Anthony Bloom
Anthony Bloom was born in 1914 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent his early childhood in Russia and Persia. Bloom’s family settled in Paris, where he received his doctorate in medicine. In 1939 he secretly professed monastic vows in the Russian Orthodox Church before leaving to serve as a surgeon in the French army. After his ordination into the priesthood in 1948, he gradually rose to a high rank in the Church. Considered by many to be a saint, Bloom died in 2003 at the age of eighty-nine.
— From February 2011excerpted from
Courage To Pray
Our deep reality may take over in moments when we are so carried away by joy that we forget who might be looking at us, . . . or when we are unselfconscious in moments of extreme pain, moments when we have a deep sense of sadness or of wonder. At these moments we see something of the true person that we are.
February 2011