The family is a small Church. Family - small church

1. What does it mean – family as a small Church?

The words of the Apostle Paul about the family as a "home Church"(Rom. 16:4), it is important to understand not metaphorically and not in a purely moral sense. This is, first of all, ontological evidence: a real church family in its essence should and can be a small Church of Christ. As Saint John Chrysostom said: “Marriage is a mysterious image of the Church”. What does it mean?

Firstly, the words of Christ the Savior are fulfilled in the life of the family: “...Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them.”(Matt. 18:20). And although two or three believers can be gathered without regard to a family union, the unity of two lovers in the name of the Lord is certainly the foundation, the basis of the Orthodox family. If the center of the family is not Christ, but someone else or something else: our love, our children, our professional preferences, our socio-political interests, then we cannot talk about such a family as a Christian family. In this sense, she is flawed. A truly Christian family is this kind of union of husband, wife, children, parents, when the relationships within it are built in the image of the union of Christ and the Church.

Secondly, in the family the law is inevitably implemented, which, by the very way of life, by the very system family life is a law for the Church and which is based on the words of Christ the Savior: “By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”(John 13:35) and on the complementary words of the Apostle Paul: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way fulfill the law of Christ.”(Gal. 6:2). That is, the basis of family relationships is the sacrifice of one for the sake of the other. The kind of love when it’s not me at the center of the world, but the one I love. And this voluntary removal of oneself from the center of the Universe is the greatest good for one’s own salvation and an indispensable condition for the full life of a Christian family.

A family in which love is a mutual desire to save each other and help in this, and in which one for the sake of the other constrains himself in everything, limits himself, refuses something he desires for himself - this is the small Church. And then that mysterious thing that unites husband and wife and that can in no way be reduced to one physical, bodily side of their union, that unity that is available to church-going, loving spouses who have gone through a considerable path of life together, becomes a real image of that unity of all with each other in God, who is the triumphant Heavenly Church.

2. It is believed that with the advent of Christianity, Old Testament views on the family changed greatly. This is true?

Yes, of course, because New Testament brought those fundamental changes to all spheres of human existence, designated as new stage human history, which began with the incarnation of the Son of God. As for the family union, nowhere before the New Testament was it placed so highly and neither the equality of the wife nor her fundamental unity and unity with her husband before God were spoken so clearly, and in this sense the changes brought by the Gospel and the apostles were colossal , and the Church of Christ has lived by them for centuries. In certain historical periods - the Middle Ages or modern times - the role of a woman could recede almost into the realm of natural - no longer pagan, but simply natural - existence, that is, relegated to the background, as if somewhat shadowy in relation to the spouse. But this was explained solely by human weakness in relation to the once and forever proclaimed New Testament norm. And in this sense, the most important and new thing was said precisely two thousand years ago.

3. Has the church’s view of marriage changed over these two thousand years of Christianity?

It is united because it is based on Divine Revelation, on the Holy Scriptures, therefore the Church looks at the marriage of husband and wife as the only one, at their fidelity as necessary condition full-fledged family relationships, on children as a blessing, and not as a burden, and on a marriage, consecrated in a wedding, as a union that can and should be continued into eternity. And in this sense, over the past two thousand years, there have been no major changes. Changes could concern tactical areas: whether a woman should wear a headscarf at home or not, whether to bare her neck on the beach or should not do this, whether grown-up boys should be raised with their mother or whether it would be wiser to begin a predominantly male upbringing from a certain age - all these are inferential and secondary things that , of course, varied greatly over time, but the dynamics of this kind of change need to be discussed specifically.

4. What does master and mistress of the house mean?

This is well described in the book of Archpriest Sylvester “Domostroy”, which describes exemplary housekeeping as it was seen in relation to the middle of the 16th century, so those who wish can be referred to him for a more detailed examination. At the same time, it is not necessary to study recipes for pickling and brewing that are almost exotic for us, or reasonable ways of managing servants, but to look at the very structure of family life. By the way, in this book it is clearly visible how high and significant the place of a woman in the Orthodox family was then seen and that a significant part of the key household responsibilities and cares fell on her and was entrusted to her. So, if we look at the essence of what is captured on the pages of “Domostroi”, we will see that the owner and the hostess are the realization at the level of the everyday, lifestyle, stylistic part of our life of what, in the words of John Chrysostom, we call the small Church. Just as in the Church, on the one hand, there is its mystical, invisible basis, and on the other, it is a kind of social institution located in real human history, so in the life of a family there is something that unites husband and wife before God - spiritual and mental unity, but there is its practical existence. And here, of course, such concepts as a house, its arrangement, its splendor, and order in it are very important. The family as a small Church implies a home, and everything that is furnished in it, and everything that happens in it, correlated with the Church with a capital C as a temple and as the house of God. It is no coincidence that during the rite of consecration of every dwelling, the Gospel is read about the Savior’s visit to the house of the publican Zacchaeus after he, having seen the Son of God, promised to cover up all the untruths that he had committed in his official position many times over. Holy Scripture tells us here, among other things, that our home should be such that if the Lord visibly stood on its threshold, as He always stands invisibly, nothing would stop Him from entering here. Neither in our relationships with each other, nor in what can be seen in this house: on the walls, on bookshelves, in dark corners, nor in what is shyly hidden from people and that we would not want others to see.

All this taken together gives the concept of a home, from which the pious internal structure in it is inseparable, and external order what everyone should strive for Orthodox family.

5. They say: my home is my fortress, but, from a Christian point of view, isn’t behind this love only for one’s own, as if what is outside the home is already alien and hostile?

Here you can remember the words of the Apostle Paul: “...As long as we have time, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of our own in the faith.”(Gal. 6:10). In the life of every person there are, as it were, concentric circles of communication and degrees of closeness to certain people: these are everyone living on earth, these are members of the Church, these are members of a particular parish, these are acquaintances, these are friends, these are relatives, these are family, the closest people. And the presence of these circles in itself is natural. Human life is so arranged by God that we exist at different levels of existence, including at different circles of contact with certain people. And if you understand the above English saying "My home is my castle" V Christian sense, then this means that I am responsible for the way of my home, for the structure in it, for relationships within the family. And I not only protect my home and will not allow anyone to invade it and destroy it, but I realize that, first of all, my duty to God is to preserve this house.

If these words are understood in a worldly sense, as the construction of a tower of ivory (or of any other material from which fortresses are built), the construction of some isolated little world where we and only we feel good, where we seem to be (though, of course, illusory) protected from outside world and whether we still think about whether to allow everyone to enter, then this kind of desire for self-isolation, for leaving, fencing off from the surrounding reality, from the world in the broad, and not in the sinful sense of the word, a Christian, of course, should avoid.

6. Is it possible to share your doubts related to some theological issues or directly to the life of the Church with a person close to you who is more church-going than you, but who can also be tempted by them?

With someone who is truly a church member, it is possible. There is no need to convey these doubts and bewilderments to those who are still on the first steps of the ladder, that is, who are less close to the Church than you yourself. And those who are stronger in faith than you must bear greater responsibility. And there is nothing improper about this.

7. But is it necessary to burden your loved ones with your own doubts and troubles if you go to confession and receive guidance from your confessor?

Of course, a Christian who has minimal spiritual experience understands that unaccountably speaking out to the end, without understanding what it can bring to his interlocutor, even if this is the closest person, does not benefit any of them. Frankness and openness must take place in our relationships. But bringing down on our neighbor everything that has accumulated in us, which we ourselves cannot cope with, is a manifestation of unlove. Moreover, we have a Church where you can come, there is confession, the Cross and the Gospel, there are priests who have been given gracious help from God for this, and our problems need to be solved here.

As for our listening to others, yes. Although, as a rule, when close or less close people talk about frankness, they mean that someone close to them is ready to hear them, rather than that they themselves are ready to listen to someone. And then - yes. The deed, the duty of love, and sometimes the feat of love will be to listen, hear and accept the sorrows, disorder, disorder, and tossing of our neighbors (in the Gospel sense of the word). What we take upon ourselves is the fulfillment of the commandment, what we impose on others is a refusal to bear our cross.

8. Should you share with your closest ones that spiritual joy, those revelations that by the grace of God were given to you to experience, or should the experience of communion with God be only your personal and inseparable, otherwise its fullness and integrity are lost?

9. Should a husband and wife have the same spiritual father?

This is good, but not essential. Let's say, if he and she are from the same parish and one of them joined the church later, but began to go to the same spiritual father, from whom the other had been cared for for some time, then this kind of knowledge of the family problems of two spouses can help the priest give sober advice and warn them against any wrong steps. However, there is no reason to consider this an indispensable requirement and, say, for a young husband to encourage his wife to leave her confessor so that she can now go to that parish and to the priest to whom he confesses. This is literally spiritual violence, which should not take place in family relationships. Here one can only wish that in certain cases of discrepancies, differences of opinion, or intra-family discord, one can resort, but only by mutual agreement, to the advice of the same priest - once the confessor of the wife, once the confessor of the husband. How to rely on the will of one priest so as not to receive different tips on some specific life problem, perhaps due to the fact that both husband and wife each presented it to their confessor in an extremely subjective vision. And so they return home with this advice received and what should they do next? Now who can I find out which recommendation is more correct? Therefore, I think that it is reasonable for a husband and wife in some serious cases to ask one priest to consider a particular family situation.

10. What should parents do if disagreements arise with their child’s spiritual father, who, say, does not allow him to practice ballet?

If we're talking about about the relationship between a spiritual child and a confessor, that is, if the child himself, or even at the prompting of loved ones, decided to resolve this or that issue with the blessing of the spiritual father, then, regardless of what the initial motives of the parents and grandparents were, with this blessing, certainly, and should be guided by. It’s another matter if the conversation about making a decision came up in a conversation of a general nature: let’s say the priest expressed his negative attitude either towards ballet as an art form in general or, in particular, towards the fact that this particular child should study ballet, in which case there is still some an area for reasoning, first of all, of the parents themselves and for clarifying with the priest the motivating reasons that they have. After all, parents don’t necessarily have to imagine their child making a brilliant career somewhere in “ Covent Garden"- they may have good reasons for sending their child to ballet, for example, to combat scoliosis that begins from sitting too much. And it seems that if we are talking about this kind of motivation, then parents and grandparents will find understanding with the priest.

But doing or not doing this kind of thing is most often a neutral thing, and if there is no desire, you don’t have to consult with the priest, and even if the desire to act with the blessing came from the parents themselves, whom no one pulled their tongues and who simply assumed that the formed their decision will be covered by some kind of sanction from above and thereby it will be given unprecedented acceleration, then in this case one cannot neglect the fact that the spiritual father of the child, for some reason, did not bless him for this particular activity.

11. Should we discuss big family problems with young children?

No. There is no need to place on children the burden of something that is not easy for us to cope with, or burden them with our own problems. It’s another matter to confront them with certain realities of their common life, for example, that “this year we won’t go to the south because dad can’t take a vacation in the summer or because money is needed for grandma’s stay in the hospital.” This kind of knowledge of what is really going on in the family is necessary for children. Or: “We can’t buy you a new briefcase yet, since the old one is still good, and the family doesn’t have much money.” These kinds of things need to be told to the child, but in such a way as not to connect him to the complexity of all these problems and how we will solve them.

12. Today, when pilgrimage trips have become an everyday reality of church life, a special type of spiritually exalted Orthodox Christians has appeared, and especially women, who travel from monastery to elder, everyone knows about myrrh-streaming icons and the healings of the possessed. Being on a trip with them is embarrassing even for adult believers. Especially for children, whom this can only scare away. In this regard, should we take them with us on pilgrimages and are they generally able to withstand such spiritual stress?

Trips vary from trip to trip, and you need to correlate them both with the age of the children and with the duration and complexity of the upcoming pilgrimage. It is reasonable to start with short, one- or two-day trips around the city where you live, to nearby shrines, with a visit to one or another monastery, a short prayer service before the relics, with a bath in the spring, which children are very fond of by nature. And then, as they grow older, take them on longer trips. But only when they are already prepared for this. If we go to this or that monastery and find ourselves in a fairly full church on all-night vigil, which will last five hours, then the child must be ready for it. As well as the fact that in a monastery, for example, he may be treated more strictly than in a parish church, and walking from place to place will not be encouraged, and, most often, he will have nowhere else to go except the church itself where the service is performed. Therefore, you need to realistically calculate your strength. In addition, it is better, of course, if a pilgrimage with children is made together with people you know, and not with people completely unknown to you on a voucher purchased from one or another tourist and pilgrimage company. For very different people can come together, among whom there may be not only the spiritually exalted, reaching the point of fanaticism, but also simply people with different views, with varying degrees of tolerance in assimilating other people’s views and unobtrusiveness in expressing their own, which sometimes can be for children , not yet sufficiently churched and strengthened in the faith, by a strong temptation. Therefore, I would advise great caution when taking them on trips with strangers. As for pilgrimage trips (for whom this is possible) abroad, then a lot of things can overlap here too. Including such a banal thing that the secular-worldly life of Greece or Italy or even the Holy Land itself can turn out to be so interesting and attractive that the main goal of the pilgrimage will disappear from the child. In this case, there will be one harm from visiting holy places, say, if you remember Italian ice cream or swimming in the Adriatic Sea more than praying in Bari at the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Therefore, when planning such pilgrimage trips, you need to arrange them wisely, taking into account all these factors, as well as many others, right down to the time of year. But, of course, children can and should be taken with you on pilgrimages, just without in any way relieving yourself of responsibility for what will happen there. And most importantly, without assuming that the very fact of the trip will already give us such grace that there will be no problems. In fact, the larger the shrine, the more opportunity certain temptations when we achieve it.

13. The Revelation of John says that not only “unfaithful, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, will have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone,” but also “the fearful” (Rev. 21, 8). How to deal with your fears for your children, husband (wife), for example, if they are absent for a long time and for inexplicable reasons or are traveling somewhere and have not heard from them for an unreasonably long time? And what to do if these fears grow?

These fears have a common basis, a common source, and, accordingly, the fight against them must have some common root. The basis of insurance is lack of faith. A fearful person is one who trusts God little and who, by and large, does not really rely on prayer - neither his own nor others whom he asks to pray, since without it he would be completely afraid. Therefore, you cannot suddenly stop being fearful; here you need to seriously and responsibly take on the task of eradicating the spirit of lack of faith from yourself step by step and defeating it by warming up, trusting in God and a conscious attitude towards prayer, such that if we say: "Bless and save",– we must believe that the Lord will fulfill what we ask. If we say to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “There are no other imams of help, no other imams of hope, except for You,” then we really have this help and hope, and not just saying beautiful words. Everything here is determined precisely by our attitude towards prayer. We can say that this is a particular manifestation of the general law of spiritual life: the way you live, the way you pray, the way you pray, the way you live. Now, if you pray, combining with the words of prayer a real appeal to God and trust in Him, then you will have the experience that praying for another person is not an empty thing. And then, when fear attacks you, you stand up for prayer - and the fear will recede. And if you are simply trying to hide behind prayer as some kind of external shield from your hysterical insurance, then it will come back to you over and over again. So here it is necessary not so much to fight fears head-on, but to take care of deepening your prayer life.

14. Family sacrifice for the Church. What should it be?

It seems that if a person, especially in difficult life circumstances, has hope in God not in the sense of an analogy with commodity-money relations: I will give - he will give himself to me, but in reverent hope, with faith that this is acceptable, he will tear something from family budget and gives to the Church of God, gives to other people for Christ’s sake, he will receive a hundredfold for it. And the best thing we can do when we don’t know how else to help our loved ones is to sacrifice something, even if it’s material, if we don’t have the opportunity to bring something else to God.

15. In the book of Deuteronomy, the Jews were prescribed what foods they could and could not eat. Should an Orthodox person adhere to these rules? Isn’t there a contradiction here, since the Savior said: “...It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth defiles a person” (Matthew 15:11)?

The question of food was resolved by the Church at the very beginning historical path– at the Apostolic Council, which can be read about in "Acts of the Holy Apostles". The apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit, decided that it was enough for converts from the pagans, which we all actually are, to abstain from food, which is brought for us with torture for the animal, and in personal behavior to abstain from fornication. And that's enough. The book “Deuteronomy” had its undoubted divinely revealed significance in a specific historical period, when the multiplicity of prescriptions and regulations relating to both food and other aspects of the everyday behavior of the Old Testament Jews was supposed to protect them from assimilation, merging, mixing with the surrounding ocean of almost universal paganism .

Only such a palisade, a fence of specific behavior, could then help not only a strong spirit, but also a weak person to resist the desire for what is more powerful in terms of statehood, more fun in life, simpler in terms of human relationships. Let us thank God that we now live not under law, but under grace.

Based on other experiences in family life, a wise wife will conclude that a drop wears away a stone. And the husband, at first irritated by the reading of the prayer, even expressing his indignation, making fun of him, mocking him, if his wife shows peaceful persistence, after some time he will stop letting go of the pins, and after a while he will get used to the fact that there is no escape from this, There are worse situations. And as the years pass, you’ll see, and you’ll begin to listen to what kind of words of prayer are said before meals. Peaceful persistence is the best thing you can do in such a situation.

17. Isn’t it hypocrisy that an Orthodox woman, as expected, only wears a skirt to church, and wears trousers at home and at work?

Not wearing trousers in our Russian Orthodox Church is a manifestation of respect by parishioners for church traditions and customs. In particular, to such an understanding of the words of Holy Scripture that prohibit a man or woman from wearing clothes of the opposite sex. And since under men's clothing Since we primarily understand trousers, women naturally refrain from wearing them in church. Of course, such exegesis cannot be applied literally to the corresponding verses of Deuteronomy, but let us also remember the words of the Apostle Paul: “...If food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to stumble.”

A family is born from the feeling of love between two people who become husband and wife; The entire family building is based on their love and harmony. The derivative of this love is parental love and the love of children for parents and among themselves. Love is a constant readiness to give oneself to another, to take care of him, to protect him; rejoice at his joys as if they were your own, and grieve at his grief as if it were your own grief. In a family, a person is forced to share the sadness and joy of another, not only by feeling, but by commonality of life. In marriage, grief and joy become common. The birth of a child, his illness or even death - all this unites spouses, strengthens and deepens the feeling of love.

In marriage and love, a person transfers the center of interests and worldview from himself to another, gets rid of his own egoism and egocentrism, immerses himself in life, entering it through another person: to some extent, he begins to see the world through the eyes of two. The love we receive from our spouse and children gives us fullness of life, makes us wiser and richer. Love for our spouse and our own children extends in a slightly different form to other people, who, as if through our loved ones, become closer and more understandable to us.

Monasticism is useful for those who are rich in love, and an ordinary person learns love in marriage. One girl wanted to go to a monastery, but the elder told her: “You don’t know how to love, get married.” When getting married, you must be prepared for an everyday, hourly feat of love. A person loves not the one who loves him, but the one he cares about, and caring for another increases the love for this other. Love within a family grows through mutual care. Differences in the abilities and capabilities of family members, the complementarity of the psychology and physiology of husband and wife create an urgent need for active and attentive love for each other.

Marital love is a very complex and rich complex of feelings, relationships and experiences. Man, according to app. Paul (1 Thessalonians 5:23), consists of body, soul and spirit. The intimate connection of all three parts of a human being with another is possible only in Christian marriage, which gives the relationship between husband and wife an exceptional character, incomparable with other relationships between people. Only their up. Paul compares it to the relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph 5:23–24). With a friend - spiritual, emotional and business contacts, with a harlot and a fornicator - only physical. Can relationships between people be spiritual if the existence of spirit and soul is rejected, if it is asserted that a person consists of only one body? They can, since the spirit exists regardless of whether we accept it or not, but they will be undeveloped, unconscious and sometimes very perverted. The Christian relationship between husband and wife is threefold: physical, mental and spiritual, which makes them permanent and indissoluble. “A man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24; see also Matt. 19:5). “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). “Husbands,” wrote the apostle. Paul, “love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church…” and further: “So husbands should love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it...” (Eph 5:25,28-29).

Al. Peter urged: “Husbands, treat your wives wisely<…>honoring them as fellow heirs of the grace of life” (1 Pet 3:7).

According to Saint-Exupéry, every person must be seen as God’s messenger on earth. This feeling should be especially strong in relation to your spouse.

Hence it follows famous phrase“Let the wife be afraid of her husband” (Eph 5:33), - afraid of offending him, afraid of becoming a reproach to his honor. You can be afraid out of love and respect, you can be afraid out of hatred and horror.

In modern Russian, the word fear is usually used in this latter meaning, in Church Slavonic - in the first. Due to an incorrect understanding of the original meaning of words, church and non-church people sometimes have objections to the text of the Epistle to the Ephesians, read at a wedding, where the above words are given.

A good, grace-filled fear should live in the hearts of spouses, for it generates attention to the lover and protects their relationship. We must be afraid to do anything that might offend or upset another, and not do anything that we would not like to tell our wife or husband. This is the fear that saves a marriage.

The body of a Christian wife must be treated with love and respect, as a creation of God, as a temple in which the Holy Spirit should live. “Don’t you know that you are the temple of God,” wrote the apostle. Paul (1 Cor 3:16), “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you” (1 Cor 6:19). Even if the body can only potentially become the temple of God, then it must be treated with reverence. The wife's body should be a temple of the Holy Spirit, just like the husband's, but it is also the place of the mysterious birth of new human life, the place where he is created who is to be raised by parents to participate in their home church as a member of Christ's Universal Church.

Pregnancy, childbirth and feeding are those phases of family life when either the husband’s caring love for his wife is especially clearly highlighted, or his egoistic-passionate attitude towards her is manifested. At this time, the wife must be treated prudently, especially carefully, lovingly, “as a weaker vessel” (1 Pet 3:7).

Pregnancy, childbirth, feeding, raising children, constant care for each other - these are all steps on the thorny path in the school of love. These are those events in the internal life of the family that contribute to the strengthening of prayer and the husband’s entry into inner world wives.

Unfortunately, people usually don’t think about the fact that marriage is a school of love: in marriage they look for self-affirmation, satisfaction of their own passion, or even worse - their own lust.

When the marriage of love is replaced by the marriage of passion, then a cry is heard:

Just listen
take the damn one away
Which made me my favorite.

When in “love” and in marriage they look for their own interesting and pleasant emotions, a profanation of love and marriage arises and the seeds of its early or late death are laid:

No, it’s not you that I love so passionately,
Your beauty is not for me:
I love the past suffering in you
And my lost youth.

In the Arab East, a woman is only a shadow of a man. Only two roles are usually recognized for her: to be an object of pleasure and a producer. In both cases we are dealing with a woman-thing. “The role of the wife is to give her husband pleasure, to which she herself has no right to claim.”

In place of the object of pleasure and concubines ancient world and Eastern Christianity places the wife as a sister in Christ (1 Cor 9:5), a joint heir of the grace of life (1 Pet 3:7). A marriage can exist and deepen its content without physical intercourse. They are not the core essence of marriage. The secular world often does not understand this.

Any attitude towards a woman or a man (outside of marriage or even within marriage) only as a source of only carnal pleasure from a Christian point of view is a sin, for it presupposes the dismemberment of the triune human being, making part of it a thing for oneself. It indicates an inability to control oneself. The wife wears - the husband leaves her, because she cannot brilliantly satisfy his passion. The wife feeds - the husband leaves, because she cannot pay enough attention to him. It is a sin to even not want to go home to a pregnant or tired and unreasonably (maybe, just as it seems) crying wife. Where is the love then?

Marriage is holy when it, consecrated by the Church, embraces all three sides of the human being: body, soul and spirit, when the love of the spouses helps them grow spiritually and when their love is not confined only to themselves, but, transforming, extends to children and warms those around them.

I would like to wish a school of such love to everyone who is getting married. It makes people cleaner, mentally and spiritually richer.

The family is sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit

Everything in the Church is sanctified in prayer by the Spirit of God. Through the sacrament of baptism and confirmation a person enters church fellowship, becomes a member of the Church; through the condescension of the Holy Spirit, the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts occurs; by His power they receive grace and the gift of the priesthood; By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the temple, prepared by the builders and icon painters for worship in it, is consecrated, and the new house is also consecrated before moving in. Are we really going to leave marriage and the beginning of married life without a church blessing, outside the grace of the Holy Spirit? Only with His help, by His power, can a home church be created. Marriage is one of the seven Orthodox sacraments. For a Christian, a relationship with a woman outside of church marriage can only be compared with an attempt to perform the liturgy as a non-priest: one is fornication, the other is sacrilege. When at a wedding it is said “I crown with glory and honor (that is, their)", then the immaculate life of the newlyweds before marriage is glorified and the Church prays for a glorious and honest marriage, for the glorious crown of their upcoming life path. Treating very strictly sexual relations outside the church marriage of Christians, considering them unacceptable, the church consciousness respects the honest and faithful civil marriage of unbelievers and the unbaptized. These include the words ap. Paul: “...when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do what is lawful by nature, then, not having the law, they are a law unto themselves<…>as their conscience beareth witness, and their thoughts, sometimes accusing, sometimes justifying one another” (Rom 2:14-15). The Church recommends that spouses who have come to faith be baptized (you can only enter the Church through baptism), and after being baptized, get married, no matter how many years they have lived in a secular marriage. If the whole family turns to faith, then the children perceive their parents’ church wedding very joyfully and significantly. If someone was once baptized, but grew up without faith, and then believed, entered the Church, but his wife remained an unbeliever, and if, according to the word of St. Paul, “she agrees to live with him, then he should not leave her; and a wife who has an unbelieving husband, and he agrees to live with her, should not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband.<…> If an unbeliever wants to get a divorce, let him get a divorce” (1 Cor 7:12-15). Of course, such a marriage of a believer with an unbeliever does not create a home church and does not give a feeling of completeness of the marital relationship. The first condition for the formation of a family as an Orthodox Church is unity of doctrine, unity of worldview. Maybe it’s less acute now, but in the 20s–30s. it was a very thorny issue; After all, we lived quite secluded back then. You cannot be understood by your spouse if you deeply, fundamentally disagree in your worldview. You may have a marriage, but it will not be the marriage that represents the domestic church and shows us the ideal of Christian Orthodox marriage. Unfortunately, I know of many cases when one of the believers married an unbeliever and left the Church. I had a close friend. He got married and even baptized his wife, but then I learned from their child that they agreed never to talk about religion in the family. In another respectable family, a bride was baptized, and when she arrived from the wedding, she took off the cross and handed it to her mother-in-law, saying: “I don’t need it anymore.” You understand what this can mean in a family. Naturally, home church did not take place here. In the end, the guy broke up with her. We now know other cases when, by the grace of God, one of the spouses comes to faith. But often the picture that emerges is that one has come to faith, but the other has not. In general, everything is going topsy-turvy for us now; maybe this is good: first the children come to faith, then they bring their mother, and then they bring their father; however, the latter is not always possible. Well, if not, then what, get a divorce? It is one thing to marry or not to marry, and another thing to separate or not to separate in such a situation. Of course, we can’t separate. In the words of the Apostle Paul, if you, a husband, become a believer, if your unbelieving wife agrees to live with you, live with her. And do you know, believing husband, whether your unbelieving wife will be saved by you? Likewise, you, believing wife, if your unbelieving husband agrees to live with you, live with him. And do you know, believing wife, whether your unbelieving husband will be saved by you? There are quite a few examples where one spouse comes to faith and leads the other. But let’s return to a normal marriage, when the bride and groom who came to get married are both Orthodox people, and then we’ll look at some other cases. For marriage, as for any sacrament, one must prepare spiritually. Such preparation is incomparably more important than any feast preparations. We are not against the wedding feast; it is a frequent symbol in Holy Scripture, and Christ Himself visited him. But for a Christian, what is important first of all is the spiritual side of each event. Before marriage, a serious confession is absolutely mandatory, during which it is important to discard your previous “hobbies,” if there were any. The composer Rachmaninov asked his friends to point him to a serious priest before marriage, so that his confession would not be formal. They named him Father Valentin Amfitheatrov, an outstanding archpriest, to whose grave Moscow people still flock with prayerful memories and requests. Those brides and grooms who fast at the same time do very well, but mandatory recommendations should not be given here. In modern church practice, the marriage ceremony consists of two parts, immediately following each other: the first is called “betrothal”, the second “wedding”, during the first, hoops-rings are put on the hands of those entering into marriage, and during the second, crowns are placed on the heads of those getting married . Betrothal is not a sacrament, it precedes the sacrament of marriage, and in ancient times, even not very distant, it was often separated from marriage for weeks and months, so that the boy and girl could better take a closer look at each other and comprehend their and their parents’ decision to get married. In the liturgical book called the “Trebnik”, the rites of betrothal and wedding are printed separately with independent initial exclamations: “Blessed is God” - betrothal and “Blessed is the Kingdom...” - wedding. Betrothal, like everything performed in the Church, like every prayer, is complete deep meaning. The wheel is held together with a hoop for strength, and the boards are tied together with a hoop to form a barrel. This is how the bride and groom become engaged to each other with love in order to form a family together and fill their lives with new content. An empty barrel dries out, but a barrel that is constantly filled retains its quality for decades. So in a marriage without its inner filling, cracks appear, the feelings of the spouses dry up and the family falls apart. Such internal content of a Christian family should be spiritual religious life and joint spiritual and intellectual interests. For betrothal, the Holy Church prays: “Eternal God, who has gathered those who are apart into union, and established a union of love for them... Bless Thy servants (the name of the bride and groom), instructing (them) in every good deed.” And further: “and unite and preserve these Thy servants in peace and like-mindedness... and confirm their betrothal in faith and like-mindedness, and truth, and love.” All those present in the church are called to pray for the love that unites the betrothed, for like-mindedness in faith, for harmony in life. "Physical beauty<…>can be fascinating<…>twenty or thirty days, and then it will have no force,” wrote St. John Chrysostom. There must be a deeper community between those entering into marriage than just physical attraction. On the inside of the groom's ring, made for the bride's finger, his name was written, on the bride's ring, made for the groom, the name of his chosen one. As a result of the exchange of rings, the wife wore a ring with her husband's name, and the husband wore a ring with his wife's name. On the rings of the rulers of the East their seal was inscribed; the ring was a symbol of power and law. “The ring gave power to Joseph in Egypt.” The ring symbolizes the power and exclusive right of one spouse over the other (“the wife has no power over her body, but the husband; likewise, the husband has no power over his body, but the wife,” - 1 Cor 7:4). Spouses must have mutual trust (exchange of rings) and constant remembrance of each other (inscription of names on rings). From now on, he and she in life, like rings in a church, must exchange their thoughts and feelings. No special prayers are read over the rings - before the betrothal, they are placed in the altar on the Throne and this is their consecration: from the Throne of the Lord, the young people and the whole Church with them ask for the blessing and consecration of the upcoming marriage. With lit wedding candles as a sign of the solemnity and joy of the upcoming sacrament, holding each other's hands, the bride and groom are led by the priest into the middle of the temple. The choir accompanies the procession with joyful praise of God and man walking in the ways of the Lord. Newlyweds are called to these paths. The words “Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee” alternate with the verses of Psalm 127. The priest goes ahead with a censer, and if there is a deacon, then he burns incense on those going to the wedding, like kings with incense, like bishops with incense: they will rule the family, create and build a new home church. Accompanied by the words “Glory to Thee, O God,” they approach the lectern and stand on the footboard - a specially spread cloth, as if boarding the common ship of life from now on. No matter what life’s storms may be, no one dares to leave this common family ship; he is obliged to guard its unsinkability, like a good sailor. If you do not have this firm resolve, get off the ship before it sets sail. The priest asks questions to the bride and groom: “Have you, (name), a good and spontaneous will and a strong thought, to take (take) this wife (name), or, accordingly, this husband (name): south (whom) /whom you see before you here.” The Church has always been against forced marriage. Saint Philaret (Drozdov) pointed out that for a wedding the desire of those entering into marriage and a parental blessing are necessary. The first of these conditions, he believed, could never be violated. In some cases, if the parents are unreasonably persistent, determined by material and other similar considerations, a wedding is possible without their consent. There is no question for parents regarding the wedding ceremony. After the bride and groom's positive answers to the questions asked, the wedding ceremony follows. It begins with the exclamation of the priest: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages,” - a most solemn exclamation, glorifying the One God by name in His Trinity fullness. The Divine Liturgy begins with the same exclamation. In subsequent prayers and litanies read by a priest or deacon, the Holy Church prays “for the servants of God,” calling them by name, who are now united in marriage to each other in communion, and for their salvation,” for the blessing of this marriage, like the marriage in Cana of Galilee, sanctified By Christ himself. Through the lips of a priest, the Church asks that Christ, “who came to Cana of Galilee and blessed the marriage there” and who showed His will about legal marriage and the resulting childbearing, would accept the prayer for those now married and bless this marriage with His invisible intercession, and give it to the slaves (to him and her) called by name, “peaceful life, long life, chastity, love for each other, in the union of peace, a long-living seed, grace for children, an unfading (that is, heavenly) crown of glory.” The Holy Church tells those entering into marriage and reminds their parents and relatives, as well as everyone present in the temple, that according to the word of the Lord, “a man will leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (see Gen. 2 :24; Mt 19:5; Mk 10:7–8; Eph 5:31). “What God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9). Unfortunately, mothers often forget this commandment and sometimes interfere to the smallest detail in the lives of their married children. Apparently, at least half of broken marriages were destroyed through the efforts of mothers-in-law. The Church prays not only for the unity of the flesh, but most importantly for “unity of mind,” that is, for the unity of thoughts, for the unity of souls, for mutual love getting married. She also prays for her parents. The latter need wisdom in their relationships with daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and future grandchildren. Parents must, first of all, morally help young people build their families, and over time they will be forced to shift many of their burdens and weaknesses onto the shoulders of their loving children, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and grandchildren. The Church edifyingly gives young people examples of ancient marriages and prays that the marriage being performed will be blessed, like the marriage of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Joachim and Anna and many other forefathers. The prayers briefly outline the Orthodox understanding of the essence of Christian marriage. It is useful for those entering it, if possible, to carefully read and think through the sequence of engagement and wedding in advance. After the third prayer of the priest, the central point in the marriage begins - the wedding. The priest takes the crowns and blesses the bride and groom with them, saying: The servant of God (name) is married to the servant of God (name) in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit And The servant of God (name) is married to the servant of God (name) in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then blesses them three times: Lord our God, crown me with glory and honor. From my own experience I know that at this moment I really want to say “Lord, descend Your grace upon Your servant (name and name), combine them into husband and wife, and bless and sanctify their marriage in Your name.” From this moment on, there are no longer bride and groom, but only husband and wife. They recite the prokeimenon: “Thou hast placed crowns on their heads, from honorable stones, asking for life from Thee, and thou hast given them to them” with the verse “As you have given them a blessing for ever and ever, I have made (them) glad with Thy countenance” and the Epistle of the saint is read ap. Paul to the Ephesians, which compares the marriage of husband and wife to the union of Christ and the Church. The reading of the Apostle, as always, ends with the singing of “Alleluia”, with the proclamation of a verse from the Holy Scripture specially selected for this service: “Thou, O Lord, hast kept us and kept us from this generation and forever,” for marriage must be preserved from folly and sinfulness of this world, from gossip and slander. Then the Gospel of John is read about the marriage in Cana of Galilee, where Christ sanctified family life with His presence and, for the sake of the wedding celebration, turned water into wine. He performed the first of His miracles to begin family life. In the subsequent litanies and prayers read by the priest, the Church prays for the husband and wife, whom the Lord deigned to unite with each other “in peace and unanimity”, for the preservation of their “honest marriage and undefiled bed”, for them to remain, with the help of God, “in immaculate cohabitation " The request is made that those who are now married be honored to reach venerable old age with a pure heart, keeping the commandments of God. A pure heart is a gift from God and the aspiration of a person who wants to achieve and maintain it, for “ pure in heart They will see God” (Matthew 5:8). The Lord will preserve an honest marriage and an undefiled bed if the husband and wife desire this, but not against their will. After the “Our Father,” a common cup is brought, which the priest blesses with the words: “God, who created everything through Your strength, and established the universe, and the beautiful crown of all those created by You, and give this common cup to those who are united in the communion of marriage, bless with spiritual blessing.” Those getting married three times are invited to alternately drink from this cup wine dissolved in water, as a reminder that from now on they, who have now become spouses, must drink joy and sorrow together from the same cup of life, and be in unity with each other. Then the priest, having united the hands of the young people under the stole as a sign of an inseparable union, leads them, circling the lectern three times as a sign of their joint procession along the road of life. During the first circle it is sung: “Isaiah rejoice, having a virgin with child, and bring forth a Son Immanuel, God and man, His name is East; It’s great for him. Let's please the virgin." During the second: “Holy martyr, who suffered well and was crowned, pray to the Lord to have mercy on our souls.” During the third circle it is sung: “Glory to Thee, Christ God, the praise of the apostles, the joy of the martyrs, and their preaching is the Trinity of One Essence.” The first hymn glorifies Christ - Emmanuel and His Holy Mother, as if asking them for blessings on those entering into marriage for living together and having children for the glory of God and the benefit of the Church of Christ. The name Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us,” joyfully spoken by the prophet Isaiah, reminds those entering family life with its labors and sorrows that God is always with us, but are we always with Him - that’s what we need to check in ourselves throughout of your life: “Are we with God?” . The second hymn remembers and praises the martyrs, for just as the martyrs suffered for Christ, so spouses should have love for each other, ready for martyrdom. In one of the conversations of St. John Chrysostom says that a husband should not stop at any torment and even death if they are needed for the good of his wife. The third hymn glorifies God, Whom the apostles praised and in Whom they were glorified, in Whom the martyrs rejoiced and Whom - in the three Persons of Being - they preached with their word and their suffering. The grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out on all members of the Church, although “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:4). If we understand following the ap. Peter, the priesthood as service to God in the Church of Christ, then some receive the gift of creating home churches, others - the gift of the priesthood for the Eucharistic presiding and pastoral or episcopal service, etc. d. Any gift of the Holy Spirit must be carefully and carefully guarded: “do not neglect the gift that is in you, which has been given to you...” (1 Tim. 4:14), whether it be cleansing from sins in confession, receiving the Divine grace of union with Christ in communion, priestly ordination or marriage ceremony. The talents received in the sacrament of marriage - gifts for building a family, a home church - must be multiplied in your life and work, remembered and cared for. You cannot leave the wedding, closing the door of the temple behind you and forgetting in your heart about everything that was in it. If neglected, the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit may be lost. There are many cases where the memory of a wedding helped to overcome a period of difficulties, save the family and have great joy in it. A Christian family must be spiritual. Each of its members should strive to acquire the Holy Spirit in its structure, everyday life and inner life. Spirituality is a gift of God. We don’t know when it comes to this or that home or family, but we must prepare ourselves and our family to receive and preserve this gift, remembering the words of Christ that the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by patient labor and those who labor ascend into Him (cf. Matthew 11: 12). It is humanly possible to talk about ways of preparation, but not about spirituality itself. For people living in a secular marriage and wishing to get married, preparation for a church wedding should have some features. If they, entering into marriage unbaptized, later accepted the faith and were baptized, then it is advisable to not have marital relations between themselves between baptism and wedding and remove the rings - they will put them on again at the betrothal as a church symbol, and not as a simple civil sign of marital status . Before a church wedding, you should live like brother and sister, focusing on joint prayers to the best of your strength and capabilities. If they were baptized in infancy, then, having decided to get married according to Christian custom, they must undergo the test of marital abstinence. If they already have children and have come to faith with the whole family, then they should prepare their children for their wedding and try to make the external, ritual side of the wedding festive (although they don’t have to make an expensive wedding dress) and dress their children festively. One of the children can be assigned to hold the blessed icons of Jesus Christ for the father and the Mother of God for the mother. Children can be given flowers to present to their parents after the wedding. The wedding of parents should feel like a family event. religious holiday. After the wedding it’s good to arrange in a close circle festive table with children and close believing friends. There is no longer a place for a large wedding feast here. Children show amazing sensitivity to the sacrament of their parents' marriage. Sometimes they hurry their father and mother: “When will you finally get married!” - and live in tense anticipation of this event. One baby, some time after the wedding of his parents, approached the priest, caressing him tenderly, saying: “Do you remember how you married us? - “I remember, I remember, dear!” - The priest’s face lit up with emotion. The preschool boy said “us” and not “mom and dad.” The wedding of parents became a solemn entry into the Church and their children. As “those who got married” testify, after the wedding the relationship between husband and wife changes.

The definition of family as a small Church has its roots in the early centuries of Christianity. The Apostle Paul in his epistles mentions Christians close to him, the spouses Aquila and Priscilla, and greets them and “their domestic Church” (Rom. 16:4). And this is no coincidence. A family in the New Testament understanding is a union of a man and a woman who live Christian ideals, church life and pursue the only goal - salvation in Christ. No other goals than this will create a family like the Church: not just human love and respect, not raising children, not living together, but only Christ is the meaning, strength, and perfection of all this.
The family union in the Holy Scriptures is compared to the union of Christ and the Church. Just as Christ loved the Church, a husband must love his wife, take care of her, and guide her on the right path of Christian salvation. The highest spiritual purpose of this union is confirmed by the fact that grace unites two people into one flesh in the Sacrament of Marriage. That’s why we talk about the family as a small Church.
How can we preserve the sanctity and strength of the family in our difficult times? There is one simple and, at the same time, complex answer to this. There must be love. Not a surrogate in the form of passion and love, often based on external well-being. And true Christian love is self-sacrifice. If the interests of a loved one are above personal ambitions, if there is no place for struggle for leadership in the family, then this is true love, which the Apostle Paul wrote about. Only such love is long-suffering, merciful, does not boast, is not proud, does not seek its own, covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything. It is for the granting of such love that one must pray, calling on God’s help in preserving and increasing it.
Another constant condition for maintaining harmony in the family is mutual support for each other in any life situations. Patience and trust in the Lord, and not despair and mutual reproaches, should be paramount in building relationships. For a person, a family should be an unchanging support system, with which a person is not afraid of being misunderstood, scolded or not consoled. “Bear one another’s burdens,” he says, “and thus fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
Modern young families are often faced with seemingly impossible big problem, which sometimes turns out to be crushing for a family union, is the desire to spend leisure time with your friends, acquaintances or colleagues, often to the detriment of the time that they could devote to each other. The situation is especially aggravated when a child appears in the family. This, unfortunately, is an unconscious problem of shifted priorities. An Orthodox person must understand that there is no one closer and more important than the Lord, after whom in second place there should be a spouse and no one else. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife” (Gen. 2:23-24). Neither children, nor parents, nor, especially, friends, will make up for everything that a person receives in marriage. This is boundless trust, and self-sacrifice, and care, and consolation, and support, and equal sharing of difficulties and hardships. It is no coincidence that the Sacrament of Marriage is one of the seven Sacraments of the Orthodox Church. Truly, there is no greater happiness on earth than to be happy in a marital union.

Today, a serious problem is the question of what a Christian family and marriage is. Now this concept is quite difficult to comprehend in parish life. I see so many young people who are disoriented in what they want to see in their family. In their heads there are a lot of cliches of relationships between a boy and a girl, which they focus on.

It is very difficult for modern young people to find each other and start a family. Everyone looks at each other from a distorted angle: some have gained their knowledge from Domostroy, others from the television program Dom-2. And everyone, in their own way, tries to live up to what they read or see, while abandoning their own experience. The young people who make up the parish very often look around them to find a mate who might suit their ideas of family; How not to make a mistake - after all, an Orthodox family should be exactly like that. This is a very big psychological problem.

The second thing that adds depth to this psychological problem: the separation of concepts - what is the nature of the family, and what is its meaning and purpose. I recently read in a sermon that the purpose of the Christian family is procreation. But this is wrong and, unfortunately, has become an undiscussed cliche. After all, the Muslim, Buddhist, and any other family have the same goal. Procreation is the nature of the family, but not the goal. It is laid by God in the relationship between husband and wife. When the Lord created Eve, He said that it was not good for man to be alone. And I didn’t mean just childbearing.

First declaration of love

In the Bible we see a Christian image of love and marriage.

Here we meet the first declaration of love: Adam says to Eve: bone of my bones and flesh of flesh. Think about how wonderful this sounds.

In the wedding rite itself, it first speaks of helping each other, and then only the perception of the human race: “Holy God, who created man from the dust, and from his rib formed a wife, and combined with him an assistant suitable for him, for it was so pleasing to Your Majesty, so that man may not be alone on earth.” And therefore having many children is not the goal either. If a family is given the following task: it is imperative to reproduce and reproduce, then a distortion of marriage may occur. Families are not rubber, people are not endless, everyone has their own resource. It is impossible to set such a colossal task for the Church to solve the demographic issues of the state. The Church has other tasks.

Any ideology that is introduced into the family, into the Church, is terribly destructive. She always narrows it down to some sectarian ideas.

Family – small Church

Helping a family become a small Church is ours the main task.

And in the modern world, the word about the family, as a small Church, should sound loudly. The purpose of marriage is the embodiment of Christian love. This is a place where a person is truly and completely present. And he realizes himself as a Christian in his sacrificial attitude to each other. The fifth chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, which is read at the Wedding, contains the image of the Christian family that we focus on.

U o. Vladimir Vorobyov has a wonderful idea: the family has its beginning on earth and has its eternal continuation in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what a family is created for. So that two, having become a single being, transfer this unity to eternity. Both the small Church and the Heavenly Church became one.

Family is an expression of the anthropologically inherent churchliness in a person. In it the fulfillment of the Church, implanted by God in man, is realized. Overcoming, building oneself in the image and likeness of God is a very serious spiritual ascetic path. We need to talk a lot and seriously about this with our parish, with young men and women, with each other.

And reducing the family to stereotypes must be destroyed. And I believe that the large family- This is good. But everyone can do it. And it should not be carried out either by spiritual leadership or by any council decisions. Procreation is exclusively the fulfillment of Love. Children, marital relationships are what fill the family with love and replenish it as a kind of impoverishment.

Marriage is a relationship of love and freedom.

When we talk about intimate relationships in a family, there are many complex issues. The monastic charter by which our Church lives does not imply discussion on this topic. Nevertheless, this question exists, and we cannot escape it.

The implementation of marital relations is a matter of personal and internal freedom of each spouse.

It would be strange, because the spouses take communion during the Wedding Rite, to deprive them of their wedding night. And some priests even say that spouses should not receive communion on this day, because they have a wedding night ahead of them. But what about those spouses who pray to conceive a child: so that he is conceived with God's blessing, shouldn’t they also receive communion? Why is the question raised about the acceptance of the Holy Mysteries of Christ - God Incarnate - into our human nature with a certain impurity in the relationship consecrated by the Wedding? After all, it is written: the bed is not bad? When the Lord visited the wedding in Canna of Galilee, He, on the contrary, added wine.

Here the question of consciousness arises, which reduces all relationships to some kind of animal relationship.

The marriage is celebrated and is considered undefiled! The same John Chrysostom, who said that monasticism is higher than marriage, also says that spouses remain chaste even after they rise from the marital bed. But this is only if their marriage is honest, if they take care of it.

Therefore, marital relations are relations human love and freedom. But it also happens, and other priests can confirm this, that any excessive asceticism can be the cause of marital quarrels and even the breakdown of a marriage.

Love in marriage

People marry not because they are animals, but because they love each other. But not much has been said about love in marriage throughout the history of Christianity. Even in fiction, the problem of love in marriage was first raised only in the 19th century. And it was never discussed in any theological treatises. Even seminary textbooks do not say anywhere that people who create a family must love each other.

Love is the basis for creating a family. Every parish priest should be concerned about this. So that people who are going to get married set themselves the goal of truly loving, preserving and multiplying, making it that Royal Love that leads a person to Salvation. There can be nothing else in marriage. This is not just a household structure, where the woman is the reproductive element, and the man earns his bread and has a little free time to have fun. Although now this is exactly what happens most often.

The Church must protect marriage

And only the Church is now still able to say how to create and maintain a family. There are a lot of enterprises that make it possible to enter into and dissolve marriages, and they talk about it.

Previously, the Church was indeed the body that took upon itself the responsibility of a legal marriage and at the same time carried out the church blessing. And now the concept of legal marriage is becoming more and more blurred. Ultimately, legal marriage will be diluted to the last limit. Many people do not understand how a legal marriage differs from a civil marriage. Some priests also confuse these concepts. People do not understand the meaning of marriage in government institutions and they say that they would rather get married in order to stand before God, but in the registry office - what? In general, they can be understood. If they love each other, then they do not need a certificate, some kind of formal certificate of love.

On the other hand, the Church has the right to enter into only those marriages that are concluded in the registry office, and here a strange thing happens. As a result, some priests say strange words: “You sign, live a little, a year. If you don’t get divorced, then come get married.” Lord have mercy! What if they get divorced because there was no marriage? That is, such marriages do not seem to be considered, as if they did not exist, and those that the Church has married are for life...

It is impossible to live with such a consciousness. If we accept such a consciousness, then any church marriage will also fall apart, because there are reasons for the dissolution of a church marriage. If you treat state marriage in this way, that it is such a “bad marriage,” then the number of divorces will only increase. A married and an unmarried marriage have the same nature, the consequences of divorce are the same everywhere. When the strange idea is allowed that one can live before the wedding, then what will our marriage itself be like? What then do we mean by indissolubility, by “two - one flesh”? What God has joined together, man does not separate. After all, God unites people not only through the Church. People who meet each other on earth - truly, deeply - they are still fulfilling the God-given nature of marriage.

Only outside the Church they do not receive that grace-filled power that transforms their love. Marriage receives the power of grace not only because it is married in the Church by a priest, but also because people take communion together and live together the same church life.

Many people do not see the essence of marriage behind the wedding ceremony. Marriage is a union that was created by God in heaven. This is the mystery of paradise, heavenly life, the mystery of human nature itself.

Here there is a huge confusion and psychological obstacles for people who are looking for a groom or a bride in Orthodox youth clubs, because as long as there is an Orthodox with an Orthodox, and there is no other way.

Preparing for marriage

The Church needs to prepare for marriage those people who do not come from within the church community. Those who could now come to the Church through marriage. Now a huge number of unchurched people want a real family, a real marriage. And they know that the registry office will not give anything, that the truth is given in the Church.

And here they are told: get a certificate, pay, come on Sunday at 12. The choir is for a separate fee, the chandelier is for a separate fee.

Before a wedding, people must go through a serious preparatory period - and prepare for at least several months. This should be absolutely clear. It would be good to make a decision at the Synodal level: since the Church is responsible for the indissolubility of marriage, it allows it only between those who regularly came to the Temple for six months, confessed and received communion, and listened to the priest’s conversations.

At the same time, civil registration in this sense recedes into the background, because under modern conditions it makes it possible to secure some property rights. But the Church is not responsible for this. She must comply with very clear conditions on the basis of which such a Sacrament is performed.

Otherwise, of course, these problems with debunked marriages will only grow.

Answers on questions

When a person understands that he is personally responsible for every thought, every word, for every action, then the person begins to real life

– What are you doing in your parish to restore the value of marriage?

Marriage is a value of the Church itself. The task of a priest is to help a person acquire these values. Young people today are often disoriented about what marriage is all about.

When a person begins to live church life and partake of the Sacraments, everything immediately falls into place. Christ and we are next to Him. Then everything will be correct, there are no special tricks, there shouldn’t be any. When people try to invent some special techniques, it becomes very dangerous.

– What solutions exist to solve this problem? What advice do you have for young people?

– First of all, take your time and calm down. Trust God. After all, most often people do not know how to do this.

Free yourself from cliches and ideas that everything can be done in some special way, the so-called recipes for happiness. They exist in the minds of many Orthodox parishioners. Allegedly, in order to become such and such, you need to do this and that - go to the elder, for example, read forty akathists or take communion forty times in a row.

You need to understand that there are no recipes for happiness. There is personal responsibility for one's own own life, and this is the most important thing. When a person understands that he is personally responsible for his every word, for his every step, for his action, then, it seems to me, a person’s real life will begin.

And give up what is unnecessary: ​​external, far-fetched, what replaces a person’s inner world. The modern Christian church world now strongly gravitates towards frozen forms of piety, without comprehending their usefulness and fruitfulness. It focuses only on the form itself, and not on how correct and effective it is for a person’s spiritual life. And it is perceived only as a certain model of relationships.

And the Church is a living organism. Any model is good only insofar as it is. There are only some direction vectors, and a person has to go himself. And you shouldn’t rely on an external form that will supposedly lead you to salvation.

Half

– Does every person have their own half?

– The Lord created man in this way, removing a part from him to create the second half. It was the Divine act that made man incomplete without union with another. Accordingly, a person therefore looks for another. And it is fulfilled in the Mystery of Marriage. And this replenishment occurs either in family life or in monasticism.

– Are they born with halves? Or do they become halves after the wedding?

– I don’t think that people are created this way: as if there are two such people who need to find each other. And if they don’t find each other, they will be inferior. It would be strange to think that there is only one and only one who was sent to you by God, and all the others must pass by. I don't think so. Human nature itself is such that it can be transformed, and relationships themselves can also be transformed.

People look for another precisely as a man and a woman, and not at all as two specific individuals who exist in the world. In this sense, a person has quite a lot of choices. Everyone is suitable and unsuitable for each other at the same time. On the one hand, human nature is distorted by sin, and on the other, human nature has such enormous power that by the grace of God, the Lord creates children for himself even from stones.

Sometimes people who grow hard on each other suddenly become so indivisible, unity in God and with each other’s efforts, if desired, with enormous work. And it happens that everything seems to be fine with people, but they don’t want to deal with each other, to save each other. Then the most ideal unity can fall apart.

– Some people are looking for and waiting for some internal signal that this is your person, and only after such a feeling are they ready to accept and stay with the person whom God has placed in front of them.

– It is difficult to fully trust such a feeling, on the one hand. On the other hand, you can’t help but trust him absolutely. This is a Mystery, it will always remain a Mystery for a person: The Mystery of his mental anguish, heartache, his anxiety and his happiness, joy. No one has an answer to this question.

Prepared by Nadezhda Antonova

Bishop Alexander (Mileant)

Family - small church

IN The expression “family is a small church” has come to us from the early centuries of Christianity. The Apostle Paul in his epistles mentions Christians especially close to him, the spouses Aquila and Priscilla, and greets them and “Their home church” (Rom. 16:4).

There is an area in Orthodox theology about which little is said, but the significance of this area and the difficulties associated with it are very great. This is the area of ​​family life. Family life, like monasticism, is also Christian work, also “the path to salvation of the soul,” but it is not easy to find teachers on this path.

Family life is blessed in a number of ways church sacraments and prayers. In the Trebnik, a liturgical book that everyone uses Orthodox priest In addition to the order of the sacraments of marriage and baptism, there are special prayers over a mother who has just given birth and her baby, a prayer for naming a newborn, a prayer before the beginning of the child’s education, an order for the consecration of a house and a special prayer for housewarming, the sacrament of unction of the sick and prayers over the dying. There is, therefore, the Church's concern for almost all the main aspects of family life, but most of these prayers are now read very rarely. The writings of the saints and Church Fathers place great importance on Christian family life. But it is difficult to find in them direct, specific advice and instructions applicable to family life and raising children in our time.

I was very struck by the story from the life of one ancient desert saint, who fervently prayed to God that the Lord would show him true holiness, a true righteous man. He had a vision, and he heard a voice telling him to go to such and such a city, to such and such a street, to such and such a house, and there he would see real holiness. The hermit joyfully set off on his journey and, having reached the indicated place, found two washerwomen living there, the wives of two brothers. The hermit began to ask the women how they were saved. The wives were very surprised and said that they lived simply, amicably, in love, did not quarrel, prayed to God, worked... And this was a lesson to the hermit.

“Eldership”, as the spiritual leadership of people in the world, in family life, has become a part of our church life. Despite any difficulties, thousands of people were and are drawn to such elders and elders, both with their usual everyday concerns and with their grief.

There were and are preachers who can speak especially clearly about spiritual needs modern families. One of these was the late Bishop Sergius of Prague in exile, and after the war - Bishop of Kazan. "In what spiritual meaning family life? - said Vladyka Sergius. In non-family life, a person lives on his outer side - not on his inner side. In family life, every day you have to react to what is happening in the family, and this forces a person, as it were, to expose himself. Family is an environment that forces you not to hide your feelings inside. Both good and bad come out. This gives us the daily development of moral sense. The very environment of the family is, as it were, saving us. Every victory over sin within oneself gives joy, strengthens strength, weakens evil...” These are wise words. I think that raising a Christian family these days is more difficult than ever. Destructive forces act on the family from all sides, and their influence is especially strong on the mental life of children. The task of spiritually “nurturing” the family with advice, love, directions, attention, sympathy and understanding of modern needs is the most important task of church work in our time. Help Christian family really become a “small church” - the same great task, what the creation of monasticism was like in its time.