Fr David of Walsingham (1930–93)

Apostle to the English

Archimandrite David Meyrick (1930–1993) was a latter-day Saint Felix or Saint Fursey, both apostles to the East Angles in the seventh century. St Felix was a native of Frankish Burgundy and St Fursey an Irishman. Fr David was also of non-English stock, hailing from an ancient Welsh family that claimed descent from St Cadwallader, King of Gwynedd at the time of Felix and Fursey and in later legend styled last King of the Britons. This brings to mind a theory that Metropolitan Kallistos once shared with me, that the English were generally too prosaic a people to readily embrace Orthodoxy, and that all English converts must have, somewhere in their ancestry, a tincture of Celtic blood – what he called ‘a certain fey quality’. Speaking as someone with no discernible Celtic connection, I cannot myself attest to the veracity of this claim but it certainly applies in spades to Fr David.

Mark Meyrick, as he was christened, was the son of the Anglican Rector of Codford St Peter with Codford St Mary in Wiltshire. He was a pious youth, teased and bullied at school for his assiduous attendance at chapel. He went on to try various careers: farmer, gas meter reader, and merchant seaman. He was also an enthusiastic musician. But his path in life was essentially fixed the moment he walked into an Orthodox Church, in his case the Cathedral of St Alexander Nevsky in Paris on Christmas Day (O.S.) 1952 with a friend called Boris. As a note in the archive puts it:

This was my first experience of Orthodox worship. Although the service lasted more than three hours, I was only conscious of being in church for a few minutes. Then I seemed to be in what I can only describe as Heaven. For a moment I was worshipping, in the presence of God, with the Saints and Angels. Then Boris was tugging at my sleeve and telling me the service was over and we should go up to receive the Antidoron.

The experience of worship is often the ‘way in’ for converts to Orthodoxy. Metropolitan Kallistos has a similar story about visiting the Russian Church on Buckingham Palace Rd (on the site of what is now Victoria Coach Station). And many reading this will have noted the parallels with the emissaries of Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev in the tenth century, who did not know whether they were ‘in heaven or on earth’ when attending the divine liturgy in the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople.

It took some time, some wandering and soul-searching, for this experience to bear fruit in the decision to seek reception into the Orthodox Church. This duly took place in London in 1963 at the Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia (ROCOR) at Emperor’s Gate. But almost immediately, as he recalls it later, the young man felt a vocation to the priesthood. As he records it he was kneeling in Church during the ‘Our Father’:

And very clearly, very silently, very compellingly, a voice like crystal said in the centre of my being ‘BE A PRIEST’.

Bishop Nikodem, a former general in the imperial army, concurred with this vocation and proposed some training. He offered him, along with his great friend from Merchant Navy days, Leon Liddament, the choice of studying at Saint-Serge in Paris or with Fr Lazarus Moore in India.

Fr David: middle row, far left, next to Fr Lazarus. Leon Liddament middle row, far right. Bottom left, seated, is Mother, now Saint, Gavrilia (Papayiannis).

When considering whether or not to join Fr Lazarus, Fr David records a remarkable dream:

Again, when wondering if we should go to Fr Lazarus, I dreamt that Leo and I had reached a great cathedral which had no roof, but which was made up of many chapels. The centre aisle down which we walked was raised above the chapels on either side, so that we looked down into those chapels. In each chapel were many Clergy and in each chapel the Liturgy of a different Church was being celebrated. We were very tired, but at last we found what we were searching for and with joy we descended into a chapel where were many Orthodox Bishops and Priests. Fr Lazarus was serving the Liturgy, but he stopped to turn and join with the other clergy in welcoming us.

It would doubtless be too much to make a developed ecclesiology out of such a dream, but its ecumenical potential – the Christian Church imaged as a great cathedral with many chapels – is intriguing. Not that Fr David had any doubts about the ecclesial fulness of the Orthodox Church, but he was certainly more than ready to see the operation of grace outside her boundaries. And this brings us on to Walsingham.

Soon after their return from the best part of a year with Fr Lazarus in India – a period that deserves a separate post of its own – Bishop Nikodem ordained Mark deacon and subsequently priest.

At his ordination, Bishop Nikodem remarked:

Our church was enriched today by a new Pastor in the pastures of Christ. Especially noteworthy here is that the new Pastor has come from the people among whom we have received refuge and from whom our Church receives support and help and from whom we hear approving reports concerning the beauty of our Orthodox Services.

Before long a request came from Canon Colin Stephenson for help in caring for the Orthodox chapel within the Anglican shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. In response to this request, the missionary brotherhood of St Seraphim of Sarov was formed – the name commemorating the brotherhood to which Bishop Nikodem had belonged in Yugoslavia at the time that ROCOR was formed. The small group, under Fr Mark’s leadership, took on the old railway station and began the business to turning it into a centre of Orthodox iconography, hymnography, mission, and worship.

Fr David – as I shall call him from now on although he only took the name David on his monastic tonsure in 1980 – immediately saw that one of his most vital tasks was to root Orthodoxy in the soil of these islands. While preserving all its mystery and beauty, he presented Orthodoxy as something native and not foreign or exotic. One of the chief ways he did this was through the cultivation of the veneration of the saints of Britain and Ireland through iconography and hymnography. He produced the prototypes for many of the icons of the British and Irish Saints along with the magnificent icon of All Saints of Britain and Ireland to which I drew attention to in the last post. He made much of the fabric of the church with his own hands: this was a hand-made and home-grown Orthodoxy very far from the shiny newness of much modern ecclesiastical paraphernalia. Fr David also facilitated the publication of many of Fr Lazarus’ translations of liturgical texts into a dignified and elegant English. And there was a whole team at St Seraphim’s working for the first time on the hymnography of the saints of these islands.

Fr David had a great knack with people, especially English people. He was entirely without pretension and somehow classless – quite an achievement in what is still a rather class-ridden society. He was very much at home with people from all walks of life whether down at Fakenham market or chatting to local tradesmen. He was, in other words, quite the opposite of Evelyn Waugh – a brilliant writer but terrific snob of whom it was said that he could talk to anyone ‘from royalty down to minor gentry’. Fr David was a great lover of animals, from the pet pig of his childhood to his dogs of later life whom he was convinced were possessed of souls. He was always much grieved by any animal in distress.

Let me not suggest that he was perfect nor that all his projects met with success. While certainly a natural monastic he was not necessarily a natural abbot: his dreams of establishing a monastery never really took off. The establishment of an Orthodox parish nearby in Great Walsingham was not easy for him. And he had his share of ecclesiastical difficulties, leaving ROCOR in 1978 for the Moscow Patriarchate under Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh because of ROCOR’s increasingly exclusivist and anti-ecumenical stance.

But he was, as those who knew him recall, a ‘pure soul’ and an icon of humility. He would habitually greet people with the salutation, ‘Glory to Jesus Christ’ (answer: ‘Glory forever!’) much as St Seraphim had greeted people with the Easter greeting, ‘Christ is risen!’. And, as ‘Orthodox Station’ seeks to show, his legacy lives on. Readers of this post might like to know that we are hosting a conference on the British Saints in May of this year that is designed to honour his legacy. You can find further details here:

British Saints Conference | St Seraphim's

Next time: Demetrios Koutroubis (1921-83) , an eminent Greek theologian who found great solace and inspiration at St Seraphim’s.