Is Monasticism Higher than Marriage? St. John Chrysostom on Marriage & Sexuality by Fr. Panayiotis 

Marriage is no walk in the park especially when filled with passions. You must learn to die to all passions in order to keep from getting a divorce. If you do not learn to die to self and old habits you will never be able to make marriage work. If you see a successful happy loving marriage you see a couple who has defeated the greatest passion. Pride. I am not there yet so please pray for me and my family.

that is amazing how the first opinion of ST. Chrystom was only a personal opinion lacking deep spiritual and practical experience and the second was so deep in experience with God. many till today still talk ill of marriage due to the effect of western thoughts of marriage and intimate relationship

O Holy Hierarch John Chrysostom, pray for us sinners!!☦️🙏

Father Panayiotis you are one of the most well spoken teachers by far and I know you're genuinely compassionate and care for the souls of others. My first ever experience at an Orthodox Church was a New Years celebration. I remember quite vividly Father breaking up a fight between two unsober gentleman and quite successfully. I had never seen this happen at any church before in my life and it certainly made me think long and hard about the phrase "hospital for sinners" for it gave me a direct in the face experience to such notion. After many years I eventually received Chrism and Communion joining the Church. The fact they were able to be reconciled even if only outwardly left me with the impression that I was in the right place.

Thank God Jesus 🙏 God bless you all Amen 🙏⛪🕯️

A wonderful description of the word "virginity" as we of this modern world have nown it to be, not being taught that the worrd itself has other meanings - spiritual virginity which is more fruitful in our lives if we uderstand and know God, Fr. Panayiotis, thank you for this explanation, to me, it was very helpful. Agape...

0:00 Monasticism & Marriage 0:25 Monasticism > Marriage 0:34 Monasticism < Marriage 0:38 The Patristic Witness • Exaltation of Monastic Life 1:00 Fathers had a deep respect of the Married State 1:14 1:23 God created Humanity as Male and Female, becoming 1 Body in Marriage. Become 1 Flesh. 2:39 Virginity and Marriage 3:25 Chronological Order of St John Chrysostom • Austere Ascetic Life • Art of Rhetoric 4:29 Influenced by Greek Philosophy and teacher Liebenius 4:56 Elevates Virginity and Monasticism 5:35 • Marriage: Difficult, Burdensome, where the lazier of men find refuge • Monasticism: Freeing, flying to the heights 6:33 _In Praise of Maximos_ • God Blessed Marriage ergo Marriage Is Good • Marriage is given as a condescension for the WEAKness of Men, those unable to control carnal passions. To avoid fornikation. 8:03 Quenching Desire, Procreation, Containment of Carnal Passions. Marriage is medicine to carnal weakness. 8:54 Virginity (Higher) > Marriage (Lower) 9:26 Live a life of continence in marriage. • Join A Monastery • Raise Children through the Monastery 10:58 St John Chrysostom encounters Married Couples. He revised his understanding of married life. 11:35 Monasticism is not for everyone, God would not ordain that the many would not be saved, just because they cannot become monks. Marriage = Monasticism in the effort for man to perfect himself. 12:23 Enoch, Job: Married Men 13:58 Wives and Virtue, at the same time 14:26 Use marriage according to rule of hood measure. Continence and Prudence 15:10 Epistle to Ephesians Marriage: Opportunity for the perfecting of Agape, Love ❤️ , an image of Christ’s Love For The Church. Husband Must Love Wife, Give Himself For Her, She Must Obey Him, Retain Equality with Him. 16:46 Eros - The Unification of Essence of Man, In Everyman is Eros. 17:21 Woman, made from the side of man, constitute 2 halves, come together, become 1 Body. 2 halves = 1 whole 1 anthropos 18:55 Mixing of bodies 19:48 ❤ Agape ❤ Eros ❤ Philia Coexist, Coincide Strengthen Unite Become 1 Again Great is The Mystery of Marriage 20:48 Healing ❤️‍🩹 23:16 Virginity Not just physical, but spiritual too: 23:46 Pure In Soul = Virgin, true virginity. Even if she has a husband. 24:55 Patience Frugality Modesty Decency 26:57 Eros, Glue Uniting Parts into Whole. 27:43 *Spiritual Purity* Obtainable by Monastics and Married Persons 27:55 2 Paths to The Way of God. Seeking Union with Bridegroom Christ. 28:41 Love of Spouses Love of Children, Domestics Love Of Poor and Suffering 29:06 Chrysostom went against Ancient Roman Normalcy

Thank you father for your work and trisagion for this too 🙏🏻

Glory to God

Thank you for the video, such an important and necessary understanding of the deeper purpose we are called to, through marriage. 🙏🏼

That was really good, thank you. God bless you

Wow! That’s so wonderful to listen to his development and it seems that St John Paul II discovered the same in his so called „theology of the body“. There he says about virginity that it is the goal and should be accomplished at the end of life. That it is state of the soul rather than of the body.

The choice of an icon of the Wedding in Cana as the backdrop of this presentation is just brilliant!

Thanks for your heart and sound minded presentation of how our faithful Orthodox Christian heroes, guided by God The Holy Spirit, understood the deeper purpose of sexual eros union between a husband and wife. When transformed by God's Grace and encouraging one another to grow in Christ, the two not only become one in body but also soul.

Even though I believe monasticism to be a higher and more angelic life than the married life, the major issue is negligence. Regardless if one is a monk or married, if you neglect your salvation you become unfruitful. So marriage in itself isn’t the problem but negligence. And it so happens that being married gives ample room for becoming negligent. Being a monk gives ample room for working on one’s salvation. If we created a community of married people that lived in their cells and had a church where we would do the services everyday like the monks and our work was keeping the grounds and making products to sell to sustain the community and were obedient to an abbot and had our prayer rule, married people would become much more holy and fruitful.

I honestly believe that both paths are chosen for you by God. There is no path to life but Christ and monastic or not we are all the same in the eyes of the Lord

The fact that the monastic life is superior to the married life doesn't denigrate the value of the married life. The married life is good and blessed and how God created Adam and Eve. But there is a path that is even more like the life to come and that is the monastic life. We know the future world and future bodies and state will be superior to our current world and body and spiritual state. This doesn't make the current world, body and spiritual state problematic; just of a lesser glory than that to come. God said of what He created that it was good and yet the creation to come will be superior to it. Likewise, the monastic life is superior to the good God created which is marriage. The fact that few can and do live this way only makes it all the more praiseworthy.

What an amazing, amazing video. Maybe it would get more views if the title was like, "Is monasticism higher than marriage? St. John Christosm's thoughts develop through his life" Because I am from your community post, that's why I watched the video. Otherwise, I might not have thought too much about it, when this video is really incredible.

Glad I didn't comment half way through 😂. I very much agree with the end theological stance

Fr do you have any opinion on Fr John Romanides teaching? His teaching has received a lot of criticism recently online as supposedly being in error but I find what I’ve read so far of his teaching of the Patristic faith to be helpful to me personally (the book by Met, Hierotheos).

Great video! May I ask why the voice over instead of Father Panayiotis reading himself? I pray you all are doing well☦️

I follow what the Church says no matter what. And I really don't know as much as others. But, my personal thinking: I think if marriage really was negative that Christ would have made it very clear for us. I don't think we should even think that we can draw any conclusions about marriage. God also said "Be fruitful, and multiply...". So simply put: there are two paths. Chose one.

Glory be to the One and only King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ the Son of God!

What about those who are neither married nor monks? I have my own thoughts about this but I'd be curious to hear what others have to say.

Why does the tradition feel more in agreement with young Chrysostom? and what can we do to promote his later views. I think this one thing would do more for the character of the church in our day than all the prayers on Mt. Athos.

But isnt Saint Pauls writing in 1. Corinthians chapter 7 rather clear that holy writ esteems the Celibate life higher than marriage?

The research done in the paper presented addresses one common approach for arguing that monasticism is superior to marriage. At best one might conclude arguing on the basis of Chrysostom’s works for the superiority of monasticism is not sufficient given the reasons in this paper. However Geronda Ephraim of Arizona offers a common sense argument in favor of monasticism in Counsels from the Holy Mountain pg. 92 which don’t require scholarship to assess its validity. “Although struggling to live the Christian life in the world is a godly pursuit, it does not even come close to monasticism in its yield of spiritual wealth and its closeness to God. ‘A tree is known by its fruit.’ An entire army of monastics has filled Heaven. How many Righteous (saints who attained sanctity while living in the world and not clergy, monastic, or martyr) saints do we have? You can count them on your fingers “ Geronda Ephraim also offers the following on pg. 83 “…virginity was dictated first, whereas marriage is a result of the Fall. Consequently, whoever wishes to attain the virtue that Adam and Eve had when they were in Paradise must live in virginity and chastity “ It was interesting to hear Fr. Panayiotis position on this issue. I believe he finds the fact that there was marriage at the start as his main theological issue since God created marriage. But it seems that some saints and holy men view marriage as a result of the fall and so there’s no issue in their mind to state marriage is inferior to monasticism. I say saints because likely Geronda Ephraim received his understanding from St. Jospeh the Hesychast and probably St. Ephraim of Katounakia held the same view. Good work on closely reading St. John Chrysostom which I’m sure will benefit Fr.’s heart.

What do you think of youtube orthodox ethos that says sex is only for kids?

I have yet to see such "marriage " among lay people

There’s a real, seemingly irresolvable contradiction here… If eternal virginity is the exclusive ontology of the eschaton, then it necessarily stands above marriage; so how could we possibly avoid denigrating marriage, procreation and family? If these things are products of the fall, soon to be discarded, how can we possibly imbue them with any reverence or teleological interiority? Furthermore, one cannot posit that marriage, procreation and family will be annulled simply because of their unnecessariness, for this would presuppose that the unnecessary is categorically annulled, but this is not the case. In fact, the unnecessary is actually elevated in the eschaton, with the most obvious examples being love and beauty, both of which have their teleology in themselves. A lower example would be food. Despite our bodily resurrection, we will still be able to feast with Christ. This means that a good meal actually retains more eternality than the sexual union between man and wife.

Without marriage and procreation, there would be no monastics. It's crazy to think that every single animal on earth has that hormonal drive to procreate, but somehow we're different? Yes, I understand we are different from all other animals, but this is hardwired into our genetic coding. To think otherwise just seems absurd when you think about it

If you put it in context of the Bible. God created Adam and Eve, there was no sex. After the fall aka darkness, sex entered. If you take in consideration the 2th, 3th and 4th fall, I see only demons imo no need for pro creation, marriage. Monk modus is the way. No worry’s about kids, wife time and so on. 24/7 time 2 worship God and fight for the salvation of your soul, but that’s my humble opinion. God bless 🙏

Theologians loves to give themselves a point in life by using words that nobody has ever heard. As an editor, I would ask: Why not use "discipline" or other synonym? You need to get this guy looking exotic and learned, is why even though he wears Medieval clothing.