The Healing Word
by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis
What's in a title?
From the pen of Bishop Basil it was clear The Healing Word would be more than a comforting “There! There!” to a child with a grazed knee; more also than prayers for healing; I suppose one could have reasonably associated it with the beginning of St John's Gospel; but the title does not prepare one for the vast canvas on which Bishop Basil sketches the healing power of God's Word:
in the experience of the person; in the life of the Church; and in the cosmos itself. Nor does it prepare one for the depth of his insight.
One of the striking things of this work is the way in which Bishop Basil, as it were, stands back at times from what he has written and by the odd word - 'extraordinary', 'fascinating' - reveals his own sense of wonder, a wonder that is infectious.
At other times he spells out for us the implications of the passages of scripture he has been considering. After the healing of the man born blind, he writes: 'We are constantly being asked to look beyond what is immediately visible to our senses.'
This is the basic theme of the entire book: behind the given-ness of our personal circumstances, which may appear to be simply the result of chance, there is, nevertheless, a 'deep structure' which lies 'behind' the world as we know it. Indeed, everything in creation, in the mind of the Fathers and particularly Maximus the Confessor, has its own deep structure or 'logos', all of which emanate from God's love for mankind. Man, however, has chosen not to be true to his God-given logos and so disrupts the one-ness of God's world: difference becomes division. Christ, the true Logos, or Word, of God comes to heal the division, to make man at one with God again and at one with his neighbour.
Bishop Basil describes the way in which a person may be incorporated into the healing Word of God by Baptism and Chrismation. His very detailed exposition of these two services of the Orthodox Church I found very helpful and illuminating.
This leads to the second section of the book: Difference, Division and Healing in the life of the Church. He frankly ackowledges that the outer darkness can also be found within the Church as well but it cannot affect the Church's deep structure, for it is being constantly renewed through the Holy Spirit.
At the heart of the Church is the Eucharist, in which all the baptised are priests joining with their High Priest in offering the whole of creation back to its Creator. It 'brings together God and mankind; it unites the visible and invisible creation; it makes the kingdom of heaven present on earth; it makes a Paradise of our inhabited world....and effects the unification of male and female.'
Bishop Basil is at pains to highlight the way in which in the Divine Liturgy difference is made one – illustrated both by the structure of the church building and its origin in the liturgy of the Atonement of the Jewish temple. This leads naturally on to the topic of Christian disunity which he maintains is largely driven by the stumbling block of unacknowledged rivalry, drawing upon the work of the French anthropologist René Girard.
In the final section Bishop Basil addresses the disparity between the world view of Christianity and the present scientific view which pervades people's thinking today.
He finds the world view of the hierarchical system of Dionysus the Areopagite is capable of providing a framework within which the sciences of today can fit quite happily.
He then contrasts the world view of Maximus in which creation is God's gift of love to mankind with the current scientific view in which creation is simply an object to be studied and a commodity to be used.
He claims 'Already the leading edge of scientific investigation points in the same direction the Tradition has taken from the beginning.' Thus we have an opportunity of dialogue with the world if we can appropriate both the language of the Fathers and the scientific language of the day as well.
However expressed, ultimately our fragmented and broken world needs the healing Word of God himself.
This is a wide-ranging book but the clarity of Bishop Basil's style, his obvious enthusiasm for his topic and the logical progression of his argument carry the reader along very happily. It deserves to be widely read.
Fr Edwin.
The Living Body of Christ
by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Darton, Longman & Todd 2008. ISBN 0 232 52718 0. 235pp. £10.95
In this volume, Metropolitan Anthony does not offer us a systematic treatise on the nature of the Church of the kind one might expect from a university professor. Instead, we see multifaceted views of the Church, as if through a kaleido-scope. The book is a compilation of talks, lectures and letters which required consideration of different aspects of the Church according to their particular circumstances.
More importantly, Metropolitan Anthony reminds us that the Church, though a society of repentant sinners, is nevertheless, the body of Him who is both God and Man. This theandric ‘extension of the incarnation’ (p. 6) transcends our abilities to under-stand and explain. It should come as no surprise, then, that the book reflects the multifaceted perception of this mystery that Christians have had from the earliest times.
Metropolitan Anthony warns us of the perils of a ‘godless approach to divine things’. Theology is not ‘to God what ornithology is to birds’. It is, rather, ‘an increasing knowledge of God through communion’ (p.83). There is a primacy of experience3 which means that the Church can only be truly known from within.
Although the material in The Living Body of Christ expresses the thoughts of Metropolitan Anthony over a period of many years, much of it is so relevant to our situation in the Vicariate, that it feels as if we are being addressed directly.
I was particularly struck by his teachings about hierarchy, authority and power. ‘Power consists in the ability of a given person or persons to enforce its will and its decisions upon others. Authority is something quite different. In a sense authority has no power; it is the persuasiveness of truth that is authority’ (p. 149).
In practical terms, this is ex-pressed – or rather should be expressed – by the Church’s structure as a genuine hierarchy of service. ‘If in the Church we are simply a hierarchy of power because we have different titles and ranks, that is a negation of the very substance and life of the Church.’
Quoting Father Sophrony, he explains that whereas a secular State is a pyramid standing on its base,the Church is a pyramid standing on its point. And at this point is not a man, not a hier-archy, not a council of bishops. This point is the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can be the head, the supreme point of the church, and then, layer after layer of the people exercise Christ’s own diakonia, carrying on their shoulders all the weight of the pyramid (p. 207).
We may also draw some comfort from Metropolitan Anthony’s observ-ation on ‘the vision of the Church as the Holy Trinity mirrored: alive, dynamic, living’. This, he says, can only be demonstrated in a small unit where everyone knows everyone, where people know and respect each other, in small dioceses where everyone is known to the bishop and the bishop is known to all the priests (p. 151).
The Living Body of Christ is char-acterised by an attitude of ‘openness’ to the world beyond the canonical boundaries of the Church. This includes willingness for the Church to engage in dialogue with other Christian communities and with the broader cultural life of society.
Metropolitan Anthony teaches us that the Church betrays its vocation if it adopts the characteristics of any kind of ethnic, cultural or social ghetto. It even does so if it defines itself exhaustively as a gathered Eucharistic community (p. 143). This is not to demean the liturgical life of the Church in any way or to suggest that we should become woolly minded in matters of doctrine or ethics. The Church is a prophetic body. This should not, however, be seen only, or even chiefly, in negative or censorious terms.
Metropolitan Anthony teaches that we are called to receive truth and acknowledge holiness wherever we discern them. The temptation to retreat into a ‘safe’, unchallenged religiosity, which can be locked away in some hermetically sealed part of our brains, is to be rejected.
Our vocation in all walks of life is to bring the things of this world back to God, that He may sanctify them. We are not intended to be ‘an introverted society, a society locked in upon itself, but a society of people who look outward for the lost sheep of the kingdom of God’ (p. 192). In this there is no security. ‘Every step is a risk. At every moment evil is before us and God is with us’ (p. 196).
I believe it to be of great significance that Metropolitan Anthony does not stand alone in calling for this spirit of openness. It is a theme which runs through the teaching of Fr Alexander Schme-mann. It is also writ large in the works and lives of Fr Alexander Men‘ and St Maria of Paris. Given such a unified witness from people such as these, how can we fail to conclude that it is a vital message for our time?
The Living Body of Christ is a book that deserves to be read more than once. It contains many more insights than I am able to mention here. These include the mystery of Holy Baptism, the origin of monasticism and the nature of doubt. When Metropolitan Anthony first expressed these thoughts, his words must have conveyed a sense of authenticity, freshness and urgency.
In the short time since the Church embarked upon her third millen-nium, the importance of many of them has become even more apparent.
Ian Page
A Report on
Conference in Memory of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Saturday June 21, 2008
An Apostle in Our Time
On Saturday 21st June there took place in London at the Serbian Church of St Sava the first conference in this country on the Legacy of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who died in 2003. Organised by the Metropolitan Anthony Foundation, a charity set up to further his work, it attracted a large audience who came to listen to speakers from Europe, America and the Lebanon, as well as England, to testify to the great impact the Metropolitan had made on the life of the Church and the lives of people, and to encourage the continuation of his work.
Professor Amal Dibo from Beirut posed the question at the outset that plagues modern Christians: how can a 2,000-year-old Church spread the Good News of Christianity in today's fast-changing world that is indifferent to God? Metropolitan Anthony had, she argued, found the answer, by addressing this challenge to the human heart – the eternal in us that does not change. She identified in him two qualities that enabled him to do this, speaking as he did not only to his fellow Orthodox but to all Christians, and also to people of other faiths or none: his openness to his listeners; and his deep sensitivity and compassion. He reached out to each person he met, bringing to them and to the world a living testimony to God. In Amal's words, he applied himself to be 'loving of mankind'; he had a deep sensitivity and compassion, nurtured by his family and his life as a Russian ėmigrė, doctor and soldier during the War, and priest. He used his personal talents of wit and generosity to deliver the words of God, always with total conviction. 'I stake my life on what I am saying' was one of his often-used phrases.
Amal then analysed the way Metropolitan Anthony used anecdotes and stories to convey his message: the wit, surprise and irony he employed to bring his spiritual children to understanding, and to lessen the hard, sometimes tragic impact of a Christian facing commitment in a hostile world. He did not impose rules on people, but knew how to lead them to solutions.
He had the ability to make Christianity look easy; and he could ask the impossible of his listeners, by making it look possible and by leading people through the steps they could take to achieve it.
Amal concluded by stressing the importance of Metropolitan Anthony's personal approach to people. He received people with the heart; his eyes pierced then, he understood what was behind their words. She commented on how he would on occasion shake one's shoulders. In his great compassion he put human concerns first, but blended them with the eternal. And by doing so he brought to the world a living testimony to God.
The second talk, by Father Sergei Ovsiannikov from Amsterdam, was billed as a 'Letter to Bishop Anthony'. In it Father Sergei spoke of how Metropolitan Anthony taught him that priests must awaken questions in people so that they could find God themselves. He also spoke to him of the problems of unity within the Church. 'You can see the unity but we have to deal with the disunity,' Metropolitan Anthony had advised Father Sergei.
He also spoke of the many discussions they had had about the will of God: how it could be discerned, whether people were ready to accept it, how one coped with the feeling that one was unloved by God. Metropolitan Anthony had quoted to him the words of one of the Church Fathers, that there were three wills acting in the world: the will of God, which, as at the Annunciation, was never forced on a person but was for him or her to accept; the will of Satan, which seduces and tempts; and the human will, which had to choose between God's will and Satan's will.
Metropolitan Anthony had likened the role and place of the priest to that of the donkey carrying Jesus on Palm Sunday: she must have thought the crowds were cheering her. In the same way, a priest must not be tempted to appropriate often.
Why did Metropolitan Anthony have such authority in the atmosphere of ferment that existed at that time, when student riots were common and political ideals attracted more interest among the young than religion? Canon Binns suggested it was his certainty – which was not a fanatical dogmatism but a process by which one came to experience the presence of God. He repeated Metropolitan Anthony's words:'God exists. I have met Him'. Metropolitan Anthony had talked at length about God's belief in man, and in a world of suffering; about divine love which exists in the Trinity, and false kinds of human love. He had also spoken of themes such as creation and the sanctity of matter, the Incarnation, redemption and freedom, and God's solidarity with the human condition. In everything he said he had insisted on the importance of setting aside inadequate, twisted ideas of God that made Him too small.
Why was Metropolitan Anthony such an effective speaker? Canon Binns reminded the audience how he had never spoken as an Orthodox but as a Christian, and had never sought to proselytise. He was a Christian leader who belonged to everybody, who always started from the point at which people were, asking them to look at their own experience not just of faith but also of being human. Only then would he introduce themes of the Christian faith.
His mind was sharp and he spoke with clarity, in a systematic, organised and yet passionate way that was accessible to his listeners, and with a vision that was rarely found elsewhere. Behind his words was a complex personality, sensitive to the mood of the age. He urged others to speak out of sheer conviction; and this was exactly what he did himself.
Irina von Schlippe added that at around this time, when the BBC was recording his talks, Metropolitan Anthony had been worried that he had no new ideas; he had said everything he had to say. He had asked Irina what people wanted to hear, and she had replied, 'What God wants of us'. That had given him new inspiration and started him speaking from a whole new angle.
After lunch there were two more speakers. The first, Dr. Barbara Newman, an academic from America, was entitled 'Standing at the Gates of Time'. She spoke, from her experience of knowing Metropolitan Anthony in the late 1970s and 80s, of the way he could compress a lifetime of meaning into a short saying that would stay with his listeners for ever. For instance, he had talked about joy: if we desire to receive joy as a gift, we must practise it as a virtue.
The source of his own joy was prayer. But he loathed conventional piety. His approach was more immediate, more challenging. 'Plunge the dagger of prayer into your heart', he had told her. But this was always to be fulfilled in the doing, and in doing what was possible. 'Don't think of doing God's will; think of delighting His imagination,' he had advised.
His view of salvation was, like everything, maximalist. 'What matters is not that people believe in God but that God believes in them,' he had said. 'As we grow in Christ, our own salvation becomes irrelevant'.
He loved Orthodoxy, but was fully aware of the imperfections of the Church on the ground – which made it a Church that could accommodate human imperfection. If he joined a Church without spot or wrinkle, he would spoil it, he reasoned.
He had long desired 'to depart and be with Christ' in St. Paul's terms, but remained, living out his life for the sake of service. Eternity was a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who stands at the gates of time and opens them, and lets time pour into Him.
The last speaker was Father John Lee, for so many years a priest serving under Metropolitan Anthony at his cathedral in London. Father John entitled his talk, 'My friend Bishop Anthony'. While acknowledging what the previous speakers had said, he wished to present something of Metropolitan Anthony's worry, depression, fear and doubt that had beset him during his final illness and which showed him to be utterly true and human.
Father John described how he had first met Metropolitan Anthony in 1967, and how his relationship with him had gradually deepened, culminating in his eventual ordination.
He saw his legacy in two things: prayer, as had already been acknowledged by the previous speakers. He was adamant that one should be completely honest towards God. 'Don't ever lie to God,' he had said. 'Tell him if you don't believe, or if you are bored with Him.' Only by being true could one truly meet God.
The second thing was how he celebrated the services of the Church. Metropolitan Anthony had been very strict about the conduct in the altar. There was no talking, no leafing through books; such things, he insisted, should be done before the beginning of the service. Father John stressed how important it was that this strict, reverential atmosphere be preserved.
Father John went on to speak of private conversations he had had with Metropolitan Anthony, for instance on the death of Father John's father, who had not been a believer. What would become of him in Eternity?
Metropolitan Anthony's answer was to say: imagine you have just died. Could you be happy in Eternity if your father were not there?
For a number of years Father John had acted as Metropolitan Anthony's driver, taking him to speak at a wide range of places. One was Sandhurst, which the Bishop had loved. He had also driven him to hospital appointments during his final illness, when he had been in a lot of pain. The illness really threw him; he was no longer the confident Metropolitan Anthony.
He told Father John how his grandmother had appeared to him in a dream, holding a calendar. The pages began to turn in her hand, and stopped on 4th August. 'I will die on 4th August', he foretold.
He underwent a lot of treatment, including surgery and chemotherapy. He was a marvellous patient, never asking for anything, and making friends with everyone in the hospital, despite his suffering.
Father John ended his talk by reiterating this point: that Metropolitan Anthony was a man who was no stranger to suffering, and that his humanity included worries and fears as well as the more positive aspects.
The conference ended with a Round Table with the title ' An Apostle in our Time', chaired by Karin Greenhead and with Father John, Barbara Newman, Deacon Peter Scorer and Irina von Schlippe as its panel members. Karin began by speaking of Metropolitan Anthony's special gifts of oratory, a clear mind, a beautiful voice. He inspired us, he urged us to take risks, he showed us divine love. We basked in his gifts; but what had we done with them?
Irina von Schlippe spoke of the joy of being an Orthodox Christian which he instilled, and the joy and love on his face on meeting people. He saw the Russian Revolution as a wake-up call for the revival of Orthodoxy. He taught that every action should be offered to God, and that we should all preach by example. He urged people in their daily lives to seek to move to a place of authority, but retaining humility. Cowardice was to be shunned; we had to show the world what it is to be a Christian, at whatever the cost.
He was passionate about our calling to care for our planet. He called us to see the reflection of God on each person's face, as the Neighbour of the Gospel.
Barbara Newman spoke of Metropolitan Anthony's honesty, and his greatness as an Orthodox teacher.
Father John described two confessions he had made to the Metropolitan: during the first Father John had had to wake him for absolution; at the second he had spoken the words, 'Be faithful'.
Peter Scorer described the Metropolitan Anthony 3-day conference held in Moscow last year, at which there were 24 speakers. It reflected Metropolitan Anthony's great and continuing influence in Russia. There had been a wonderful talk by Freke de Graaf, a former member of the London Cathedral parish, on how Metropolitan Anthony had inspired her current work in Moscow. Another, by a historian, had referred to the Statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh as drawn up under Metropolitan Anthony as a great legacy. They alone incarnated the Gospel into legal terms in a way that did not happen anywhere else. An abbot from the Danilov Monastery had talked of Metropolitan Anthony as a pastor and teacher, and in particular of how he spoke of the freedom of the individual, compared with the absence of freedom which was the dominant approach in the Church in Russia.
Peter concluded by saying that Metropolitan Anthony was a maximalist. He demanded everything of a person. There had been talk in some quarters of the possibility of his eventual canonisation, which worried some people. It was always difficult to see sainthood in people we knew.
The debate was thrown open to the floor, and many questions and comments were put, as they had been following the earlier talks. They included a discussion on Metropolitan Anthony's sympathies with the idea of universal salvation; his insistence that each person had to follow his or her own calling and not a strict set of rules, and that in the New Testament we were all kings, priests and prophets; how he accepted people where they were, how he was burning with the Holy Spirit, how we had all absorbed something of Metropolitan Anthony in our beings; but that we had to find ways of taking this forward, both communally and individually.
Greetings and thanks were expressed to Father Milun of the Serbian Church, and the day concluded with an invitation to Vespers in the church.
Many thanks must also be given to Kelsey Cheshire and her team for organising the conference.