The World as a Passageway to the Kingdom

The Elder Aimilianos writes:

“In general, the Fathers were concerned about the Kingdom of heaven, and in a certain manner theologized based on their personal, spiritual revelations and eschatological experiences.  That is, they saw the world as a figure, a prelude, a passageway to the kingdom of God.  This is why they always endeavored to raise the human person from earth to heaven.

The Church Fathers saw the Old Testament as a foreshadowing of the New.   The events of the Old Testament and even the words of the text were seen as both revealing Christ and hiding Christ.  The saints of the Old Testament saw Christ, but only at a distance or in shadow or in a prefiguring.  Only when the Word became flesh in Christ was the reality revealed.  According to the Elder Aimilianos, life now on earth is similarly a prelude to the reality of the Kingdom.  We must live this life on earth, yet it remains only the passageway to the reality for which we hope and desire.  As such, this world is viewed as temporary or transitional, or the path upon which we must trod to reach our destination.  The things of this world for the Fathers are to be viewed in this perspective – their import is not eternal or permanent but is passing away.  This spirituality caused the Fathers to see this world as of secondary importance to our eternal lives.  Thus through the centuries, the Orthodox spiritual writers did not focus very much on studying the world, but rather were far more interested in the world to come which they believed was the only true reality.  Or, as Galileo puts it, “The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.”  This was indeed the interest of the Fathers.

The Elder continues:

The Fathers did not focus their theology on matters pertaining to this world.  This is why they did not produce a theology of marriage.  They certainly taught marriage, and taught things about marriage, but always with an emphasis on raising the human mind from marriage itself to what marriage represents and symbolizes.  St Paul does the same thing when he says that ‘marriage is a a great mystery concerning Christ and the Church.'”  (THE MYSTICAL MARRIAGE: Spiritual Life According to St Maximos the Confessor, p 120)

Thus for the Fathers, as the Elder notes, even marriage for them was not about living on earth, but a way to experience salvation, to experience a way to the Kingdom of God.  The Fathers didn’t produce a theology of marriage because they were not very interested in the physical life in the material world.  They were focused on raising people from this world to heaven.   Marriage was not an absolute for them for it really only belonged to the fallen world and they weren’t trying to figure our how to better enjoy this world.  Though Orthodox concerned about the culture wars proclaim Orthodoxy has a clear idea of marriage, Elder Aimilianos says, “not so.”   There still are plenty of things for the Church to discuss today.

Scripture Means More Than Words and History

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.  (Genesis 2:21-25)

The Genesis 2 account of how God created the first human woman from the first human has been used variously to support among other things,  ideas of gender,  heterosexual marriage and natural law notions of the proper relationship between males and females.  In the New Testament though we find a very different interpretation and use of the text by St Paul.  Paul sees the Genesis text as referring to the great mystery of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  St Paul like many of the early Christian biblical interpreters saw in the Old Testament not history or literal legal prescriptions, but that the texts pointed beyond those things to Christ.  Jesus Himself said that Moses (who in ancient thinking was the author of the Torah or Pentateuch) wrote about Him, Jesus (John 5:46; see also Luke 24:27, 44-45).  So, St Paul says of Genesis 2:24 –

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.  (Ephesians 5:25-33)

St Paul does get from the Genesis 2 text that husbands should love their wives and wives should respect their husbands.  He doesn’t deny that message, but he believes the text is far more interested in the great mystery of Christ and the Church.  That’s how he interprets Genesis 2:21-25.  And even though St Paul reads the text to refer to Christ, he allows the text to also have a lesser important meaning (He uses this lesser meaning in his argument in 1 Corinthians 11:7-12).  So if today we focus on Genesis 2 as mostly meaning natural law or heterosexual marriage, we are focusing only on what St Paul says is the lesser meaning of the text and we are missing its most important meaning – a reference to Christ.

St Methodius writing in the late 3rd Century or early 4th Century (d. 311AD) is very struck by St Paul’s use of the Genesis text.

Yet, while everything else seems rightly spoken, one thing, my friend, distresses and troubles me, considering that that wise and most spiritual man–I mean Paul–would not vainly refer to Christ and the Church the union of the first man and woman, if the Scripture meant nothing higher than what is conveyed by the mere words and the history; for if we are to take the Scripture as a bare representation wholly referring to the union of man and woman, for what reason should the apostle, calling these things to remembrance, and guiding us, as I opine, into the way of the Spirit, allegorize the history of Adam and Eve as having a reference to Christ and the Church?

Basically, what St Methodius realizes is that if the meaning of the Genesis 2 text is mostly about the marriage of a man and a woman, St Paul wouldn’t need to allegorize it.  St Paul highlights the great mystery in the text because that is what the divine purpose of the text is.  St Paul isn’t adding something that is not there, but rather is pointing out what we might miss in the text if we are too focused on reading the text literally.  St Paul wants us to understand the significance of Genesis 2 for Christians – the text isn’t mostly about human marriage and reproduction, rather it is about the Messiah and the Church.  Methodius continues:

For the passage in Genesis reads thus: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  But the apostle considering this passage, by no means, as I said, intends to take it according to its mere natural sense, as referring to the union of man and woman, as you do; for you, explaining the passage in too natural a sense, laid down that the Spirit is speaking only of conception and births; that the bone taken from the bones was made another man, and that living creatures coming together swell like trees at the time of conception.

Christ the bridegroom

St Methodius is actually confronting and contradicting someone who reads the text literally telling them they are missing the point – the meaning and intention – of Genesis, of Moses, of the Old Testament by reading the text literally.  Methodius does not think the Scriptures are intended just to give us a sex education class or a class on child birth as he sees that as beneath the dignity of Holy Writ.  We don’t need Scripture to tell us about things we can learn from nature.  Scripture is a revelation from God about God – that is what we need to open our eyes to see.   The Bible is not a physiology text for it is a spiritual and sacred writing trying to lift our minds and hearts beyond the physical to the divine.  He would want to know why we want to read the text according to the flesh when God has enabled us to understand it according to the spirit.   Methodius presses his point by reading what St Paul says:

But he, more spiritually referring the passage to Christ, thus teaches: “He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”  (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Kindle Location 575-590)

None of this means that biology or the physical body is of no spiritual importance.  God created us with bodies, with sexual organs and identities, capable of biological reproduction.  We have to learn how to connect our physical bodies with the spiritual in the same way we have to learn how to connect the literal text with its spiritual meaning.  The Bible doesn’t always do this – but God has created us with the capacity to discern the spiritual message of the written word, to harvest the spiritual fruits of Scripture, to retrieve the treasures of the Bible, to fathom the depths of the Word of God.

Unfortunately, sometimes we abandon the road to the heavens to satisfy our fleshly interests.  We move in the opposite direction from St Paul in reading the texts of the Old Testament.  And the end result is that we find ourselves entangled in earthly things or with a worldly point of view.

Blessed Matrimony

St. John Chrysostom writing on marriage says that marriage when it functions as it is designed to do restores humans to a paradisaical state.  Chrysostom seems to understand that the first humans were made complete, having both a male and female nature:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  (Genesis 1:27)

Among the divisions and separations caused by the fall were the separating out of male and female.  In marriage, where the two become one flesh, we have the ‘recreation’ of a whole human being – a human who is created male and female.  In Genesis 2 God creates the female out of the male but shows in this their interdependency – the two were created out of one flesh (Adam’s).   Marriage thus heals one of the wounds caused by sin.  Marriage is God joining together or reuniting the male and female which had become separated through the fall.   Chrysostom writes:

This love [eros] is deeply implanted within our inmost being. Unnoticed by us, it attracts the bodies of men and women to each other, because in the beginning woman came forth from man, and from man and woman other men and women proceed. Can you see now how close this union is, and how God providentially created it from a single nature? . . . He made the one man Adam to be the origin of all mankind, both male and female, and made it impossible for men and women to be self-sufficient. (Sermon 20, on Ephesians 5:22–33)

The love of husband and wife is the force that welds society together. (Sermon 20, on Ephesians 5:22–33)

Chrysostom believes marriage is based in love.  No partner in marriage should live in fear of the other for it is love that binds them together.  If either spouse tries to dominate the other and make them afraid through threats or abuse, it is sinful and not Christian marriage.

What kind of marriage can there be when the wife is afraid of her husband? (Sermon 20, on Ephesians 5:22–33)

How difficult it is to have harmony when husband and wife are not bound together by the power of love! Fear is no substitute for this. (Sermon 20, on Ephesians 5:22–33)

How foolish are those who belittle marriage! If marriage were something to be condemned, Paul would never call Christ a Bridegroom and the Church a bride. (Sermon 20, on Ephesians 5:22–33).”

(A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today, Kindle Loc. 4682-90)

In the end Chrysostom argues that the very reason St Paul can use marriage as a metaphor or image  of the the relationship between Christ and the Church is because marriage is supposed to reflect perfect love.  Marriage becomes a means for us to live godlike love which is self sacrificing and works always for the good of the other.  Marriage is the right metaphor for the Christian’s relationship with Christ because we become one flesh with Christ in the Church through baptism and the eucharist, becoming one body in the Church.

Ephesians 5: Husbands and Wives

In the Orthodox service of Holy Matrimony, we read Ephesians 5:21-33 as the Epistle for the Sacrament:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

The reading causes consternation for some because it seems to reflect an antiquated worldview that doesn’t coincide with our ideas of gender equality.  Additionally, by using the language of being subject one to another it raises concerns about abuse.  Some of these concerns result from our English translations of the text, some  from past experience in patriarchal cultures, and some from current societal emphases on the individual as being a more important social unit than any other including the marital union.

If we look at the entirety of Ephesians 5 , we see it is offering instruction in how Christians are to behave in daily life.  As St. Paul is unfolds his instruction he lists these things which are intended for all Christians, both male and female, to maintain in all their relationships:

1]   Speaking to each other in Psalms & hymns (vs 19)
2]   Singing from the heart
3]   Giving thanks always for all things (vs 20)
4]   Being subject to one another (vs 21)

Those four points are St. Paul’s ideal for how we Christians are to relate to any other Christian at any given time.  It is a harmonious view of relationships involving speaking in lyrical verse and singing to each other.

Being subject to one another is just one of four ways we Christians are to relate to each other, and we need to note this is for all Christians and all relationships between Christians.  St. Paul doesn’t say only women are to be subject to men, but each Christian should embrace humility and love which means considering other Christians as better than themselves (Philippians 2:2-8), and so being willing to submit to their judgments and ideas.  This is easy to do if the other is being equally submissive and not trying to lord it over you – something also forbidden Christians in how they relate to each other (Mark 10:42-45).

When St Paul mentions this 4th directive in how to relate to each other, he then seems to go into a bit of an excursus, giving an example of what he means.  We can read the text like this:

Being subject to one another – for example, wives be subject to your own husbands (vs 22)

St Paul doesn’t say at this point that all women Christians are to be subject to all men.  He gives a specific example of what he means that we all should be subject one to another.  Christian wives are subject to their own Christian husbands, he specifies each wife is to be subject to her OWN husband.  Not to all husbands in general, not to all males or men.  All St Paul is doing is giving an example of what he means.  He then goes on in vs. 25 describing  what it means for husbands to also be subject to their wives:  they are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, dying for her rather than lording over her.   Jesus did not lord it over his disciples or anyone else.  He wasn’t abusive at all, but rather laid down His life for the sake of those He loved.
Where people get into trouble with this Ephesians 5 text is when they read it only literally and fail to see that St. Paul’s mind was far from a solely, literal or legal point of view. St. Paul in this very text shows us where his mind really is:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” [Genesis 2:24].  This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church…

Paul takes the law, takes a very literal text from Genesis (2:24) about human marriage and says  this text is really a mystery about Christ and the Church.  He is interpreting Genesis 2:24 in a mystical and spiritual way.  One could easily argue with him and say, “No, it’s not, it’s just about male and female marrying each other.”  But Paul is using Christian exegesis – he is claiming what Jesus Himself claims – Moses wrote about Christ (John 5:39-46; Luke 24:27, 44-45).  Paul sees husbands and wives being subject to each other not as part of human law, but part of the mystery of Christ and how Christ loves us. Christ said we are to love one another as he loves us (John 13:34-35). St. Paul is simply saying the same thing. Paul reinterprets the literal text of the law in a very mystical way.
We also get a sense of marriage as a mystery in the Matrimony service from the Gospel we read, John 2:1-12, which is not a law about marriage, but Christ blessing a marriage – changing water into wine – it is another text about mystery, a mystical understanding of marriage. Marriage is not about law, but about blessings, abundance, grace, a miracle of abundance.  We don’t read in Matrimony a text like Mark 10-5-9 in which marriage is promulgated as a law of God joining two together and humans being forbidden to break the law.  Rather, we read about Christ’s presence at a wedding, and how that in itself created a blessing for the bridal couple, and brought about a great miracle which is the mystery of Christ’s presence in our lives.

We see in Ephesians 5 that St. Paul himself reads the text of Genesis 2:24, of  the Torah, of the Law, not literally, but mystically and spiritually.  So why do we imagine that we are to read St Paul only literally?  St Paul himself wanted us to get a mystical or spiritual meaning from the literal text.  If we hear the Ephesians 5 text only in a literal, legalistic way, we are not hearing St. Paul at all.  So rather than our feeling uncomfortable with the literal meaning of the text, we need to really read St. Paul and contemplate how marriage is related to the love that Christ has for his Church or more straightforwardly, how Christ loves us. The couple is to become an example of Christ’s love for them and for all the world.   We read Ephesians 5 at the sacrament of marriage because it tells the newly wed couple how they are to live in relationship to each other.  They are to love each other, and that means denying the self, putting the other ahead of the self, of subjecting one’s own will and desires and wishes to the good of the other.  If the language of being subject to one another hinders you from being Christ like, then find the language and the example of how to be more Christ like in your love for one another.  But there is goodness in Paul’s language, for Paul is describing how Jesus loves us – he subjected Himself to death for our sake (Philippians 2:5-11).
The Christian couple is to be a visible reality of the mystery of Christ’s love for us. Christ came and loves us – but He didn’t love us because we are perfect, sinless, flawless human beings – perfectly lovely and lovable.  He loves us despite our faults, failures, foibles. That is how a Christian couple are to love each other so that marriage is a sign of God’s love in this world. In every marriage, each spouse realizes that the other is not perfect and faultless.  That becomes exactly when each Christian spouse begins to love the other as Christ loves us.   If the spouse is perfectly lovely and lovable, then loving them is just an instinctive reaction and not a choice.  Love truly comes into play only when we realize the faults of the other and choose to love them.  That is how Christ loves us.

One other thought, not from the mystical side of love and marriage.  St. Paul’s comments are to husbands and wives (and do note literally he is not talking to all Men and Women in general but exactly to married husbands and wives).  It is true his comments are not based in a modern assumption that male and female are totally equal or identical in nature. The equality of the genders was not really part of the ancient worldview. But probably even more grating to our ears is Paul’s language that we are to be subject one to another. We do not like the image of subjugation. It rubs us wrong entirely.
Nevertheless, Paul uses it as a way to describe how we are to relate one to another because it was something well understood in his world, and it describes how Christ loves us to the point of dying for us on the cross. So, whereas he addresses being subject to one another to all Christians, men and women, as the normal way for Christians to relate to each other, he also gives specific direction to a wife that the way she will be subject to the husband is the way that the church submits to Christ. All male and female Christians are to submit themselves to the lordship of Jesus Christ. That is also the particular way a wife subjects herself to her husband.  This has nothing to do with abuse because Christ loves the church, he doesn’t abuse her, sexually, physically, emotionally, verbally or in any other way. That is why being subject to Christ can be an image of how a wife should love her husband.

As for the husband, St. Paul says FOUR times that the way in which the husband subjects himself to his wife is LOVE.  He repeats this Four times in 5 verses, we get the sense that he is being a parent – how many times do I have to tell you husbands to love your wives?  Maybe in his mind, the husbands are slow learners because he keeps repeating the instruction.  On the other hand, when Paul told the wives to be subject to their husbands he adds only one direction – respect your husband. He doesn’t repeat this instruction to the women, apparently he thought the wives learned in one lesson.
There is another lesson here about marriage. St. Paul treats men and women not as entirely equal or identical in characteristics.  We would do well to remember that marriage is often not about equality, because once spouses begin measuring the behavior of each other in equal terms, the marriage is in trouble.  Many marital counselors point out that when spouses start counting rights and wrongs and who does more for whom, that marriage is headed in a wrong direction.   You cannot be constantly measuring whether you are doing more than your spouse in everything, nor keeping a record of rights and wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).   And certainly a sign that a marriage has problems is when one or both spouses keeps a ledger accounting for everything they do and measuring it against everything the other does or fails to do. Such exact measuring is not love. Love means you keep doing what you need to do and you don’t do it just to get an equal amount in return (Luke 6:35). Hopefully in a marriage, both spouses are meeting the needs of the other, but at any one time in any marriage one spouse may have to contribute more to the marriage than the other to make the marriage succeed. Those imbalances are a normal part of love. So if St Paul gives us words that seem to indicate there is inequality in marriage, on a certain level he is correct. If you are caught up only in measuring what is fair, your marriage will not be based in love, but will become a system of debts and slavery. Instead, true love means at times giving or receiving more than one’s spouse.   We get this sense in another context where St Paul says:
“I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality. ” (2 Corinthians 8:13-14)   For St Paul equality isn’t a matter of people being equal in everything, but rather equality for him means in love one who has more shares with the one has less – that is what makes us equals.  He doesn’t think there is a gender equality, but he certainly believes that two people can mutually love and support each other in a complimentary fashion and this creates equality.

A final point based upon all else that has been said:  don’t forget about the Scriptures because you think they have antiquated ideas.   Indeed they were written long ago in a very different cultural milieu, and some of their assumptions are not our assumptions about life.   Nevertheless, the Scriptures still speak to us about the mystery of God’s love and we can find God’s love for us in them if we ourselves move beyond just looking to the Scriptures for laws and rules and regulations and read them as St Paul read them – to reveal the mystery of Christ to us.  We read Ephesians 5 at our service of Holy matrimony because this chapter speaks to us about the mystery of God’s relation to us and how we are to relate one to another as Christians.

Crown Them With Glory and Honor

The Groom and Bride are crowned (wed) to one another with these words: “Lord our God, crown them with glory and honor.”

As the above words, taken from an Orthodox wedding service indicates, some in the Orthodox Church believe it is exactly when the Priest blesses the wedding couple with the words of Psalm 8:5, “Crown them with glory and honor“, that the couple are considered united in the sacrament of marriage.  An interesting commentary on Psalm 8:5 might give us insight into how Orthodoxy understands both what it is to be human and how marriage fits into the divinely instituted sacrament of marriage.

Genesis 1:27 states that humankind, male and female, is created in the divine ‘image.’  What does this mean? Certainly it cannot mean that humans bear some kind of physical resemblance to God, for in contrast to neighboring peoples who fashioned idols of their gods, Israelites were absolutely forbidden to make any physical image of Yahweh.  So the idea that humans have any kind of physical likeness to God would be unimaginable to the biblical authors. Scholars still debate the precise meaning of the phrase ‘in the divine image,’ but many believe that Psalm 8:5 provides important insight. The psalm praises God for creating humanity as ‘a little lower than God, / and crowned . . . with glory and honor.’  In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ (kabod) is regularly used of Yahweh, but here it is applied to humans. Kabod or ‘glory’ refers to God’s reality or presence made visible, and the psalm indicates that God somehow shares this divine reality with humankind.  …

describing humans as created in the image of God suggests that God shares something of God’s own self with the human creature. Further, humankind is created to be a visible manifestation of God on earth; this is a major purpose for human existence. … creation of humankind in the image and likeness of God above all points to ‘something happening’ between God and the human race.  ‘What God has decided to create must stand in a relationship to him.’ Against this background, it becomes evident that the Priestly redactor presents a stark contrast between the religious beliefs of Israel and Babylonia. In the Babylonian creation myth, humans are created to serve the gods as slaves serve their masters.   (Marielle Frigge, Beginning Biblical Studies, p 90)

Joachim & Anna

When the priest blesses the wedding couple with the words, “Lord, crown them with glory and honor”, he is asking the Lord God to make His presence manifest in the couple being united in marriage and in one flesh.  God is sharing His divinity with the couple newly united in marriage and they together – two in one flesh – are revealing this presence of God in humanity.  It is a revelation that doesn’t occur in one human alone, but the goodness of God being revealed in the couple as couple.  The couple is not created by God to serve God as God’s slaves, but to reveal God present in humanity.  Matrimony is revealing “something happening between God and the human race” in a way that one person alone is not capable of revealing.  Humanity is created by God to be in communion with God.  The community of marriage makes this union between God and humans visible in a unique way. It reveals how God makes male and female in God’s own image – in other words as icons of God.

The two become one flesh – and this is in some mysterious way revelation of the incarnation of God.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church . . .”  (Ephesians 5:31-32)

The Wedding Prokimenon

O Lord, crown them with glory and honor!

You have set upon their heads crowns of precious stones; they asked life of You, and You gave it to them.   

O Holy Martyrs, who fought the good fight and have received your crowns: Entreat the Lord that he will have mercy on our souls.

(Texts from the Service of Holy Matrimony)

The wedding service of the Orthodox Church realizes that marriage if it is to be fully Christian is a form of martyrdom.  It requires each spouse to submit their will and desires to the other and for the good of the other.  It is not about personal satisfaction, but about creating love in self-denial – forming a community modeling perfect love, like the Holy Trinity.  Because each spouse must deny themselves and take up their cross to love as the Lord loves them, in the service of holy matrimony, the newly weds are reminded to be martyrs.  So there are several references to the martyrs in the texts and symbolism of the service, including the use of crowns for the bride and groom.  We catch the sense of the texts from the wedding ceremony listed above in this post in a comment about the Martyrs of Lyons.

Because of the sincerity of their [the martyrs’] love, this became the greatest of the battles against the Adversary. The Beast had to be throttled to be forced to disgorge alive those who had been devoured. They did not  boast over the ones who had fallen. On the contrary, of their riches they gave to those in need and with motherly tenderness went and pleaded with the Father on their behalf.

They asked for life, and he gave it to them, and they shared it with their neighbor when they went forth to God in complete triumph. Having always loved peace and always commended peace, in peace they departed to God. They left no distress for their Mother no division or conflict in the family of the faith, but rather joy, peace, harmony, and love. (The Martyrs of Lyons, Early Christian Spirituality, p. 50, emphases not in original text)

Christian Martyrdom and Christian Marriage both are based in believers seeking life- eternal life! – from God.  All those who serve the Lord whether in marriage, as clergy or in martyrdom ask God to bestow life on them, even as they deny themselves to follow Him.

(Psalms 21:3-14)
For you meet him with rich blessings;
you set a crown of fine gold on his head.
He asked you for life; you gave it to him—
length of days forever and ever.

The Marriage Crown

Before the final blessing of the marriage, the priest prays that God will “take up their crowns.” This image is an encouragement for married couples to live in holiness and follow the ways of the martyrs and married saints to salvation. Salvation is a gift that is tried by many obstacles and temptations; yet, it is expressed as joyful life in the presence of God in his kingdom. This joy is not as fleeting or simple as temporary “happiness.” Rather, it contains within itself the fruits of labor and assists in the development of the unquenchable desire to serve the other in accordance with one’s natural inclination as a communal being.

Then secondly, the glory and the honor is that of the martyr’s crown. For the way to the kingdom is the martyria–bearing witness to Christ. And this means crucifixion and suffering. A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not “die to itself” that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of “adjustment” or “mental cruelty.” It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. (Schmemann, For the Life of the World)

Crowns become the reward for and sign of carrying the cross. Before marriage a specific cross is given to the individual, but now a new cross is given to the two united as one. This new cross requires cohesive work with the other in a way that is unique to the individual and is bearable only in services to Christ, through the spouse, by the Holy Spirit and in concordance with the Father. In this sacrificial love, martyrdom is made manifest. Again, in the words of Fr. Schmemann,

In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as something only “natural.” It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But “by the cross joy [and not ‘happiness’!] entered the whole world.” Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken “until death parts,” but until death unites us completely.

(Bp. John Abdalah and Nicholas G. Mamey, Building an Orthodox Marriage, pp. 57-58)

Mother of All the Living Ones

The man called his wife’s name Zoe (Life), because she was the mother of all the living.  (Genesis 3:20)

As we in America honor our mothers today, we remember that it is through women that we come into the world.  Women have a unique role to play in the life of the world and are involved in God’s life-giving nature in a way that men cannot be.  Even the life-giving incarnation of God, required a woman for our salvation.  Males had no direct role in the incarnation itself, except to be in need of it for salvation.  So motherhood itself is a necessary part of the salvation of every human being.  Males cannot be saved without a woman, which is why all Christians should also honor, Mary, the Theotokos.  As St Elizabeth shows in her own praise of Mary as  “she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?“   (Luke 1:42-43)   Elizabeth was overwhelmed that the Mother of the Lord should visit her.

However unique and great the role of motherhood is in the continuation of the human race and in the salvation of all humans, motherhood is not the only role women play in the life of the church.  The ability to give birth is a unique role for women, but not the only role for women in the Church.  Obviously the entire history of women monastics shows us that child birth is not essential for the salvation of women.  There are many women who are saints in our Church, who were never mothers, nor even tried to be.

Women, including mothers, have the same path to salvation as men: through holiness.  There are women Disciples of the Lord such as the Myrrhbearing Women.  There are women who are proclaimed Equal to the Apostles (such Photini the Samaritan Woman and Helen the mother of Constanine).  There are women who are titled Evangelizers   (such as Nina of Georgia  but also God chose women to serve as the first Evangelists – the Myrrhbearing Women carried the message to the male Apostles).   In the Church calendar of saints there are women martyrs, confessors, ascetics, women prophets, deacons, teachers, rulers and monastics.

So while motherhood is a unique role for women in God’s creation and in the Church, it is not the only role for women.  And few women are glorified as saints just for being mothers. The women saints of the Church are generally recognized for all the other roles they played in the life of the Church.

Mothers like all women can know the Lord.  They can be saints and disciples because they can be imitators of Christ.  Mothers give us life, but they can also be examples of how to love and live for eternal life.   Giving birth is a natural thing, which may be why it is not always the way to holiness.  We are a pro-life Church, and we honor our mothers because they show the sanctity of life in their pregnancies, in giving birth and in their rearing of children.  Mothers reveal a unique relationship between themselves and the infants to whom they are giving life as well as to the life-givingness itself.   Mothers are the human element in the birthing process.   Mothers can be examples not only to their children, but to all women and men of how to follow Christ (Titus 2:3-4), to be His disciple, to experience His presence every day in the most mundane circumstances, in the most natural way.  Jesus in fact says everyone who does the will of God becomes His mother (Mark 3:33-34).  The holiness of motherhood lies in doing God’s will.    And the children of believing mothers are considered to be holy (1 Corinthians 7:14) based on the mother’s faith.

Be blessed like Rebekah

In giving birth to us, in giving life to us, our mothers make it possible for us to experience God, to be in God’s presence.  For this alone, we should thank and honor our mothers.

Vicious Gossip vs. The Vivifying Gospel

Jesus said:  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  (John 13:34)

Anyone who has worked to love another, knows how much energy this requires.  It is easy for us to say that we love someone, but life shows us how much love can demand from us.  Spouses realize over a lifetime of marriage that love requires a great deal from them – demands things they never imagined would be required if you truly desire to love someone.  Parents bring their children into the world, and desire to love them, but again learn that love demands much of us in ways we cannot even imagine.   Just on a daily level, even when things are going well in our family, we realize that loving, forgiving, apologizing, overlooking faults, dealing with personalities drains a lot of energy, and yet this is what love requires.

Wrestling with love occurs in our lives as Christians as well.  Desiring to be a Christian while living in the world tests the limits of our love.  This was also the experience of monks who left everything to follow Christ.  It is easy to imagine that going to a monastery – where one naively believes “everyone is committed to Christ and Christ’s love just like I am” – will be the perfect world to work out one’s salvation.  But in the monastery too, love puts its demands on us – to deny ourselves in order to follow Christ.

The elders were keenly aware, from their own personal experience, of the high cost of fulfilling the commandment to love. Their reading of Scripture served to confirm this sense and to encourage them to risk loving even under extreme circumstances. It is startling, as we listen to the monks talk about the requirements of love, how literally they took the words of Scripture. Poemen’s interpretation of one Gospel text illustrates well the particular kind of demands love made upon the monks in their life in the desert, and how their reading of Scripture helped them to respond to these demands.

Abba Poemen saw the text, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13) as referring to just such a situation: “If someone hears an evil saying, that is, one which harms him, and in his turn, he wants to repeat it, he must fight in order not to say it. Or if someone is taken advantage of and he bears it, without retaliating at all, there he is giving his life for his neighbour.” Fulfilling the commandment, then, entailed having the courage to love in circumstances where one’s natural response would lead one in precisely the opposite direction.  (Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, pp. 264-265)

 

Reflection on the Christian Family

While in the Orthodox Tradition, the family is often considered to be “the little church” in which we live and practice our Orthodox Faith, the family as a social unit has not gotten the attention in our spiritual tradition that one can find for monks and nuns.

Be that as it may, most of us spend at least part of our lives in families and there we do have to consider how to be Christian.  In the modern age we see some attempts to write about the family from an Orthodox perspective, including trying to emphasize married saints of the Church.  This literature though gives witness to the dearth of writings on family in the mostly monastic spirituality of Orthodoxy.  Even in the New Testament, depending on what English translation you read, the word “family” only occurs 5-20 times, and even there gives almost no instruction on what Christian family might look like.

“In addition to temptations from the evil one, Starets Macarius  [19th Century, Russian] gives several other important causes for family problems. To one correspondent he writes: ‘It is this growing indifference to His Word, and our consequent refusal to examine our hearts-where we could find both the peace He bequeathed us and the insight into our lack of love of Him and of our neighbor-which brings in its wake this punishment, this disruption of the home.’  He also says that this is due to our failure to see Christ in others. He reminds us that when we mistreat others, we are in a real sense mistreating Christ. So he tells us, ‘Remember that you are pupils of Christ-of Christ who teaches us to love not only our friends but even our enemies, and to …  forgive all who trespass against us. “But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses’”Matt. 6:15). What a frightful prospect!’

Along these same lines, he tells a correspondent that while it is good that she has a long prayer rule and often reads the Church Fathers, ‘remember that love of the neighbor is the first work you must strive for. And you do not even have to leave your house to find that neighbor: your husband is that neighbor; your mother is that neighbor; and so are your children.’ To another spiritual child, he says that the ‘poison’ in the family cannot be cast out of their home ‘unless you promptly cease condemning each other. You clearly think you are always in the right; she, of course thinks she is. You heap on her a multitude of grave or petty accusations. She does the same to you. Where will this all end?’  Then he points out that the chief things the husband accuses his wife are actually the same faults he has. The Elder concludes:

All this financial trouble between you comes of your having completely forgotten that yours is a Christian home, or should be. A home is a Christian one when all the members of the household bear each other’s burdens, and when each condemns only himself. You have forgotten this, both of you. And so every word of hers pieces you, like an arrow dipped in poison. And your words, likewise, pierce her.

Ponder the truth of Christian marriage: man and wife are one flesh! Does it not follow that they must share all their possessions? And yet you two haggle over this property! And why? Because of words!

Unless you promptly strive for and achieve a loving peace between you, it is hopeless to try to bring tidiness and fairness into your business dealings with one another. Humble yourself, not her. Love her, not yourself.”

 (David and Mary Ford, Marriage as a Path to Holiness, p. xlvi-xlvii).