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==Biography==
The future [[Archimandrite]] Lazarus was Edgar Moore, in Swindon, England, on the 18th of [[October 18]], 1902. At the age of 18, he moved to Alberta, Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer for several years. It was here that he sensed a "call from God" (his own words) to become a missionary. For the next five years he studied at St Augustine's College in Canterbury, England - a training-college for Anglican missionaries. In 1930 he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England, and then, in 1931, an Anglican priest. Following this in 1933 the travelled to India, where he joined the Christa Seva Sangha, an Anglo-Indian brotherhood with an ashram at Poona.
Drawn towards Orthodoxy, Edgar travelled in either 1934 or 1935 (there is some uncertainty about the date) to Palestine, [[Mount Athos]] and then Serbia, where he was received by Metropolitan [[Metropolitan Antony Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev|Anthony (Khrapovitsky)]] into the [[Russian Orthodox Church outside Outside Russia]], which at that time was centred in Sremsky Karlovsky, near Belgrade. He was then professed a monk at [[Mikovo Monastery]], before being [[ordination|ordained]] by Archbishop Feofan ([[ROCOR]]) in January 1936 to the priesthood.
Fr Lazarus was then sent to the [[Russian Ecclesiastical Mission]] in Jerusalem, where he worked closely with Abbess Mary (Robinson) and Mother Mary (Sprott), both converts from Anglicanism at the [[Russian Convent of St Mary Magdalene]] on Gethsemane. Whilst in (what was then) Palestine, Fr Lazarus taught at the school in Bethany which was maintained by the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission.
Following the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, the newly-founded state of Israel handed over the property of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission to the Soviet Union, leaving the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, under [[ROCOR]], dispossed. Fr Lazarus then served as priest to the Russian Convent in Ain Karim (which at the time had around 100 nuns) and to the Transjordan.
This lasted a short period of time. In 1952, Hmk Lazarus was sent back to India, to help ROCOR with the approach made to them by a group of non-Chalcedonian Syrian Orthodox in Malabar, South India, who had approached the Russian Synod seeking admission into Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. Ultimately, the group were not received, but Fr Lazarus stayed in India for the next twenty years, he helping in missionary work. Much of his translation work was done and published during this time. Due to black cassock's being offensive to local residents, he wore a white cassock instead. While in India, he met Mother [[Gabrielia (Papayannis)|Gabrielia]], whom he consulted in his translations of the Fathers and of the [[Psalter]].
