Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Renewing the Christian Family VI

The Monastic Life and the Family: Chastity - An Introduction

One hundred two years ago in his favorite booth at Pete’s Tavern in New York City’s Gramercy Park neighborhood, O. Henry penned his beloved story The Gift of the Magi. To those of you who have not read The Gift of the Magi, a young couple James and Della, unbeknownst to one another, each seek to buy a meaningful Christmas gift for the other. Being of modest means, James sells his pocket-watch to buy a handsome set of combs that Della had "worshipped for long in a Broadway window" with which she might comb her beautiful, long tresses. For her part Della has her tresses cut and sells them to a wig maker in order to buy a platinum chain for James’ treasured pocket-watch. James and Della: a young married couple brimming with romance, and each sacrificing for the beloved.

Fast forward to 2006: On a recent trip to Grandma’s house through lower Manhattan, not too far from Pete’s Tavern, my twelve-year-old daughter blurted out "That’s not appropriate, is it?" She directed our eyes to a large billboard on the side of a building in which a young man and woman were wrapped in one another’s arms wearing nothing more than the designer briefs they were selling. Forget about finding anything to indicate that the man and woman in the ad are married which is to say that the two have nothing in the way of commitment to one another. Related to this is the unspoken vocation crisis: the marriage rate in the United States saw a fifty percent decline between 1970 and 2004. The idea of committing one’s life to one person, of offering oneself as a gift to one other, has become less appealing. What is appealing is sex without strings, doing what feels good, and living for the moment. Wendell Berry aptly observed that

"with one’s ‘sexual partner,’ it is now understood, one must practice ‘safe sex’ - that, is one must protect oneself, not one’s partner or the children that may come of the partnership" (Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community).

Sexual gratification has become an end unto itself with no real regard or concern for the person behind the object of one’s sexual desire. The devaluation of chastity goes well beyond sex. If something at least briefly satisfies one’s desires, go for it. It may be anything from sex to alcohol to food to a new car. Self-indulgence and over-indulgence are practiced with little or no regard for their consequences.

Mother Marija, Abbess of Holy Annunciation Monastery observed to me that +John Paul II’s Theology of the Body reveals, "The best way to chastity is to have reverence for God’s creation, not destroy or desecrate it." To revere God’s creation leads us to care for it and cherish it. In the Byzantine Church the priest blesses the first fruits of the harvest on the Feast of the Transfiguration as much as he blesses the marriage of the young bride and groom. Both the first fruits of the harvest and the new marriage are of God. Both are good. Both require our attentive care.

The Norsemen of old understood the inseparability of marriage and family life to the land (creation). The Old Norse word husbondi refers to man as "master of the house" as well as caretaker of his land (creation). This Old Norse word also had a feminine form husbonde "mistress of the house" and caretaker of her land. Wendell Berry, in his essay Renewing Husbandry (in The Way of Ignorance), wrote, "To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve." To be husbandi/husbande in the fullest sense is to revere creation and to sacrifice self.

In his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Benedict XVI wrote of two types of love: eros (ascending love) and agape (descending love). Seen properly, eros can attain grandeur. More specifically "eros tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing" (emphasis added).

When during the Byzantine ritual of marriage the priest prays that the bride and groom be blessed with "matrimonial chastity" there always seem to be at least a few raised eyebrows. O. Henry’s James and Della knew the connection between chastity and marriage. Most people living in our current culture would be hard-pressed to find any such connection. What do we expect from a culture in which freedom in the bedroom and even the marketplace is centered on selfish desire?