The question for Christians who are already married and raising children is not: “How can I reduce to a bare minimum my family obligations so as to be ‘free’ to lead a ‘more spiritual’ life?” It is rather: “How should I nurture within my family life my love for God and my neighbor?”
Children in the Church Today: An Orthodox Perspective
by Sister Magdalen
Category: MARRIAGE
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She may say, “Until when do I continue giving him my love?” The matter, however, requires that we do not take things personally, and that we understand that his lack of expression of his feelings has something to do with his upbringing and his way of thinking about his ideal self. This understanding liberates the wife from the bonds that he does not love her, and she begins to say, “He loves me but he does not know how to express his feelings. Therefore, I will teach him how to do so, by expressing my feelings and offering him love.” My advice to you is that you should not look at this matter personally, because you will not be able to offer [him] love, except if you look at this as a matter related to his personality, education, and upbringing.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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It doesn’t matter what our citizenship is, it doesn’t matter what our status is here or there, it doesn’t matter if we’re married not married, if we have kids or don’t have kids, if we have a job or don’t have a job—none of that matters because we are children of God. And as a father takes care of his child, so God will take care of us. And if we find ourselves in points in our lives where we feel like God has abandoned us, it is not He who has abandoned us—it’s we who have abandoned Him.
—Fr. Daniel Habib -
Once when Abba Macarius was passing through Egypt with some brothers he heard a young woman saying to her mother: “Mama, a rich man loves me and I hate him while a poor man hates me and I love him.” Abba Macarius was amazed on hearing this. The brothers said to him: “Father, what is this saying that you were amazed [at it]?” The elder said to them: “Truly our Lord is rich and he loves us—and we do not want to hear him. Our enemy the devil is poor and hates us—and we love his impurity.”
Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers
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A man who, seeing through the illusion with the eye of his spirit purged, lifts himself above the struggling world, and, to use the words of the Apostle, slights it all as but dung, in a way exiling himself altogether from human life by his abstinence from marriage, — that man has no fellowship whatever with the sins of mankind, such as avarice, envy, anger, hatred, and everything of the kind. He has an exemption from all this, and is in every way free and at peace; there is nothing in him to provoke his neighbours’ envy, because he clutches none of those objects round which envy in this life gathers. He has raised his own life above the world, and prizing virtue as his only precious possession he will pass his days in painless peace and quiet.
On Virginity, Chap. 4
St. Gregory of Nyssa -
Men consider silence to be the mere absence of noise and speech, but the reality is much more complex.
The silence of a couple who are dining alone can express the depth of a communion that no longer needs words; on the other hand, they may no longer be capable of speaking to each other. The first silence is a silence of communion, and the second—a silence of rupture. Each of these two opposite forms conveys a very strong message; the first says: I love you. The second: Our love is over.
—Dom Dysmas De Lassus
The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat -
The purpose of Christian marriage is for people to reach unselfish love and to cut off their own will, and thence reach God.
—St. John Chrysostom -
Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. Do so with respect to children, so with respect to a wife, so with respect to magisterial offices, so with respect to wealth, and you will be some time a worthy partner of the banquets of the gods. But if you take none of the things which are set before you, and even despise them, then you will be not only a fellow-banqueter with the gods, but also a partner with them in power.
—Epictetus, Enchiridion
