My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST1 HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN FAMILY (Part II)
By His Eminence Archbishop Chrysostomos, from "Orthodox Tradition".
Just as an army trains soldiers to battle the enemy for the sake of the homeland, so the true family, the Orthodox Christian family, endows its children with the spiritual armor by which they can overcome temptations, battle sin, live exemplary and moral lives, gain union here on earth with God, fulfill the divine potential within man, and pass into the next life with the spiritual power to pray for family members left behind. A True Orthodox Christian family teaches love (agape) to its members-that intuitive, spontaneous love natural to blood relations, and encourages them to go out into the world sharing this love with others and perfecting it to whatever degree possible.
A True family moves out beyond itself. If family members should gain wealth or fame, these are secondary things. These accomplishments are measured only by the primary contribution that they make to the Church, to society in general, and to the fulfillment of Christian ideals. And if a family member should embrace Monasticism, it is for this individual that the Church reserves the greatest praise: for one who can, without the reinforcement of family ties and the comfort of marital affection, show and give love unselfishly; for one who can, living in poverty, produce richness in his soul and heart; for one who can, in the face of the world's ridicule and scorn, maintain inner dignity; for one who can, though separated from his family, show more real love, in his prayers and example, than those present to it.
Though only part of my family is Orthodox, my own experience in entering the Monastic life has not been as difficult as it might have been. But I have seen terrible cases of ill-treatment, in which Monastics have been hurt deeply by the attitudes of their own families--usually in the case of converts who enter Monasticism from non-Orthodox families. Some families, lacking a spiritual understanding of the family itself, consider such Monastic outcasts, betrayers of the family, and destroyers of the family unit. Every foul and vulgar motivation is attributed to the Monastic. Hatred, resentment, and antipathy are engendered among family members for the monastic.
We must reflect on these instances with sobriety since they reflect an attitude which is now invading even the Orthodox Christian family in this country, where the larger Orthodox jurisdictions have either no Monastic institutions or--with very few exceptions--Monastic institutions wholly foreign to anything in Orthodox Christian Tradition. Where are those mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who would rejoice in offering up a family member to intense service to God, a service in which limited family love is lifted up to expansive spiritual love? Where are those who would give up the best, the strongest, and most beloved to a life of purity?
There could be nothing more pristine than the True Orthodox Christian family. It is, after all, the crucible in which the elements of whole persons are formed. We should exalt such a family and pray that God will make us worthy to lead and to establish such families. At the same time, we must be careful not to accept as a true family that which is false! We must guard against mere social views of the family. And those families wrongly formed and wrongly operating we must call--by the power of love that even they have in their midst--back to the Christian image of the family that we see in the lives of Christ, the Theotokos, the Apostles, and the Martyrs and Saints. (Orthodox Heritage)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George