08/22/2026
What did a seventeen-year-old Kallistos Ware encounter when he first stepped inside an Orthodox church?
In The Inner Kingdom, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware recalls the unexpected moment his journey to Orthodoxy began:
“I can remember exactly when my personal journey to Orthodoxy began. It happened quite unexpectedly one Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1952, when I was seventeen. I was walking along Buckingham Palace Road, close to Victoria Station in central London, when I passed a nineteenth-century Gothic church. ...
At first I thought that it [the church] was entirely empty. Outside in the street there had been brilliant sunshine, but inside it was cool, cavernous, and dark. ...
Then I realized that the church was not altogether empty. Scattered in the nave and aisles there were a few worshipers, most of them elderly. Along the walls there were icons, with flickering lamps in front of them, and at the east end there were burning candles in front of the icon screen. Somewhere out of sight a choir was singing. ...
My initial impression of an absence was now replaced, with a sudden rush, by an overwhelming sense of presence. I felt that the church, so far from being empty, was full—full of countless unseen worshipers, surrounding me on every side. ...
Like St. Vladimir’s emissaries I too had encountered “heaven on earth.” I too had felt the immediacy of the celestial Liturgy, the closeness of the angels and the saints, the uncreated beauty of God’s Kingdom.”
—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom, Chapter 1, “Strange Yet Familiar: My Journey to the Orthodox Church”
In the days leading up to the anniversary of his repose on August 24, we invite you to explore the writings of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.
Discover his books: https://svspress.com/kallistos-ware/
