My first Bible Hieromonk Anthony (Skorik), head of the Pilgrimage Service of the Donskoy Stavropegic Monastery in Moscow:

 

                                                                                                            Hieromonk Anthony (Skorik)

 

I didn’t like to read as a child—I considered it boring, if not outright torture. Yet I still felt love and reverence before two books: the collected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and a children’s Bible.

 

In the summer, I often stayed overnight at my godmother’s summer house. I would “dive” into that children’s Bible every evening and I could leaf through it for hours. I didn’t even read the text, but carefully examined the mysterious illustrations of biblical subjects, which attracted me with something that was mysterious, bright and interesting at the same time. There were two pictures that I will remember forever.

 

The first was a scene of the Flood with Noah's Ark rocked by fierce waves. But I was most amazed and captivated by another illustration: the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount. I don't know what exactly I found in it. A quiet, calm and peaceful picture—but it grabbed me so forcefully that I looked through the book over and over again.

 

Time went by. I started to go to church. Once on the feast of the Transfiguration, I was blessed to enter the altar. That event prompted me to read my first book in life—the Orthodox Catechism. But I was already beginning to dream of reading a real Bible.

 

As my thirteenth birthday was approaching, my parents began to wonder what present I wanted from them. The answer didn’t take long—I asked them to buy me a copy of the real Bible. It was a shock! My mother wasn’t very pleased with my “pious” hobbies as it was! But in the end she agreed.

 

At our church, the cheapest Bible cost eighty hryvnia [Ukrainian currency.—Trans.], but I didn’t like it. It was in an inconvenient format, the paper was too thin, and had a bold font that was unpleasant to the eyes. There was another one on sale, but it was much more expensive.

 

In the city of Kharkov (Ukraine) where I grew up, there was a central market, and next to it, across the river, were book stalls. I went there in search of a Bible. And I found it! There were several Bibles for sale on a cardboard box, among the makeshift shelves. So I bought myself a copy.

 

My approach to reading the Bible was serious: I began to read it from the very beginning, from Genesis. The speed of reading was extraordinary for me: I read the whole Book of Genesis in one day, finished Exodus by the middle of the second day, and by the end of the summer vacation I finished the text of the Apocalypse of St. John the Evangelist with a feeling of joy and accomplishment.

 

The Bible was one of the first books that I read in its entirety. It radically changed my worldview—so much so that I became an Orthodox priest. Now I don't read the Holy Scriptures every day, and I really regret it when I can't take the Bible into my hands. The main thing that I understood for my entire life is that if prayer is a conversation between man and God, then reading the Holy Scriptures is a conversation between God and man.