Marriage and Holy Orders

St. Nonna, wife of the Bishop of Nazianzos,
St. Gregory the Elder,
and mother of St. Gregory the Theologian

As Church discipline developed, it increasingly prohibited the ordination of married men in both East and West. Initially, as in the case of Gregory the Theologian’s father, bishops were often married.* Eventually, both East and West forbade episcopal ordination of married men, as they do until this day.

Though East and West both esteemed virginity, the Latin Church grew more stringently to oppose the ordination of sexually active married men. Though the popes of Late Antiquity never forbade the ordination of married men, it is not surprising that their insistence on perpetual clerical continence soon evolved into required clerical celibacy for the Latin Church. The Eastern Church also recommended that married priests practice an ascesis of continence  - but temporary continence prior to the celebration of the Eucharist. Just as the Eucharistic fast from food was not expected to be perpetual, neither were married priests expected to practice sexual continence perpetually.

Neither approach strikes me as necessarily superior to the other. Rather, with Patriarch Photius (before 866), I regard each as legitimately distinct disciplines.** Discipline is subject to change and it is up to the Church in each age to respond effectively to the needs of her people and to demonstrate with her disciplinary decisions respect for both virginity and marriage, preferring neither.
_____________________________________________________
* 1 Tim 3:2; Peter Gilbert. “Introduction.” On God and Man: The Theological Poetry of St. Gregory Nazianzus. Trans. and Ed. Peter Gilbert. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, 23. 

** Peter L’Huillier. “The First Millenium.” Vested in Grace. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001. 34. 

Monasticism and the Baptized

Blessed Pope John Paul II on Mount Sinai, where, on Feb. 26, 2000, he visited the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine, which, he said, "stands indomitable as a witness to divine wisdom and love."

One significant work of the recently beatified Pope John Paul II for the Eastern Churches is his Apostolic Letter, Orientale Lumen. In this letter, Blessed Pope John Paul II identifies monasticism as “a reference point for all the baptized.” One could look at each Christian way of life and see in it a model for all Christians, without denying the distinctiveness of particular vocations. Another way of putting it is that there is not one spirituality for monks, another for priests, and another for the married. There is one Christian spirituality and theology, just as there is one Christianity, one Christ, and one Church. “There is… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all” (Eph 4:4-6). A monk is not living just a part of the Christian life, but the whole of Christian life. The same is true of a priest, a married person, and each Christian. Looking at Christianity as expressed and lived in each vocation instructs each Christian in their own living of Christ. Monasticism, however, is particularly suited to this type of examination.

“In the East, monasticism was… presented as a symbolic synthesis of Christianity,” writes John Paul. This is for good reason. The life of the monk or nun is one of total absorption in Christ, shown by their commitment to prayer, their apostolically communal way of life, and their radical observance of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is not to suggest that these elements are unique to monasticism, but that they are expressed by monasticism with rare clarity. As John Paul writes, “The monastery… is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people.”

Monasticism, like martyrdom before it, stands as a radical sign of the coming kingdom, in which all people are called by God to participate, and which monastics, in a sense, already experience. The martyrs and the monastics count their sacrifices nothing, even a joy, as they know they are imitating the Lord and going to Him. “The Church invokes [the] return [of the cosmos to the Father], and the monk and the religious are its privileged witnesses,” according to John Paul. They witness and experience this recapitulation of the universe primarily in their lives of prayer, both liturgical and individual. John Paul continues, “As a living sign of this [eschatological] expectation, the monk continues and brings to fulfillment in the liturgy the invocation of the Church… a maranatha constantly repeated… with the whole of his life.”

The very breath of a true monastic is prayer. In the East, the witness of the hesychasts’ silent prayer of the heart particularly exemplifies this. “Silence (hesychia),” John Paul notes, “is an essential component of Eastern monastic spirituality,” and each Christian ought to incorporate, to that degree they are able, this prayer into their life.

Heavenly Marriage

11th century Georgian miniature of St. John Chrysostom

          In his earlier letters to Theodore, John Chrysostom mourns for the soul of one who has decided to marry. In his later letter to a young widow, he counsels an end to mourning for the body of a good husband who has died. These situations are opposite in many respects. He addresses his former letter to a young man planning marriage – his latter to a widowed young woman. Each reflects considerably and distinctly on the theme of marriage. He writes the former letters as an ascetic monastic with limited experience – the latter as a cleric with more experience. A comparison of these letters does much to show both the evolution and the consistencies of Chrysostom’s thought and ministerial approach.

Chrysostom’s earlier letter to his friend Theodore is more accusatory and harsher in tone than his more temperate and gentle letter to the young widow. For example, he accuses Theodore of opening his mind, which “the devil has now set on fire… to all manner of soul-destroying and shameful thoughts.” However, he does not write to condemn. In an effort to strengthen Theodore against despair, he gives many examples from scripture of figures that have fallen and repented, returning to their former glory. He then threatens Theodore with a long description of the fires of hell and the torments of the damned, tempered somewhat by an attempt to inspire him with a description of the blessedness of heaven.

Only after thirteen long pages of such bulwarks and admonishments, does Chrysostom get to the point

Clerical Asceticism

This historiated initial contains a bust portrait of a haloed figure, probably intended to be St. Gregory the Great, carrying a cross and a book. It appears in the Saint Petersburg Bede (Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18), which is famous for containing the earliest such initial in European illumination.

St. Gregory the Great was first a monk and, in some respects, this remained his ideal, yet he was a monk who willingly submitted to the decision of Pope Pelagius II to pluck him from his monastery so that he could serve in the ordained ministry. His own willing response to this became a model of his ministerial ideal expressed in his Book of Pastoral Rule (PR), in which he sought a life of balance between asceticism and serving others in the world. For Gregory, a cleric, like a monk, must have ascetic experience, must embrace suffering and adversity, must struggle to overcome passions and vice, and must become dispassionate and virtuous. Gregory’s advice in these areas is of enduring value in the present age. “How he may please the Lord,” (1Cor 7:32) must always be the cleric’s first concern and the cleric is one called by the Lord to a balance of withdrawal from the world and service to those in it. It seems that, for Gregory, one of “the things of this world” that should not distract the cleric from his vocation is concern for “how he may please his wife” (1Cor 7:33). One aspect of his balance of asceticism with service is his advocacy of clerical continence. Though not addressed directly in the Book of Pastoral Rule, his opinion on the matter is clear enough. Elsewhere, (Epistles I, 44 and IV, 36) he promotes a rule of clerical continence and within this text he speaks negatively of sexual desire (PR III, 27). Even here he seeks a balance however and refers to the state of marriage as “most honorable” (PR III, 27). Further, he makes much use of bridal imagery in his descriptions of clerical life. This too is in keeping with the monastic tradition, which often makes similar use of this imagery.