Byzantine Ramblings posted a series of videos from Met. Anthony (Bloom) on the role of suffering in the Christian faith. If you're thinking, "Oh, how boring and depressing." I urge you to at least watch the first in the series embedded below.
From later in the interview:
Interviewer: Does God want us to suffer?
Met. Anthony: I would say - I am sorry to be so stubborn - I would say He wants us to love, not to suffer, but suffering is always inherent to love in a world which is disharmonious, ugly, violent, aggressive, and so forth. He does not want us to suffer. He wants us to love. Yet, he warns us: Love means death. The shedding of blood. Heart blood or physical blood.
Interviewer: So death is at the center of suffering?
Met. Anthony: Well, death is the full measure of it. Death is really, with its sharpness and its finality, the test of your readiness to love. I feel that the great mistake that a Christian can make - and I say Christian because there is a background of faith attached to my statement - is to love himself, to think, and consequently to feel that with the death of the person things have come to an end. If we really believe what is our Christian faith that God is God of the living. That for Him and in Him everyone is alive. That there is a future which is eternity. Then the death of a person is the moment; tragic, painful, of separation. I wouldn't say more tragic or more painful than the separation that occurs as a result of an iron curtain or a closed frontier or the gates of a prison, but anyhow a separation. But, with a difference that if a person is truly alive in God and so are you there is a present and a future and not only a past. And instead of rehearsing the past to make the present more dark one should face the present, which is a transitory separation, in the expectation of a future meeting. And not simply as wishful thinking, but as an active preparation for it because in terms of love - which I have been perhaps using too much - If you have loved truly a person, if this life has been meaningful to you, the rest of this life can be marked by the life of the person who is now in God's keeping...
Met. Anthony: I would say - I am sorry to be so stubborn - I would say He wants us to love, not to suffer, but suffering is always inherent to love in a world which is disharmonious, ugly, violent, aggressive, and so forth. He does not want us to suffer. He wants us to love. Yet, he warns us: Love means death. The shedding of blood. Heart blood or physical blood.
Interviewer: So death is at the center of suffering?
Met. Anthony: Well, death is the full measure of it. Death is really, with its sharpness and its finality, the test of your readiness to love. I feel that the great mistake that a Christian can make - and I say Christian because there is a background of faith attached to my statement - is to love himself, to think, and consequently to feel that with the death of the person things have come to an end. If we really believe what is our Christian faith that God is God of the living. That for Him and in Him everyone is alive. That there is a future which is eternity. Then the death of a person is the moment; tragic, painful, of separation. I wouldn't say more tragic or more painful than the separation that occurs as a result of an iron curtain or a closed frontier or the gates of a prison, but anyhow a separation. But, with a difference that if a person is truly alive in God and so are you there is a present and a future and not only a past. And instead of rehearsing the past to make the present more dark one should face the present, which is a transitory separation, in the expectation of a future meeting. And not simply as wishful thinking, but as an active preparation for it because in terms of love - which I have been perhaps using too much - If you have loved truly a person, if this life has been meaningful to you, the rest of this life can be marked by the life of the person who is now in God's keeping...
Remainder of the series found here.
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