Married Monastics?
In Climacus' seventh century classic, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, ordinarily read by Orthodox monastics during Great Lent, the question is asked, "How can we who are married and living among public cares aspire to the monastic life?" This is no idle or frivolous question, particularly in the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, where it is not uncommon for our monastics to be in committed relationships. Chastity, is should be noted, suggests that the individual's relationships and motives are pure and free of sin, as much as possible, and do not obstruct the path to God. One who is chaste, according to one of the desert Ammas (desert mothers), is one whose manner of life does not distract, one whose relationships and interests do not divert him or her from the path that is at one and the same time narrow and broad, which leads to union with God. In the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, our monastics are called to chastity, but not to continence or celibacy: to be celibate is to refrain from marriage, and to be continent is to refrain from sexual relations.
Climacus' very sensible and concrete response is, "Do whatever good you may. Speak evil of no one. Rob no one. Tell no lie. Despise no one, and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies. Show compassion to the needy. Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone. Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your spouse can provide you. If you do all this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven. " (Paulist edition, p. 78) As Climacus well knew, monastic life is marked by love, moderation, simplicity, single-mindedness, prayer, almsgiving, and self-discipline. However, it is not meant to be painful or too arduous, nor something only for the great spiritual athletes, nor only for single people; rather, it is a deepening of the vowed baptismal covenant, by which the Christian becomes more intimately aware of the reality that she or he is a beloved child of God, inseparably and eternally united to that God, whose love never fails.
The monastic life, as much as we are able, is the angelic life here on earth; it is marked by prayer, sacrificial love, and service to one another and to our families and communities. Often, it is an inner, private aspect of life, exerting enormous influence over our ways of thinking. John Climacus suggests that there are many ways that the mind of one leading the active life and immersed in "the world" might be occupied. In his extravagant way, he suggests that we might think about the love of God, the remembrance of the kingdom, the zeal of the holy martyrs, the remembrance of the presence of God as in the saying, 'I saw the Lord before me' (Ps 15:8), the remembrance of the holy spiritual powers, and the remembrance of death, judgment, punishment, and sentence." (p. 134).
Whether we live alone or in a committed relationship, we stand daily before the "dread judgment-seat," not with paralysis of fear, but with something closer to relaxed reverence. At the close of each day, we do what used to be called an "examination of conscience," and face those moments we'd rather forget, bringing them to God and offering them in recognition of our humanity. One of the old Russian theologians prayed, "O God, in my humanity I have sinned; but You, in Your Divinity, I entreat You, forgive me and heal me." In facing our human mortality, we enter daily into the recollection of death. Certainly, if we pay attention, we are acutely aware of our own shortcomings and failures, and those who live in committed relationships often find those shortcomings and failures stand out with extraordinary clarity. At the same time we dare to say "Lord have mercy," with the sure conviction that indeed God is and ever shall be merciful and loving to each one of us who return, like the prodigal, to the arms of our loving God. In living as monastics, we witness to the transforming love of God and we rejoice in the opportunity to bring that love into all the various human relationships in which we find ourselves. Let us give thanks to God for the gift of the relationships that grace our lives.
