Great tidbits from an interview with Anthony Bloom, a Russian Orthodox doctor/priest/monk in Great Britain and Ireland. This comes from page 11-12 of “Beginning to Pray” (Anthony Bloom) (bold/emphasized items by me):
Timothy Wilson (Interviewer): When were you ordained?
Archbishop Anthony Bloom: I was ordained in 1948 but before that I took monastic vows. This was done secretly because it was incompatible to openly profess monastic vows and also to be a physician. So I lived a sort of monastic life under the cover of my medical work, trying to be inwardly faithful to stability, to poverty, to chastity, to obedience, but expressing all these things in my medical situation – whether in the war, or afterwards during peacetime when I became a general practitioner. Then when I became a priest the face that I had taken vows came out into the open. Nowadays we lack priests to such an extent that none of my generation who became monks with the intention of leading a secluded or retiring life was given a chance to do it. We were all called by our bishops and sent out into pastoral work.
T.W.: You are still a monk …
Bloom: Yes.
T.W.: But you are, so to speak, living in the market place.
Bloom: I don’t think living in the market place is any different from living in the wilderness. To be poor financially is in a way much easier than to be poor inwardly, to have no attachments. This is very difficult to learn and something which happens gradually, from year to year. You really learn to value things, to look at people and see the radiant beauty which they possess – without the desire to possess them. To pluck a flower means to take possession of it,and it also means to kill it. The vow of poverty makes me appreciate things much more. But first of all one must learn to be free within oneself.
pat loughery 
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