METROPOLITAN ANTHONY BLOOM OF SOUROZH. I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT DEATH

METROPOLITAN ANTHONY BLOOM OF SOUROZH

I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT DEATH

            His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was born in Lausanne, Switzerland June 6, 1914 and died on August 4, 2003.   He was the bishop of the Diocese of Sourozh, the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland.  He spent his early childhood 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.  During the Bolshevik Revolution the family had to leave Persia, and in 1923 they settled in Paris where the future metropolitan was educated, graduating in physics, chemistry and biology, and taking his doctorate in medicine at the University of Paris.

            In 1939, before leaving for the front as a surgeon in the French army, he secretly professed monastic vows in the Russian Orthodox Church.  He was tonsured and received the name Anthony in 1943.  During the occupation of France by the Germans he worked as a doctor and took part in the French Resistance.  After the war he continued practicing as a physician until 1948, when he was ordained to the priesthood and sent to England to serve as the Orthodox Chaplain of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius.  He was appointed vicar of the Russian patriarchal parish in London in 1950, consecrated as a Bishop in 1957 and Archbishop in 1962 in charge of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland (the Diocese of Sourozh).  In 1963 he was appointed Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe, and in 1966 was raised to the rank of Metropolitan.  At his own request he was released in 1974 from the function of Exarch in order to devote himself more fully to the pastoral needs of the growing flock of his diocese and all who came to him seeking advice and help.

            Metropolitan Anthony received honorary doctorates from Aberdeen University (“for preaching the Word of God and renewing the spiritual life of this country”); from the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary for his theological, pastoral, and preaching work; from Cambridge University; and from the Kiev Theological Academy.  His first books on prayer and the spiritual life (Living Prayer, Meditations on a Theme, and God and Man) were published in England, and his texts are now widely published in Russia, both as books and periodicals.  Many Orthodox Christians in Great Britain and throughout the world consider Metropolitan Anthony to be a saint.

            The following article came to me on the internet about the Metropolitan discussing the issue of death from a very personal point of view. It is a video of the Metropolitan speaking in Russian with Greek subtitles. I believe the article is quite significant about the issue of death and how Orthodox Christians must prepare themselves for this eventuality.

            He tells us in this article: “I would like to talk to you about death.  I have a special opinion about death.  I will explain to you why I confront death the way I do.  It is not because I seek to confront death calmly but rather I seek to confront it with greater desire, greater hope and with greater expectations.  My first and intense encounter with the reality of death came while I was having a conversation with my father who said to me: “You must live life educating yourself about the advent of death.  Just like a groom waits for the arrival of the bride, you too should wait for the coming of death.  You should desire it.  You should rejoice in anticipation for your encounter with it so that you will receive it with piety and tranquility.”  That was the issue of death during my first encounter with it.

            My second encounter with death came many years later and it happened with the sudden death of my father.   I had visited him in his bedroom.  It was a moonlit night in a French home in a room that had a bed, a table, a stool, and a few books.  I entered the room; I closed the door and just stood there.   And then I was overwhelmed by a wave of silence, a profound silence which astoundingly cried out to me.  It said there is no death in spite of what other people think about it.  For death as we know it is a great lie.  This is why I have a positive relationship with death and that is why I feel so deeply and intensely in the words of St. Paul who says: “for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” for if I remain in this body in the present life I will be separated from Christ.  The Apostle continues by offering the following words which astonished me.   The meaning of these words is: I desire death since then I will be in complete union with Christ.  He ends by saying that on the other hand I also desire to continue living so that I may spiritually help others.  He is willing to give up that He desires the most union with Christ for the sake of helping other Christians.

            Metropolitan Anthony Bloom says that my eyes have seen death in abundance.  I was a doctor for fifteen years.   Five of those years I served in the war and during the German occupation of France I served as a doctor for the French Resistance.  I continued my life as a priest for forty six years during which I performed the funerals of a whole generation of Russian immigrants.  These were funerals of the first wave of immigrants to France from Russia.  During this time, I did not see anything else but funerals.

            That which surprised me during that time was that I found that Russians died peacefully (Orthodox Christians?) while the people of the West, for the most part, died with a sense of fear.  This is so because the Russians do not believe in the certainty of this life.  They abandon this world with a sense of ease when they leave for the unknown.  There is one thing that every priest and every person must remind themselves about life; the death we encounter is mostly unknown to us.  We hardly know anything about death.  We know nothing about that which we experience at the hour of our death.  Whatever we know, and it is very little, is connected with eternal life.  Each one of us experience times when our souls rise above the present reality of corruption and taste the fullness of heavenly joy.  Therefore, that which we have to teach ourselves and others is that we must prepare ourselves for life (beyond the grave) and not death.  In doing this, when we bring up death we should understand it as a doorway that leads to eternal life.  In spite of this, the dying process for someone is not an easy thing.  Whatever we think about death and eternal life it is quite different from the reality of death itself.

            I will share with you an example from my own experience during the war.  I was a surgeon on the front lines.  A young soldier was dying who was my age, twenty-five years old.  At night I went to see him.  I sat near him and asked him: “how are you?” He looked at me in the eyes and said to me:  “tonight I will die.”  “Are you afraid to die?”  “I myself am not afraid to die but I feel the pain that I must leave behind all those things I love, my young wife, my village and my parents.  But that which I truly fear is that I will be alone when I die.”  “You will not be alone,” I said to him.  “How will this be?”  “I will remain with you.” “You cannot remain with me all night.”  “But of course I can,” He thought a little and he said to me: “even if you stay with me, the moment will come when I will not feel anything, as I enter darkness and then I will die alone.” “It will not happen like that,” I answered him.  “We will be together and we will be talking.  You will tell me all that you want to tell me.  You will tell me everything that comes to your mind, that comes to your soul and all things that you love.  I will be holding your hand and slowly, slowly you will get tired of talking and then I will do the talking.  And as sleep overcomes you, I will lower my voice, you will close your eyes and I will be completely silent.  But I will continue to hold your hand so that you can squeeze it to be assured that I am with you.  Slowly, slowly your hand will feel my hand but you will no longer have the strength to squeeze it.  Then I alone will continue to squeeze your hand but you will not die alone.  And that is how we remained together all night.  At one point, his hand became so weak I began to squeeze his hand so that he would know that I was near him.  And then his hand began to get cold and it fell limp.  He was no longer with us.   It is extremely important that a dying person not be left alone when he is leaving for eternity. 

            I will now say something personal.  My mother suffered from cancer for three years.  I took care of her.  We were close to one another and we loved one another very much.  While I was taking care of my mother I also carried on with my pastoral duties as a priest and I was responsible for the city of London.  I also had to travel to Paris once a month for a synod meeting.  My finances were not very good and I could not afford to call my mother when I was away to check on her condition.  I would always return to London anxiously wondering if she were still alive.  So, on my return to her the joy of seeing her again was unbelievable.  So, in this way my mother was slowly, slowly flaming out.  I remember moments when she would call me and say: “It is very difficult without you being present.  Sit down close to me.”  I, on the other hand, had the same feeling about her.  There were moments that it felt unbearable for me to be without her.  I would then abandon everything I was doing; I would go up to her room telling her: “I feel great pain without you.”  In hearing this she would comfort me.  In this way we were journeying together on the road to eternity.  I felt this way because when she left the world she took with her all the love I had for her and all the things that we had shared together.  We had virtually spent our whole lives together.  Only during the first few years following our migration we were separated because we did not have a place to live.   We later on came together and got to know one another very well.  Once she said to me: “It is strange, the more I get to know you the less I know about you.  This is so because every word that I say about you I have to add another word.” 

            I want to add something else here about death since everything that I have mentioned so far is personal and refers to other people.  Death closes us in on us from all sides and it is the common fate of all human beings.   At this very moment we are in the middle of wars. (1940’s). Many of our fellow human beings are dying horrible deaths.   We Christians must learn to be calm as we face our own death knowing it is only through death that we will see the birth of eternal life.  Only by deeply breathing in the reality of eternity will we be able to defeat the fear of death.   If we accomplish this, we will also be able to help others to share in this fullness of life.  But before the separation of the soul from the body we must live other issues of in relation to death.  We are given the opportunity and the means to avoid permanent spiritual death; that is permanent and irrevocable spiritual death. Death simply means we cease to exist as flesh and bones.  Mysterious things happen during death. (The mystery of death is profound for it initiates us into a new dimension of existence.)

            There is another story that I wish to share with you.  I once was called by a family to visit a very old lady.  This was woman was a very enlightened lady.  It appeared that she was going to die that very same day.  She confessed her sins to me and at the end of the confession I said to her: “Natasha, have you asked forgiveness from all the people that you know or are you hiding a thorn from me?”  She responded:  “I have asked for forgiveness from everyone except my son-in-law.  I can never forgive him.”  I said to her that if this is so, I cannot read the prayer of absolution for you; neither can I give you Holy Communion.   You will be given over to the judgment of God.    You will find yourself before Him and you will give an account of the life you lived.  She replied: “but I am going to die today.”  I responded: “You will die without forgiveness and Holy Communion if you do not repent and be reconciled with your son-in-law.  I will leave now and return in one hour.”  I left.  I returned to her in one hour and she received me with great joy and said to me: “how justified you were.  I phoned my son-in-law.  We talked and reconciled and he is coming here now.  I hope that before I die that we will embrace one another and be reconciled with everyone before I leave for eternity.”

Transliterated from a video of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom speaking in Russian with Greek subtitles by:

+Fr. Constantine (Charles) J.Simones, Waterford, CT, USA Sept. 17, 2015, 860-460-9089,  cjsimones300@gmail.com