Through Death to Glory
I am lying awake at night. We have had another row about nothing, or rather another row that tried to be about everything. The pressures of work, children and paying the bills all spill over into our relationship. We are unable to explain and explore what we really feel and so the frustrations, fears and disappointments become personal. "Is this it?", I ask the ceiling. "Is this all there is? Just a succession of days filled like this one?"
The world seems to think that marriage is about happiness and personal fulfilment. That is surely why so many marriages break down. When people say that they are not compatible, they surely mean that the other party to the marriage didn’t quite turn out as they expected. But marriage, in the Orthodox Christian perspective, is no more to do with personal satisfaction than the monastic life. Indeed for all Christians, whether married, single or monastic, there is but one aim in life, which is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and the transformation and transfiguration of our lives.
The Blessed Virgin Mary spent her childhood in a semi-monastic condition in the Temple precincts where the pious tradition of the Church teaches us that she was fed by angels. We may certainly believe that she was wholehearted in her devotion to God, even at such an early age. But as she grew beyond childhood she found herself betrothed to the aged Joseph, and we have no hint of a murmur of complaint from her lips. Then of course the Angel Gabriel visited her and announced to her the part that she would play in the salvation of the world. Her reply is the model of that of a servant or handmaid of the Lord, "Let it be unto me according to your word".
In the Scriptures we find her teaching others to obey the Lord Jesus, "do whatever he tells you". And she stands at the cross, when her Son, the Incarnate Word of God, lays down His life for the world. After the resurrection she is found with the Apostles, and continues to hold a most respected place among the believers throughout her life, in the care of the Apostle John.
Finally, our tradition teaches us that she experienced death, and that when the Apostle Thomas came to see where she had been laid it was found that her tomb was empty and that she had been granted the blessing of a foretaste of the resurrection in her own body, a body which had borne the Lord of Glory.
Whether living a monastic life, being betrothed and married, and then living as a widow, it seems that the Virgin Mary, in all times and places of her life, lived always as one who said, "let it be unto me according to thy word".
This is the antidote to that human fallen desire for self satisfaction which is found to assault those who are married, those who are single and those who live the monastic life. Indeed who could read the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers and not be filled with a sense of the spiritual and psychological pressures which weigh upon them. Yet the married state is not without similar pressures and challenges, and the marital home can be as much of a cell as any in the Egyptian deserts.
When one of the monks runs to his spiritual father and describes the temptation to leave his cell he is instructed to return and shut himself up and do nothing but overcome that urge to seek greener grass elsewhere. This is no less a temptation to married people. Lying awake at night after a row it would be very easy to believe that somewhere else, anywhere else, there was a means of self fulfilment. But it is the same temptation experienced by monks, and even single people, and must be resisted in the same way.
Indeed it would be fruitful to read the Desert Fathers and apply each monastic lesson to the married state. The aim of both vocations is the same – to find salvation in the presence of God. The temptations are the same, even if they take different forms. The monastic virtue of poverty is as necessary to a married person, since attachment to things, and even to people, is destructive. The monastic virtue of obedience is as necessary, since obedience is a means of learning humility and of defeating self-will. The monastic virtue of stability is as necessary, since it makes us face our weaknesses and sins where we are and does not allow us to pretend that we would be better people if only we were somewhere else.
Are there not monks who lie awake at night asking, "Is this it?". Are there not single people who ask the same question? If that is so then changing our circumstances cannot change our frustration. If I leave my wife and children and seek to become a monk then I will be as bad a monk as I will have proved to have been a husband and father.
I must learn that indeed this is all there is, because this is where the Lord has brought me. Now what will I do in this situation? I must echo the words of the Virgin Mary, "let it be unto me according to thy word". Let it be as you will Lord, only give me the grace for today.
The Feast of the Dormition reminds us that the Blessed Virgin Mary passed through death, as we all must. It is through death that we rise to glory. Indeed there was a dying to self throughout her life so that she was fitly prepared for life after and beyond death. And this is the response we should offer to every frustration and disappointment in marriage, as in all other conditions of life. Let it be unto me according to thy word.
This is all there is. Perhaps every day will be miserable, who knows. Certainly my own experience has not been so gloomy. But God gives enough grace. Not for guaranteed happiness, but for growth in the experience of His presence. And in that growth there is the possibility for moments of happiness, moments of transfiguration between a husband and wife. If even the Virgin Mary passes through death then how can we insist that our lives be free from all pain and frustration. It is through the giving of ourselves to the will of God that we find truly ourselves, and are able to begin to experience the hidden substance of marriage in the presence of God. The Virgin Mary shows us how, in those committed to to each other in marriage and indeed in every life.
