While I was reading the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel, before I reached the third chapter, I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a presence. And the certainty was so strong that it was Christ standing there that it has never left me. This was the real turning point. Because Christ was alive and I had been in his presence I could say with certainty that what the Gospel said about the crucifixion of the prophet of Galilee was true, and the centurion was right when he said, 'Truly he is the Son of God'. It was in the light of the Resurrection that I could read with certainty the story of the Gospel, knowing that everything was true in it because the impossible event of the Resurrection was to me more certain than any event of history. History I had to believe, the Resurrection I knew for a fact. I did not discover, as you see, the Gospel beginning with its first message of the Annunciation, and it 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.
T. W.: And this conviction has stayed with you all through your life? There have been no times when you have doubted your faith?
Bloom: I became absolutely certain within myself that Christ is alive and that certain things existed. I didn't have all the answers, but having touched that experience, I was.........

About ANTHONY BLOOM
Metropolitan of Sourozh, was born in Lausanne, June 19, 1914. His childhood was spent in Russia and Persia, his father being a member of the Russian Imperial Diplo­matic Corps. His mother was the sister of Alexander Scriabin the composer. The family had to leave Persia during the Revolution and came to Paris where Arch­bishop Anthony was educated, graduating in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and taking his doctorate in Medicine, at the University of Paris. During World War II he served as an officer in the French Army until the fall of France and then worked as a surgeon in one of the Paris hospitals and also took part in the Resistance. In 1943 he professed monastic vows while practising as a physician in Paris. In 1948 he was ordained to the priest­hood and in 1949 came to England as Orthodox Chaplain to the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius; and in 1950 was appointed Vicar of the Russian Patriarchal Parish in London. In 1958 he was consecrated Bishop, and Archbishop in 1962, in charge of the Russian Church in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1963 he was also appointed Exarch to the Patriarch of Moscow in Western Europe, and in 1966 raised to the rank of Metropolitan. He takes an active part in inter-Church and ecumenical work, and was a member of the Russian Church delegation to the World Council of Churches in New Delhi in 1961 and in Geneva in 1966.
Publications: Somatopsychic Techniques (translated into English and published in 1957); Living Prayer, 1966.