ABOUT THE MOST SECRET
Candidate of Theology, graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy Archpriest Dimitry Moiseev answers questions.

Hegumen Peter (Meshcherinov) wrote: “And, finally, we need to touch on the sensitive topic of marital relations. Here is the opinion of one priest: “Husband and wife are free individuals, united by a union of love, and no one has the right to enter their matrimonial bedroom with advice. I consider harmful, and in the spiritual sense as well, any regulation and schematization (“chart” on the wall) of marital relations, except for abstinence on the night before communion and asceticism of Great Lent (according to strength and mutual consent). I consider it completely wrong to discuss issues of marital relations with confessors (especially monastics), since the presence of an intermediary between a husband and wife in this matter is simply unacceptable, and never leads to good.

With God, there are no small things. As a rule, the devil often hides behind what a person considers unimportant, secondary... Therefore, those who wish to improve spiritually need to put things in order with God's help in all areas of their lives, without exception. Communicating with familiar family parishioners, I noticed: unfortunately, many in intimate relationships from a spiritual point of view behave “worthless” or, simply speaking, sin without even realizing it. And this ignorance is dangerous for the health of the soul. Moreover, modern believers often possess such sexual practices that other secular womanizers' hair can stand on end from their skill ... Recently I heard how one woman who considers herself Orthodox proudly announced that she had paid only $ 200 for "super" -educational sexual training - seminars. In all her manner, intonation, one could feel: “Well, what are you thinking, follow my example, especially since married couples are invited ... Study, study and study again! ..”.

Therefore, we asked the teacher of the Kaluga Theological Seminary, candidate of theology, graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archpriest Dimitry Moiseev, to answer the questions of what and how to study, otherwise “teaching is light, and the unlearned are darkness.”

Is intimacy in marriage important to a Christian or not?
- Intimate relationships are one of the aspects of married life. We know that the Lord established marriage between a man and a woman in order to overcome the division between people, so that the spouses would learn, by working on themselves, to achieve unity in the image of the Holy Trinity, as St. John Chrysostom. And, in fact, everything that accompanies family life: intimate relationships, joint upbringing of children, housekeeping, just communication with each other, etc. are all means to help a married couple achieve the degree of unity available to their condition. Consequently, intimate relationships occupy one of the important places in married life. It is not a center of coexistence, but at the same time, it is not a thing that is not needed.

On what days are Orthodox Christians not allowed to have intimacy?
- The Apostle Paul said: "Do not move away from each other, except by agreement for the exercise in fasting and prayer." It is customary for Orthodox Christians to refrain from marital intimacy during fasting days, as well as on Christian holidays, which are days of intense prayer. If anyone is interested, take the Orthodox calendar and find the days where it is indicated when the marriage is not performed. As a rule, during these same times, Orthodox Christians are advised to abstain from marital relations.
- And what about abstinence on Wednesday, Friday, Sunday?
- Yes, on the eve of Wednesday, Friday, Sunday or major holidays and until the evening of this day, you need to abstain. That is, from Sunday evening to Monday - please. After all, if we marry some couples on Sunday, it is understood that in the evening the newlyweds will be close.

- Orthodox enter into marital intimacy only for the purpose of having a child or for satisfaction?
Orthodox Christians enter into marital intimacy out of love. In order to take advantage of these relationships, again, to strengthen the unity between husband and wife. Because childbearing is only one of the means in marriage, but not its ultimate goal. If in the Old Testament the main purpose of marriage was childbearing, then in the New Testament the priority task of the family becomes likening the Holy Trinity. It is no coincidence that, according to St. John Chrysostom, the family is called a small church. Just as the Church, having Christ as its head, unites all its members into one body, so the Christian family, which also has Christ as its head, should promote unity between husband and wife. And if God does not give children to any couples, then this is not a reason to refuse marital relations. Although, if the spouses have reached a certain measure of spiritual maturity, then as an exercise in abstinence, they can move away from each other, but only by mutual agreement and with the blessing of the confessor, that is, a priest who knows these people well. Because it is unreasonable to take on such feats on your own, not knowing your own spiritual state.

- I once read in an Orthodox book that one confessor came to his spiritual children and said: "It is God's will for you that you have many children." Is it possible to say this to a confessor, was it really the will of God?
— If a confessor has reached absolute dispassion and sees the souls of other people, like Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Sergius of Radonezh, then I think that the law is not written for such a person. And for an ordinary confessor, there is a decree of the Holy Synod, which prohibits interfering in private life. That is, priests can give advice, but they do not have the right to force people to do their will. It is strictly forbidden, firstly, St. Fathers, secondly, by a special resolution of the Holy Synod of December 28, 1998, which once again reminded confessors of their position, rights and obligations. Therefore, the priest may recommend, but his advice will not be binding. Moreover, you can not force people to take on such a heavy yoke.

- So, the church does not call for married couples to be sure to have large families?
— The Church calls married couples to be God-like. And having many children or having few children - it already depends on God. Who can accommodate what - yes it accommodates. Thank God if the family is able to raise many children, but for some people this can be an unbearable cross. That is why the fundamentals of the ROC's social concept approach this issue very delicately. Speaking, on the one hand, about the ideal, i.e. so that the spouses completely rely on the will of God: as many children the Lord gives, so many will give. On the other hand, there is a reservation: those who have not reached such a spiritual level should, in the spirit of love and benevolence, consult with the confessor about the issues of their lives.

— Are there any limits to what is acceptable in intimate relationships among the Orthodox?
These boundaries are dictated by common sense. Perversions, of course, are condemned. Here, I think, this question comes close to the following: “Is it useful for a believer to study all kinds of sexual techniques, techniques and other knowledge (for example, the Kama Sutra) in order to save a marriage?”
The fact is that the basis of marital intimacy should be love between husband and wife. If it is not there, then no technique will help in this. And if there is love, then no tricks are needed here. Therefore, for an Orthodox person to study all these techniques, I think it is pointless. Because spouses receive the greatest joy from mutual communication, subject to love between themselves. And not subject to the presence of some practices. In the end, any technique gets boring, any pleasure that is not associated with personal communication becomes boring, and therefore requires more and more acuity of sensations. And this passion is endless. So, you need to strive not to improve some techniques, but to improve your love.

- In Judaism, intimacy with a wife can only be entered a week after her critical days. Is there something similar in Orthodoxy? Is it allowed for a husband to “touch” his wife these days?
- In Orthodoxy, marital intimacy is not allowed on the critical days themselves.

- So it is a sin?
- Of course. As for a simple touch, in the Old Testament - yes, a person who touched such a woman was considered unclean and had to undergo a purification procedure. There is nothing like it in the New Testament. A person who touches a woman these days is not unclean. Imagine what would happen if a person who traveled in public transport, in a bus full of people, began to figure out which of the women to touch and which not. What is it, “who is unclean, raise your hand! ..”, or what?

Is it possible for a husband to have intimate relations with his wife, if she is in position And from a medical point of view, there are no restrictions?
- Orthodoxy does not welcome such relationships for the simple reason that a woman, being in a position, should devote herself to caring for an unborn child. And in this case, you need some specific limited period, namely 9 months, to try to devote yourself to spiritual ascetic exercises. At the very least, refrain from intimacy. In order to devote this time to prayer, spiritual improvement. After all, the period of pregnancy is very important for the formation of the personality of the child and his spiritual development. It is no coincidence that even the ancient Romans, being pagans, forbade pregnant women to read books that were not useful from a moral point of view, to attend amusements. They understood perfectly well that a woman's mental disposition is necessarily reflected in the state of the child that is in her womb. And often, for example, we are surprised that a child born from a certain mother of not the most moral behavior (and left by her in the maternity hospital), subsequently falling into a normal foster family, nevertheless inherits the character traits of his biological mother, becoming over time the same depraved, drunkard, etc. There seemed to be no visible effect. But we must not forget: for 9 months he was in the womb of just such a woman. And all this time he perceived the state of her personality, which left an imprint on the child. This means that a woman who is in a position, for the sake of the baby, his health, both bodily and spiritual, needs to protect herself in every possible way from what may be permissible in normal times.

— I have a friend, he has a large family. It was very difficult for him as a man to abstain for nine months. After all, it is not useful for a pregnant woman, probably, even to caress her own husband, since this still affects the fetus. What is a man to do?
I'm talking about the ideal here. And whoever has some infirmities - there is a confessor. A pregnant wife is not a reason to have a mistress.

- If possible, let's return to the question of perversions. Where is the line that a believer cannot cross? For example, I read that spiritually, oral sex is generally not welcome, right?
- He is condemned as well as sodomy with his wife. Masturbation is also condemned. And what is within the boundaries of the natural is possible.

- Now petting is in fashion among young people, that is, masturbation, as you said, is this a sin?
“Of course it's a sin.

And even between husband and wife?
- Well, yes. Indeed, in this case, we are talking about perversion.

Is it possible for a husband and wife to caress during fasting?
Is it possible to smell sausage during fasting? Question of the same order.

- Is erotic massage harmful to the soul of an Orthodox?
- I think if I come to the sauna and a dozen girls give me erotic massage, then my spiritual life in this case will be thrown very, very far away.

- And if from a medical point of view, the doctor prescribed?
- I can explain it any way I want. But what is permissible with a husband and wife is not permissible with strangers.

How often can spouses have intimacy without this care of the flesh turning into lust?
- I think that every married couple determines for itself a reasonable measure, because here it is impossible to give any valuable instructions, installations. We, in the same way, do not describe how much an Orthodox person can eat in grams, drink in liters per day of food and drink, so that caring for the flesh does not turn into gluttony.

— I know one believing couple. They have such circumstances that when they meet after a long separation, they can do this several times a day. Is this normal from a spiritual point of view? How do you think?
“Maybe it’s okay for them. I don't know these people. There is no strict rule. A person himself must understand what is in what place for him.

— Is the problem of sexual incompatibility important for Christian marriage?
- I think the problem of psychological incompatibility is still important. Any other incompatibility is born precisely because of this. It is clear that a husband and wife can achieve some kind of unity only if they are similar to each other. Get married first different people. It is not the husband who is to be likened to his wife, and not the wife to her husband. And both husband and wife should try to become like Christ. Only in this case will incompatibility, both sexual and any other, be overcome. However, all these problems, questions of this plan arise in the secular, secularized consciousness, which does not even consider the spiritual side of life. That is, no attempts are made to solve family problems by following Christ, by working on oneself, by correcting one's life in the spirit of the Gospel. There is no such option in secular psychology. This is where all the other attempts to solve this problem come from.

- So, the thesis of one Orthodox Christian woman: “There must be freedom between husband and wife in sex,” is not true?
Freedom and lawlessness are two different things. Freedom implies a choice and, accordingly, a voluntary restriction for its preservation. For example, in order to continue to be free, it is necessary to limit myself to the Criminal Code in order not to go to jail, although theoretically I am free to break the law. It is the same here: to put the enjoyment of the process at the forefront is unreasonable. Sooner or later, a person will get tired of everything possible in this sense. And then what?..

- Is it permissible to be naked in a room where there are icons?
- In this regard, there is a good anecdote among Catholic monks, when one leaves the Pope sad, and the second - cheerful. One of the other asks: "Why are you so sad?". “Yes, I went to the Pope and asked: can I smoke when you pray? He replied: no, you can't. “Why are you so funny?” “And I asked: is it possible to pray when you smoke? He said: you can.

— I know people who live separately. They have icons in their apartment. When the husband and wife are left alone, they are naturally naked, and there are icons in the room. Isn't it wrong to do so?
“There is nothing wrong with that. But you don’t need to come to church in this form and you shouldn’t hang icons, for example, in the toilet.

- And if, when you wash, thoughts about God come, is it not scary?
- In the bath - please. You can pray anywhere.

- Is it okay that there are no clothes on the body?
- Nothing. What about Mary of Egypt?

– But still, perhaps, it is necessary to create a special prayer corner, at least for ethical reasons, and fence off the icons?
- If there is an opportunity for this, yes. But we go to the baths, having a pectoral cross on ourselves.

Is it possible to do “this” during fasting, if it is completely unbearable?
- Here again the question of human strength. As far as a person has enough strength ... But "this" will be considered intemperance.

—Recently, I read from Elder Paisios the Holy Mountaineer that if one of the spouses is spiritually stronger, then the strong must yield to the weak. Yes?
- Of course. "Lest Satan tempt you because of your intemperance." Because if the wife strictly fasts, and the husband becomes unbearable to such an extent that he takes a mistress, the latter will be bitterer than the former.

- If the wife did this for the sake of her husband, then should she come to repent that she did not keep the fast?
- Naturally, since the wife also received her measure of pleasure. If for one this is condescension to weakness, then for another ... In this case, it is better to cite as an example episodes from the life of hermits who, condescending to weakness or out of love, or for other reasons, could break the fast. We are talking, of course, about food fasting for monks. Then they repented of this, took on even greater work. After all, it is one thing to show love and condescension to the weakness of one's neighbor, and another thing to allow some kind of indulgence for oneself, without which one could well do without according to one's spiritual dispensation.

- Isn't it physically harmful for a man to refrain from intimate relationships for a long time?
- Anthony the Great once lived for more than 100 years in absolute abstinence.

- Doctors write that it is much more difficult for a woman to abstain than for a man. They even say it's bad for her health. And the elder Paisios Svyatogorets wrote that because of this, ladies develop “nervousness” and so on.
– I doubt it, because there are quite a large number of holy wives, nuns, ascetics, etc., who practiced abstinence, virginity and, nevertheless, were filled with love for their neighbors, and by no means with malice.

- Isn't it harmful for a woman's physical health?
“They also lived for quite a long time. Unfortunately, I am not ready to approach this issue with numbers in hand, but there is no such dependence.

- Communicating with psychologists and reading medical literature, I learned that if a woman and her husband do not have sexual relations, then she has a very high risk of gynecological diseases. This is an axiom among doctors, so it is wrong?
— I would question it. As for nervousness and other such things, the psychological dependence of a woman on a man is greater than that of a man on a woman. Because even in Scripture it says: "Your attraction will be to your husband." It is more difficult for a woman to be alone than for a man. But in Christ all this can be overcome. Hegumen Nikon Vorobyov said very well about this that a woman has a more psychological dependence on a man than a physical one. For her, sexual relations are not so much important as the fact of having a close man with whom you can communicate. The absence of such a weaker sex is more difficult to tolerate. And if we do not talk about the Christian life, then this can lead to nervousness and other difficulties. Christ is able to help a person overcome any problems, provided that a person has a correct spiritual life.

- Is it possible to have intimacy with the bride and groom if they have already submitted an application to the registry office, but have not yet been officially scheduled?
- As they filed an application, they can pick it up. Still, the marriage is considered concluded at the time of registration.

- And if, say, the wedding is in 3 days? I know many people who have fallen for this trap. A common phenomenon - a person relaxes: well, what is there, after 3 days the wedding ...
- Well, in three days Easter, let's celebrate. Or on Maundy Thursday I bake Easter cake, let me eat it, it’s still Easter in three days! .. Easter will come, it won’t go anywhere ...

- Is intimacy between husband and wife allowed after registration with the registry office or only after the wedding?
- For a believer, provided that both believe, it is advisable to wait for the wedding. In all other cases registration is sufficient.

- And if they signed in the registry office, but then had intimacy before the wedding, is this a sin?
- The Church recognizes the state registration of marriage ...

- But they need to repent that they were close before the wedding?
- In fact, as far as I know, people who are concerned about this issue try not to make it so that the painting is today, and the wedding is in a month.

And even after a week? I have a friend, he went to arrange a wedding in one of the Obninsk churches. And the priest advised him to spread the painting and the wedding for a week, because the wedding is a booze, a party, and so on. And then the deadline was extended.
- Well I do not know. Christians should not have booze at a wedding, and for those for whom any occasion is good, there will be booze even after the wedding.

- That is, you can’t spread the painting and the wedding for a week?
“I wouldn't do that. Again, if the bride and groom are church people, well known to the priest, he may well marry them before painting. I will not marry without a certificate from the registry office of people unknown to me. But I can marry well-known people quite calmly. Because I trust them, and I know that there will be no legal or canonical problems because of this. For people who regularly visit the parish, such a problem, as a rule, is not worth it.

Are sexual relationships dirty or clean from a spiritual point of view?
“It all depends on the relationship itself. That is, the husband and wife can make them clean or dirty. It all depends on the internal arrangement of the spouses. Intimacy itself is neutral.

— Just like money is neutral, right?
— If money is a human invention, then these relationships are established by God. The Lord created such people, Who did not create anything unclean, sinful. So, in the beginning, ideally, the sexual relationship is pure. And a person is able to defile them and quite often does it.

- Is shyness in intimate relationships welcome among Christians? (And then, for example, in Judaism, many look at their wife through a sheet, because they consider it shameful to see a naked body)?
-Christians welcome chastity, i.e. when all aspects of life are in place. Therefore, Christianity does not give any such legalistic restrictions, just as Islam makes a woman cover her face, etc. This means that it is not possible to write down a code of intimate behavior for a Christian.

Is it necessary to abstain after Communion for three days?
- The "Instructive Message" tells how one should prepare for Communion: to abstain from the closeness of the day before and the day after. Therefore, there is no need to abstain for three days after Communion. Moreover, if we turn to ancient practice, we will see: married couples took communion before the wedding, got married on the same day, and in the evening there was closeness. Here is the day after. If on Sunday morning they took communion, the day was dedicated to God. And at night you can be with your wife.

- For one who wants to improve spiritually, should one strive so that bodily pleasures are secondary (unimportant) for him. Or do you need to learn to enjoy life?
- Of course, bodily pleasures should be secondary for a person. He should not put them at the forefront of his life. There is a direct correlation: the more spiritual a person is, the less bodily pleasures mean to him. And the less spiritual a person is, the more important they are for him. However, we cannot force a person who has just come to church to live on bread and water. But the ascetics would hardly eat the cake. To each his own. As his spiritual growth.

– I read in one Orthodox book that by giving birth to children, Christians thereby prepare citizens for the Kingdom of God. Can the Orthodox have such an understanding of life?
“God grant that our children become citizens of the Kingdom of God. However, for this it is not enough to give birth to a child.

- And what if, for example, a woman has become pregnant, but she does not know about it yet and continues to have intimate relationships. What should she do?
- Experience shows that while a woman does not know about her interesting situation, the fetus is not very susceptible to this. A woman, indeed, may not know for 2-3 weeks that she is pregnant. But during this period, the fetus is protected quite reliably. Moreover, it also depends on if the expectant mother takes alcohol, etc. The Lord arranged everything wisely: until a woman knows about it, God Himself cares, but when a woman finds out ... She herself should take care of this (laughs).

- Indeed, when a person takes everything into his own hands, problems begin ... I would like to end with a major chord. What can you wish, Father Demetrius, to our readers?

- Do not lose love, which is so little in our world.

- Father, thank you very much for the conversation, which let me finish with the words of Archpriest Alexei Uminsky: “I am convinced that intimate relationships are a matter of personal inner freedom of each family. Often, excessive austerity is the cause of marital quarrels and, ultimately, divorce. The pastor emphasized that the basis of the family is love, which leads to salvation, and if it is not there, then marriage is “just an everyday structure, where a woman is a reproductive force, and a man is the one who earns bread.”

Bishop of Vienna and Austria Hilarion (Alfeev).

Marriage (intimate side of the issue)
Love between a man and a woman is one of the important themes of biblical evangelism. As God Himself says in the Book of Genesis, “A man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). It is important to note that marriage was established by God in Paradise, that is, it is not a consequence of the Fall. The Bible tells of married couples who had a special blessing of God, expressed in the multiplication of their offspring: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. Love is sung in the Song of Solomon, a book that, despite all the allegorical and mystical interpretations of the Holy Fathers, does not lose its literal meaning.

The first miracle of Christ was the turning of water into wine at a marriage in Cana of Galilee, which is understood by the patristic tradition as a blessing of the marriage union: “We affirm,” says St. Cyril of Alexandria, “that He (Christ) blessed the marriage man and went ... to the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1-11).

History knows sects (Montanism, Manichaeism, etc.) that rejected marriage as supposedly contrary to the ascetic ideals of Christianity. Even in our time, one sometimes hears the opinion that Christianity abhors marriage and "permits" the marriage union of a man and a woman only out of "condescension to the infirmities of the flesh." How untrue this is, one can judge at least from the following statements of the Hieromartyr Methodius of Patara (4th century), who in his treatise on virginity, gives the theological justification for childbearing as a consequence of marriage and, in general, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman: “... It is necessary that a person ... acted in the image of God ... for it is said: "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28). And we should not disdain the definition of the Creator, as a result of which we ourselves began to exist. The beginning of the birth of people is the casting of the seed into the bowels of the female womb, so that bone from bone and flesh from flesh, having been perceived by an invisible force, were again formed into another person by the same Artist ... This may be indicated by a sleepy frenzy directed at the primordial ( cf. Gen. 2:21), prefiguring the pleasure of a husband in communication (with his wife), when he, in a thirst for procreation, goes into a frenzy (ekstasis - “ecstasy”), relaxing with the hypnotic pleasures of procreation, so that something that is torn away from his bones and flesh, again formed ... into another person ... Therefore, it is rightly said that a person leaves his father and mother, as suddenly forgetting everything at a time when, having united with his wife in the embrace of love, he becomes a participant in fruitfulness, leaving the Divine Creator to take a rib from him so that from son to become a father himself. So, if even now God forms man, is it not bold to turn away from childbearing, which the Almighty Himself is not ashamed to perform with His pure hands? As Saint Methodius further states, when men "throw the seed into the natural female passages," it becomes "participant in the divine creative power."

Thus, conjugal communion is seen as a God-ordained creative act performed "in the image of God." Moreover, sexual intercourse is the way in which God the Artist creates. Although such thoughts are rare among the Fathers of the Church (who were almost all monks and therefore had little interest in such topics), they cannot be passed over in silence when expounding the Christian understanding of marriage. Condemning "carnal lust", hedonism, leading to sexual promiscuity and unnatural vices (cf. Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9, etc.), Christianity blesses sexual intercourse between a man and a woman within the marriage union.

In marriage, a person is transformed, overcoming loneliness and isolation, expanding, replenishing and completing his personality. Archpriest John Meyendorff defines the essence of Christian marriage in this way: “A Christian is called—already in this world—to have the experience of a new life, to become a citizen of the Kingdom; and it is possible for him in marriage. In this way, marriage ceases to be just the satisfaction of temporary natural impulses… Marriage is a unique union of two beings in love, two beings who can transcend their own human nature and be united not only “with each other” but also “in Christ.” .

Another prominent Russian pastor, priest Alexander Elchaninov, speaks of marriage as an “initiation”, a “mystery”, in which a “complete change of a person takes place, an expansion of his personality, new eyes, a new sense of life, a birth through him into the world in a new fullness.” In the union of love of two people, both the revelation of the personality of each of them and the emergence of the fruit of love - a child that turns the two into a trinity - takes place: “... In marriage, complete knowledge of a person is possible - a miracle of feeling, touching, seeing someone else's personality ... , observes it from the side, and only in marriage plunges into life, entering it through another person. This enjoyment of real knowledge and real life gives that feeling of completeness and satisfaction that makes us richer and wiser. And this fullness deepens even more with the emergence of us, merged and reconciled, the third, our child.”

Attaching such exceptionally high importance to marriage, the Church has a negative attitude towards divorce, as well as a second or third marriage, unless the latter are caused by special circumstances, such as adultery by one or the other party. This attitude is based on the teachings of Christ, who did not recognize the Old Testament regulations regarding divorce (cf. Mt. 19:7-9; Mk. 10:11-12; Lk. 16:18), with one exception - divorce through "the fault of fornication" (Matthew 5:32). In the latter case, as well as in the event of the death of one of the spouses or in other exceptional cases, the Church blesses the second and third marriages.

In the early Christian Church, there was no special wedding ceremony: the husband and wife came to the bishop and received his blessing, after which they both communed at the Liturgy of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. This connection with the Eucharist is also traced in the modern rites of the sacrament of Marriage, which begins with the liturgical exclamation “Blessed is the Kingdom” and includes many prayers from the rite of the Liturgy, the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel, and a symbolic common cup of wine.

The wedding is preceded by betrothal, during which the bride and groom must testify to the voluntary nature of their marriage and exchange rings.

The wedding itself takes place in the church, as a rule, after the Liturgy. During the sacrament, crowns are placed on those who are married, which are a symbol of the kingdom: each family is a small church. But the crown is also a symbol of martyrdom, because marriage is not only the joy of the first months after the wedding, but also the joint bearing of all subsequent sorrows and sufferings - that daily cross, the burden of which in marriage falls on two. In an age when the breakup of the family has become commonplace, and at the first difficulties and trials, the spouses are ready to betray each other and break their union, this laying on of martyrdom crowns serves as a reminder that marriage will only be lasting when it is not based on momentary and fleeting passion, but on the readiness to lay down one's life for another. And the family is a house built on a solid foundation, and not on sand, only if Christ Himself becomes its cornerstone. Suffering and the cross are also reminiscent of the troparion "Holy Martyr", which is sung during the triple circumambulation of the bride and groom around the lectern.

During the wedding, the gospel story about marriage in Cana of Galilee is read. This reading emphasizes the invisible presence of Christ in every Christian marriage and the blessing of God himself on the marriage union. In marriage, the miracle of the transfer of “water” must take place, i.e. everyday life on earth, into "wine" - an unceasing and daily holiday, a feast of the love of one person for another.

marital relationship

Is modern man in his marital relationship able to fulfill the various and numerous church prescriptions of carnal abstinence?

Why not? Two thousand years. Orthodox people try to fulfill them. And among them there are many who succeed. In fact, all carnal restrictions have been prescribed to a believing person since the Old Testament times, and they can be reduced to a verbal formula: nothing too much. That is, the Church simply calls us not to do anything against nature.

However, nowhere in the Gospel does it say about the abstinence of a husband and wife from intimacy during fasting?

The entire Gospel and the entire tradition of the Church, dating back to apostolic times, speak of earthly life as a preparation for eternity, of moderation, abstinence, and sobriety as the inner norm of Christian life. And anyone knows that nothing captures, captivates and binds a person like the sexual area of ​​his being, especially if he releases it from internal control and does not want to remain sober. And nothing is so devastating if the joy of being together with a loved one is not combined with some abstinence.

It is reasonable to appeal to the centuries-old experience of being a church family, which is much stronger than a secular family. Nothing preserves the mutual desire of husband and wife for each other so much as the need at times to refrain from marital intimacy. And nothing kills like that, does not turn it into making love (it is no coincidence that this word arose by analogy with playing sports), as the absence of restrictions.

How hard is it for a family, especially a young one, to have this kind of abstinence?

It depends on how people went to marriage. It is no coincidence that before there was not only a social and disciplinary norm, but also church wisdom that a girl and a young man abstained from intimacy before marriage. And even when they were engaged and were already connected spiritually, there was still no physical intimacy between them. Of course, the point here is not that what was definitely sinful before the wedding becomes neutral or even positive after the Sacrament. And the fact that the need for abstinence of the bride and groom before marriage, with love and mutual attraction to each other, gives them a very important experience - the ability to refrain when it is necessary in the natural course of family life, for example, during the wife’s pregnancy or in the first months after the birth of a child, when most often her aspirations are not directed to physical intimacy with her husband, but to taking care of the baby, and she is simply not physically capable of this. Those who, during the period of grooming and the pure passage of girlhood before marriage, prepared themselves for this, acquired a lot of essential things for their future married life. I know in our parish such young people who, due to various circumstances - the need to graduate from a university, obtain parental consent, acquire some kind of social status - went through a period of a year, two, even three before marriage. For example, they fell in love with each other in the first year of university: it is clear that they still cannot create a family in the full sense of the word, nevertheless, for such a long period of time they go hand in hand in purity as a bride and groom. After that, it will be easier for them to refrain from intimacy when it turns out to be necessary. And if the family path begins, as, alas, it now happens even in church families, with fornication, then periods of forced abstinence do not pass without sorrows until the husband and wife learn to love each other without bodily intimacy and without props that she gives. But it needs to be learned.

Why does the apostle Paul say that in marriage people will have “affliction according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 7:28)? But don't lonely and monastics have sorrows according to the flesh? And what specific sorrows are meant?

For monastics, especially novice ones, sorrows, mostly spiritual, accompanying their feat, are associated with despondency, with despair, with doubts about whether they have chosen the right path. For the lonely in the world, this is a bewilderment about the need to accept the will of God: why are all my peers already rolling wheelchairs, and others are already raising their grandchildren, and I am all alone and alone or alone and alone? It is not so much carnal as spiritual sorrows. A person living a lonely worldly life, from a certain age, comes to the fact that his flesh subsides, dies, if he himself does not forcibly inflame it through reading and watching something indecent. And people living in marriage do have “sorrows according to the flesh.” If they are not ready for the inevitable abstinence, then they have a very difficult time. Therefore, many modern families break up while waiting for the first baby or immediately after his birth. After all, without going through a period of pure abstinence before marriage, when it was achieved exclusively by a voluntary feat, they do not know how to love each other temperately when this has to be done against their will. Like it or not, and the wife is not up to the desire of her husband during certain periods of pregnancy and the first months of raising a baby. It was then that he begins to look to the side, and she gets angry at him. And they do not know how to painlessly pass this period, because they did not take care of this before marriage. After all, it is clear that for a young man it is a certain kind of grief, a burden - to abstain next to his beloved, young, beautiful wife, the mother of his son or daughter. And in a sense, it is more difficult than monasticism. It is not at all easy to go through several months of abstinence from physical intimacy, but it is possible, and the apostle warns about this. Not only in the 20th century, but also to other contemporaries, many of whom were from pagans, family life, especially at its very beginning, was drawn as a kind of chain of solid amenities, although this is far from being the case.

Is it necessary to try to fast in a marital relationship if one of the spouses is unchurched and not ready for abstinence?

This is a serious question. And, apparently, in order to correctly answer it, you need to think about it in the context of the wider and more significant problem of marriage, in which one of the family members is not yet a fully Orthodox person. Unlike earlier times, when all spouses during long centuries were married, since society as a whole was Christian until the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we live in completely different times, to which the words of the Apostle Paul apply more than ever, that “an unbelieving husband is sanctified by a believing wife, and an unbelieving wife is sanctified by a believing husband” ( 1 Corinthians 7:14). And it is necessary to refrain from each other only by mutual agreement, that is, in such a way that this abstinence in marital relations does not lead to an even greater split and division in the family. Here, in no case should you insist, let alone put forward any ultimatums. A believing family member must gradually lead his companion or life partner to the fact that they will someday come together and consciously to abstinence. All this is impossible without serious and responsible churching of the whole family. And when this happens, then this side of family life will fall into its natural place.

The Gospel says that “the wife has no power over her own body, but the husband; likewise, the husband has no power over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Cor. 7:4). In this regard, if during fasting one of the Orthodox and churched spouses insists on intimacy, or does not even insist, but simply gravitates towards it in every possible way, while the other would like to maintain purity to the end, but makes concessions, then should he to repent of this, as in a conscious and free sin?

This is not an easy situation, and, of course, it should be considered in relation to different states and even to different ages of people. It is true that not all newlyweds who get married before Shrovetide will be able to go through Great Lent in complete abstinence. All the more keep and all other multi-day posts. And if a young and ardent husband cannot cope with his bodily passion, then, of course, guided by the words of the Apostle Paul, it is better for the young wife to be with him than to give him the opportunity to "ignite". He or she who is more moderate, temperate, more able to cope with himself, will sometimes give up his own desire for purity in order, firstly, that the worst that occurs due to bodily passion does not enter the life of another spouse, firstly secondly, in order not to give rise to splits, divisions and thereby not to endanger family unity itself. But, however, he will remember that it is impossible to seek quick satisfaction in his own compliance, and in the depths of his soul rejoice at the inevitability of the current situation. There is such an anecdote in which, frankly, far from chastity is given advice to a woman being abused: firstly, relax and, secondly, have fun. And in this case, it’s so easy to say: “What should I do if my husband (rarely wife) is so hot?” It's one thing when a woman goes to meet someone who cannot yet bear the burden of abstinence with faith, and another thing when, spreading her arms - well, if it doesn't work out otherwise - she herself does not lag behind her husband. Yielding to him, you need to be aware of the measure of responsibility assumed.

If a husband or wife, in order to be peaceful in the rest, sometimes has to give way to a spouse who is not weak in bodily aspiration, this does not mean that you need to go into all serious trouble and completely abandon this kind of fast for yourself. You need to find the measure that you can now fit together. And, of course, the leader here should be the one who is more temperate. He must take upon himself the responsibility of wisely building bodily relationships. Young people cannot keep all the fasts, which means that they should abstain for some fairly tangible period: before confession, before communion. They cannot do the whole Great Lent, then at least the first, fourth, seventh weeks, let others impose some restrictions: on the eve of Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, so that one way or another their life would be tougher than usual. Otherwise, there will be no feeling of fasting at all. Because then what is the point of fasting in terms of food, if emotional, mental and bodily feelings are much stronger, due to what happens to a husband and wife during marital intimacy.

But, of course, there is a time and place for everything. If a husband and wife live together for ten, twenty years, go to church and nothing changes, then here a more conscious member of the family needs to persevere step by step, even to the point of demanding that even now, when they have lived to gray hair, children have been raised, soon grandchildren will appear, some measure of abstinence to bring to God. After all, we will bring to the Kingdom of Heaven that which unites us. However, it will not be carnal intimacy that will unite us there, for we know from the Gospel that “when they rise from the dead, then they will neither marry nor give in marriage, but will be like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25), otherwise that managed to grow during family life. Yes, first - with props, which is the bodily intimacy that opens people each other, making them closer, helping to forget some grievances. But over time, these props, necessary when the building of marital relations is built, must fall away without becoming scaffolding, because of which the building itself is not visible and on which everything rests, so that if they are removed, it will fall apart.

What exactly does the church canon say about when spouses should refrain from physical intimacy, and at what time not?

There are some ideal requirements of the Church Charter, which should define the specific path that each Christian family faces in order to fulfill them informally. The Charter presupposes abstinence from marital intimacy on the eve of Sunday (that is, Saturday evening), on the eve of the triumph of the twelfth feast and Lenten Wednesday and Friday (that is, Tuesday evening and Thursday evening), as well as during many days of fasting and fasting days - preparation for the reception of the Saints of Christ Mystery. This is the ideal norm. But in each specific case, the husband and wife must be guided by the words of the Apostle Paul: “Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for exercise in fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you with your intemperance. However, I said this as a permission, and not as a command” (1 Kor. 7, 5-6). This means that the family must grow to the day when the measure of abstinence taken by the spouses from bodily intimacy will in no way harm and reduce their love, and when all the fullness of family unity will be preserved even without props of physicality. And it is precisely this integrity of spiritual unity that can be continued in the Kingdom of Heaven. After all, from the earthly life of a person, that which is involved in eternity will be continued. It is clear that in the relationship of husband and wife, it is not carnal intimacy that is involved in eternity, but that which it serves as an aid to. In a secular, worldly family, as a rule, there is a catastrophic change of orientation, which cannot be allowed in a church family, when these props become the cornerstone.

The path to such an increase must be, firstly, mutual, and secondly, without jumping over steps. Of course, not every spouse, especially in the first year of their life together, can be told that they must go through the entire Nativity fast in abstinence from each other. Whoever can accommodate this in harmony and moderation will reveal a profound measure of spiritual wisdom. And on the one who is not yet ready, it would be imprudent to place burdens unbearable on the part of a more temperate and moderate spouse. But after all, family life is given to us in a temporary extension, therefore, starting with a small measure of abstinence, we must gradually increase it. Although a certain measure of abstinence from each other "for the exercise in fasting and prayer," the family must have from the very beginning. For example, every week on the eve of Sunday, a husband and wife turn away from marital intimacy, not out of fatigue or busyness, but for the sake of more and higher in communion with God and with each other. And Great Lent should, from the very beginning of marriage, except for some very special situations, strive to pass in abstinence, as the most crucial period of church life. Even in legal marriage, carnal relations at this time leave an unkind, sinful aftertaste and do not bring the joy that should be from marital intimacy, and in everything else detract from the very passage of the field of fasting. In any case, such restrictions should be in place from the first days of married life, and then they must be expanded as the family matures and grows.

Does the Church regulate the methods of sexual contact between a married husband and wife, and if so, on what basis and where exactly is this mentioned?

Probably, when answering this question, it is more reasonable to first talk about some principles and general premises, and then rely on some canonical texts. Of course, by consecrating marriage with the Sacrament of the wedding, the Church sanctifies the whole union of a man and a woman - both spiritual and bodily. And there is no hypocritical intention, dismissive of the bodily component of the marital union, in a sober church worldview. This kind of neglect, belittling precisely the physical side of marriage, reducing it to the level of what is only allowed, but which, by and large, should be shunned, is characteristic of the sectarian, schismatic or extra-church consciousness, and if it is ecclesiastical, then only painful. This needs to be very clearly defined and understood. As early as the 4th-6th centuries, the decrees of church councils said that one of the spouses who avoids bodily intimacy with the other because of the abhorrence of marriage is subject to excommunication from Communion, but if this is not a layman, but a cleric, then deposition from the dignity. That is, the disdain of the fullness of marriage, even in the canons of the church, is unequivocally defined as improper. In addition, the same canons say that if someone refuses to recognize the validity of the Sacraments performed by a married clergyman, then such a person is also subject to the same punishments and, accordingly, excommunication from receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ, if he is a layman, or deprivation of dignity, if he is a cleric. . This is how high the church consciousness, embodied in the canons included in the canonical code, according to which believers must live, places the bodily side of Christian marriage.

On the other hand, the church consecration of the marital union is not a sanction for indecency. As the blessing of a meal and prayer before a meal is not a sanction for gluttony, for overeating, and even more so for drunkenness with wine, the blessing of marriage is in no way a sanction for permissiveness and a feast of the body - they say, do whatever you want, in whatever quantities and at any time. Of course, a sober church consciousness, based on Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, is always characterized by the understanding that in the life of the family - as in general in human life - there is a hierarchy: the spiritual should dominate the bodily, the soul should be higher than the body. And when the bodily begins to occupy the first place in the family, and only those small centers or areas that remain from the carnal are assigned to the spiritual or even the spiritual, this leads to disharmony, to spiritual defeats and great life crises. In relation to this message, there is no need to cite special texts, because, opening the Epistle of the Apostle Paul or the works of St. John Chrysostom, St. Leo the Great, St. Blessed Augustine - any of the Fathers of the Church, we will find any number of confirmations of this thought. It is clear that it was not canonically fixed in itself.

Of course, the totality of all bodily restrictions for a modern person may seem rather difficult, but in church canons we are indicated the measure of abstinence that a Christian must come to. And if in our life there is a discrepancy to this norm - as well as to other canonical requirements of the Church, we, at least, should not consider ourselves dead and prosperous. And not to be sure that if we abstain during Great Lent, then everything is fine with us and everything else can be ignored. And that if marital abstinence takes place during fasting and on the eve of Sunday, then one can forget about the eve of fasting days, which would also be good to come as a result. But this path is individual, which, of course, must be determined by the consent of the spouses and by reasonable advice from the confessor. However, the fact that this path leads to temperance and moderation is defined in the Church's consciousness as an unconditional norm in relation to the arrangement of married life.

As for the intimate side of marital relations, here, although it does not make sense to discuss everything publicly on the pages of the book, it is important not to forget that for a Christian those forms of marital intimacy are acceptable that do not contradict its main goal, namely, childbearing. That is, this kind of union of a man and a woman, which has nothing to do with the sins for which Sodom and Gomorrah were punished: when bodily intimacy is performed in that perverted form, in which childbirth can never and never occur. This was also mentioned in a fairly large number of texts that we call “rulers” or “canons”, that is, the inadmissibility of this kind of perverted forms of marital communication was recorded in the Rules of the Holy Fathers and partly in church canons in the later era of the Middle Ages, after Ecumenical Councils.

But I repeat, since this is very important, the carnal relations of a husband and wife are not sinful in themselves and are not considered as such by the church consciousness. For the Sacrament of the wedding is not a sanction for sin or some kind of impunity in relation to it. In the Sacrament, that which is sinful cannot be sanctified; on the contrary, that which is good and natural in itself is elevated to a perfect and, as it were, supernatural degree.

Having postulated this position, we can draw the following analogy: a person who has worked a lot must have done his work - no matter whether physical or intellectual: a reaper, a blacksmith or a soul catcher - having come home, of course, has the right to expect from loving wife a delicious lunch, and if the day is not modest, then it can be a rich meat soup, and a chop with a side dish. There will be no sin in the fact that after the labors of the righteous, if you are very hungry, ask for supplements and drink a glass of good wine. This is a warm family meal, looking at which the Lord will rejoice and which the Church will bless. But how different it is from the family relationship where husband and wife choose instead to go somewhere social, where one delicacy follows another, where the fish is made to taste like a bird, and the bird tastes like an avocado, and so that it does not even remind you of its natural properties, where guests, already fed up with various dishes, begin to roll the grains of caviar across the sky to get additional gourmet pleasure, and from the dishes offered by the mountains they choose when an oyster, when a frog leg, in order to somehow tickle their dulled taste buds with other sensory sensations, and then - as it has been practiced since ancient times (which is very characteristically described in the feast of Trimalchio in Petronius' Satyricon) - having habitually caused a gag reflex, free the stomach in order not to spoil one's figure and be able to indulge in dessert too. This kind of self-indulgence in food is gluttony and a sin in many respects, including in relation to one's own nature.

This analogy can be extended to marital relations. What is a natural continuation of life is good, and there is nothing bad or impure in it. And what leads to the search for more and more pleasures, one more, another, third, tenth point in order to squeeze out some additional sensory reactions from your body - this, of course, is improper and sinful and that cannot be included in the life of an Orthodox family.

What is acceptable in sexual life and what is not, and how is this criterion of admissibility established? Why is oral sex considered vicious and unnatural, since highly developed mammals with complex social lives have this kind of sexual relationship in the nature of things?

By itself, the formulation of the question implies the clogging of modern consciousness with such information, which it would be better not to know. In the former, in this sense, more prosperous times, children during the period of mating animals were not allowed into the barnyard so that they would not develop abnormal interests. And if you imagine a situation, not even a hundred years, but fifty years ago, could we find at least one in a thousand people who would be aware that monkeys are engaged in oral sex? Moreover, would you be able to ask about it in some acceptable verbal form? I think that drawing knowledge from the life of mammals about this particular component of their existence is at least one-sided. In this case, the natural norm for our existence would be to consider both polygamy, characteristic of higher mammals, and the change of regular sexual partners, and if we bring the logical series to the final, then the expulsion of the fertilizing male, when he can be replaced by a younger and physically stronger . So those who want to borrow the forms of organization of human life from higher mammals must be ready to borrow them to the end, and not selectively. After all, reducing us to the level of a herd of monkeys, even the most highly developed, implies that the stronger will displace the weaker, including in sexual terms. Unlike those who are ready to consider the final measure of human existence as one with that which is natural for higher mammals, Christians, without denying the co-nature of man with another created world, do not reduce him to the level of a highly organized animal, but think as a higher being.

in the rules, recommendations of the Church and church teachers there are TWO specific and CATEGORICAL prohibitions - on 1) anal and 2) oral sex. The reasons can probably be found in the literature. But personally I did not look. What for? If you can't, then you can't. As for the variety of poses... There seem to be no specific prohibitions (with the exception of one not very clearly stated place in the Nomocanon regarding the “woman on top” pose, which, precisely because of the vagueness of the presentation, may not be classified as categorical). But in general, Orthodox people are even recommended to eat food with the fear of God, thanking God. One must think that any excesses - both in food and in marital relations - cannot be welcomed. Well, a possible dispute on the topic “what to call excesses” is a question for which no rules have been written, but there is a conscience in this case. Think for yourself without slyness, compare: why are gluttony considered a sin - gluttony (immoderate consumption of excessive food that is not necessary to saturate the body) and guttural insanity (passion for delicious dishes and dishes)? (this is the answer from here)

It is not customary to speak openly about certain functions of the reproductive organs, unlike other physiological functions of the human body, such as food, sleep, and so on. This area of ​​life is especially vulnerable, many mental disorders associated with her. Is this due to original sin after the fall? If yes, then why, because original sin was not prodigal, but was a sin of disobedience to the Creator?

Yes, of course, original sin mainly consisted in disobedience and violation of God's commandment, as well as in impenitence and impenitence. And this totality of disobedience and impenitence led to the falling away of the first people from God, the impossibility of their further stay in paradise and all those consequences of the fall that entered human nature and which in the Holy Scripture are symbolically referred to as putting on “leather robes” (Gen. 3, 21 ). The Holy Fathers interpret this as the acquisition by human nature of stoutness, that is, bodily flesh, the loss of many of the original properties that were given to man. Sickness, fatigue, and many other things entered not only into our spiritual, but also into our bodily composition in connection with the fall. In this sense, the physical organs of a person, including organs associated with childbearing, have become open to diseases. But the principle of modesty, the concealment of the chaste, namely the chaste, and not the hypocritically puritanical silence about the sexual sphere, first of all comes from the deep reverence of the Church for man as before the image and likeness of God. Just like not showing off what is most vulnerable and what most deeply binds two people, which makes them one flesh in the Sacrament of marriage, and gives rise to another, immeasurably sublime connection and therefore is the object of constant enmity, intrigues, distortion on the part of the evil one. . The enemy of the human race, in particular, fights against that which, being pure and beautiful in itself, is so significant and so important for the inner correct being of a person. Understanding all the responsibility and gravity of this struggle that a person is waging, the Church helps him through keeping modesty, silence about what should not be spoken about publicly and what is so easy to distort and so difficult to return, because it is infinitely difficult to turn acquired shamelessness into chastity. Lost chastity and other knowledge about oneself, with all the desire, cannot be turned into ignorance. Therefore, the Church, through the secrecy of this kind of knowledge and the inviolability of it to the soul of a person, seeks to make him uninvolved in the multitude of crafty contrived perversions and distortions of what is so majestic and well-organized by our Savior in nature. Let us listen to this wisdom of the two-thousand-year existence of the Church. And no matter what culturologists, sexologists, gynecologists, all kinds of pathologists and other Freudians tell us, their name is legion, let us remember that they tell lies about a person, not seeing in him the image and likeness of God.

In this case, what is the difference between a chaste silence and a sanctimonious one? Chaste silence presupposes inner dispassion, inner peace and overcoming, what St. John of Damascus spoke of in relation to the Mother of God, that She had a pure virginity, that is, virginity both in body and soul. The sanctimonious-puritan silence presupposes the concealment of what a person himself has not overcome, what boils in him and what he even if he struggles with, is not an ascetic victory over himself with the help of God, but hostility towards others, which is so easily spread to other people, and some of their manifestations. While the victory of his own heart over the attraction to what he is struggling with has not yet been achieved.

But how to explain that in Holy Scripture, as in other church texts, when the Nativity, virginity is sung, then the reproductive organs are directly called by their proper names: the loins, the bed, the gates of virginity, and this in no way contradicts modesty and chastity? And in ordinary life, say someone like that aloud, that in Old Slavonic, that in Russian, it would be perceived as indecent, as a violation of the generally accepted norm.

This just says that in the Holy Scriptures, in which these words are in abundance, they are not associated with sin. They are not associated with anything vulgar, carnal, exciting, unworthy of a Christian, precisely because in church texts everything is chaste, and it cannot be otherwise. For the pure, everything is pure, the Word of God tells us, but for the impure, the pure will be impure.

Today it is very difficult to find a context in which this kind of vocabulary and metaphor could be placed and not harm the soul of the reader. It is known that the largest number of metaphors of physicality and human love in the biblical book of the Song of Songs. But today, the worldly mind has ceased to understand - and this did not even happen in the 21st century - the story of the love of the Bride for the Bridegroom, that is, the Church for Christ. In various works of art since the 18th century, we find the carnal aspiration of a girl for a boy, but in essence this is a reduction of Holy Scripture to the level, at best, just a beautiful love story. Although not in the most ancient times, but in the 17th century in the city of Tutaev near Yaroslavl, a whole chapel of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ was painted with the plots of the Song of Songs. (These frescoes are still preserved.) And this is not the only example. In other words, back in the 17th century, the clean was clean for the clean, and this is another evidence of how deeply man has fallen today.

They say: free love in a free world. Why is this word used in relation to those relationships that, in the church's understanding, are interpreted as fornication?

Because the very meaning of the word “freedom” is perverted and it has long been invested in a non-Christian understanding that was once accessible to such a significant part of the human race, that is, freedom from sin, freedom as unbound by the low and base, freedom as the openness of the human soul for eternity and for Heaven. , and not at all as its determinism by its instincts or the external social environment. Such an understanding of freedom has been lost, and today freedom is primarily understood as self-will, the ability to create, as they say, "what I want, I turn back." However, behind this is nothing more than a return to the realm of slavery, subjugation to your instincts under the miserable slogan: seize the moment, enjoy life while you are young, pluck all the permitted and illicit fruits! And it is clear that if love in human relations is the greatest gift of God, then to pervert love, to introduce catastrophic distortions into it, is the main task of that original slanderer and parodist-perverter, whose name is known to each of those who read these lines.

Why are the so-called bed relations of married spouses no longer sinful, and the same relationship before marriage is referred to as “sinful fornication”?

There are things that are sinful by nature, and there are things that become sinful as a result of breaking the commandments. Suppose it is sinful to kill, rob, steal, slander - and therefore it is forbidden by the commandments. But by its very nature, eating food is not sinful. It is sinful to enjoy it excessively, therefore there is fasting, certain restrictions on food. The same applies to physical intimacy. Being legally consecrated by marriage and put in its proper course, it is not sinful, but since it is forbidden in a different form, if this prohibition is violated, it inevitably turns into "fornication."

From Orthodox literature it follows that the bodily side dulls the spiritual abilities of a person. Why, then, do we have not only a black monastic clergy, but also a white one, obliging the priest to be in a marriage union?

This is a question that has long troubled the Universal Church. Already in the ancient Church, in the II-III centuries, an opinion arose that the more correct path was the path of a celibate life for all the clergy. This opinion prevailed very early in the western part of the Church, and at the Council of Elvira at the beginning of the 4th century it was voiced in one of its rules, and then under Pope Gregory VII Hildebrand (XI century) it became predominant after the falling away of the Catholic Church from the Church Ecumenical. Then obligatory celibacy was introduced, that is, obligatory celibacy of the clergy. Eastern Orthodox Church went the way, firstly, more in line with Holy Scripture, and secondly, more chaste: not referring to family relationships, only as a palliative from fornication, a way not to inflame beyond measure, but guided by the words of the Apostle Paul and considering marriage as the union of a man and women in the image of the union of Christ and the Church, she initially allowed the marriage of both deacons, and presbyters, and bishops. Subsequently, starting from the 5th century, and in the 6th century already completely, the Church forbade marriage to bishops, but not because of the fundamental inadmissibility of the marriage state for them, but because the bishop was not bound by family interests, family cares, concerns about his own and his own. so that his life, connected with the whole diocese, with the whole Church, would be completely devoted to it. Nevertheless, the Church recognized the state of marriage as permissible for all other clerics, and the decrees of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, the Gandrian 4th century and the 6th century Trull, directly state that a clergyman who avoids marriage due to abhorrence should be prohibited from serving. So, the Church looks at the marriage of clerics as a marriage of chastity and abstinence and the most consistent with the principle of monogamy, that is, a priest can be married only once and must remain chaste and faithful to his wife in the event of widowhood. What the Church treats with condescension in relation to the marriage relations of the laity should be fully realized in the families of priests: the same commandment about childbearing, about accepting all the children whom the Lord sends, the same principle of abstinence, predominantly avoiding each other for prayer and post.

In Orthodoxy, there is a danger in the very estate of the clergy - in the fact that, as a rule, the children of priests become clergymen. There is a danger in Catholicism, since the clergy are always being recruited from the outside. However, there is an upside to the fact that anyone can become a cleric, because there is a constant influx from all walks of life. Here, in Russia, as in Byzantium, for many centuries the clergy were actually a certain class. There were, of course, cases of taxable peasants entering the priesthood, that is, from the bottom up, or vice versa - representatives of the highest circles of society, but then for the most part into monasticism. However, in principle, it was a family business, and there were flaws and dangers here. The main falsehood of the Western approach to the celibacy of the priesthood lies in the very abhorrence of marriage as a state that is condoned for the laity, but intolerable for the clergy. This is the main lie, and the social order is a matter of tactics, and it can be assessed in different ways.

In the Lives of the Saints, a marriage in which husband and wife live like brother and sister, for example, like John of Kronstadt with his wife, is called pure. So - in other cases, the marriage is dirty?

Quite a casuistic question. After all, we also call the Most Holy Theotokos the Most Pure, although in the proper sense only the Lord is pure from original sin. The Mother of God is the Most Pure and Immaculate in comparison with all other people. We also speak of a pure marriage in relation to the marriage of Joachim and Anna or Zechariah and Elizabeth. Conception Holy Mother of God, the conception of John the Baptist is also sometimes called immaculate or pure, and not in the sense that they were strangers to original sin, but in the fact that, compared to how this usually happens, they were abstinent and not filled with excessive carnal aspirations . In the same sense, purity is spoken of as a greater measure of chastity of those special callings that were in the lives of some saints, an example of which is the marriage of the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt.

When we talk about the immaculate conception of the Son of God, does this mean that it is vicious in ordinary people?

Yes, one of the provisions of the Orthodox Tradition is that the seedless, that is, immaculate, conception of our Lord Jesus Christ happened precisely so that the incarnated Son of God would not be involved in any sin, for the moment of passion and thereby distortion of love for one's neighbor is inextricably linked with the consequences of the fall, including in the ancestral region.

How should spouses communicate during the wife's pregnancy?

Any abstinence is then positive, then it will be a good fruit, when it is not perceived only as a denial of anything, but has an internal good content. If spouses during the wife’s pregnancy, having abandoned bodily intimacy, begin to talk less with each other, and watch TV more or swear in order to give some outlet to negative emotions, then this is one situation. It is different if they try to pass this time as intelligently as possible, deepening spiritual and prayerful communion with each other. After all, it is so natural when a woman is expecting a baby, to pray more to herself in order to get rid of all those fears that accompany pregnancy, and to her husband in order to support her wife. In addition, you need to talk more, listen more attentively to the other, look for different forms of communication, and not only spiritual, but also spiritual and intellectual, which would dispose the spouses to be together as much as possible. Finally, those forms of tenderness and affection with which they limited the closeness of their communication when they were still bride and groom, and during this period of married life, should not lead to an aggravation of their carnal and bodily relations.

It is known that in case of some illnesses, fasting in food is either completely canceled or limited, are there such situations in life or such illnesses when the abstinence of spouses from intimacy is not blessed?

There are. Only it is not necessary to interpret this concept very broadly. Now many priests hear from their parishioners who say that doctors recommend men with prostatitis to “make love” every day. Prostatitis is not the newest disease, but only in our time a seventy-five-year-old man is prescribed to constantly exercise in this area. And this is in such years when life, worldly and spiritual wisdom should be achieved. Just as other gynecologists, even with a far from catastrophic illness, women will definitely say that it is better to have an abortion than to bear a child, so other sex therapists advise, in spite of everything, to continue intimate relationships, even if they are not marital, that is, morally unacceptable for a Christian , but, according to experts, necessary to maintain bodily health. However, this does not mean that such doctors should be obeyed every time. In general, one should not rely too much on the advice of only doctors, especially in matters related to the sexual sphere, since, unfortunately, very often sexologists are frank carriers of non-Christian worldviews.

The advice of a doctor should be combined with advice from a confessor, as well as with a sober assessment of one's own bodily health, and most importantly, with an internal self-assessment - what a person is ready for and what he is called to. Perhaps it is worth considering whether this or that bodily ailment is allowed to him for reasons that are beneficial for a person. And then make a decision regarding abstaining from marital relations during fasting.

Are affection and tenderness possible during fasting and abstinence?

Possible, but not those that would lead to a bodily uprising of the flesh, to kindling a fire, after which the fire must be poured with water or cold shower accept.

Some say that the Orthodox pretend that there is no sex!

I think that such an idea of ​​an external person about the view of the Orthodox Church on family relations is mainly due to his unfamiliarity with the real church worldview in this area, as well as a one-sided reading, not so much of ascetic texts, in which this is almost not mentioned at all, but of texts either modern near-church publicists, or unglorified ascetics of piety, or, what happens even more often, modern bearers of secular tolerant-liberal consciousness, distorting the church's interpretation of this issue in the media.

Now let's think about what real meaning can be attached to this phrase: the Church pretends that there is no sex. What can be understood by this? That the Church puts the intimate area of ​​life in its proper place? That is, it does not make of it that cult of pleasures, that only fulfillment of being, which can be read about in many magazines in shiny covers. So it turns out that a person's life continues insofar as he is a sexual partner, sexually attractive to people of the opposite, and now often the same sex. And as long as he is such and can be claimed by someone, it makes sense to live. And everything revolves around it: work to earn money for a beautiful sexual partner, clothes to attract him, a car, furniture, accessories to furnish an intimate relationship with the necessary surroundings, etc. etc. Yes, in this sense, Christianity clearly states that sexual life is not the only content of human existence, and puts it in an adequate place - as one of the important, but not the only and not the central component of human existence. And then the rejection of sexual relations - both voluntary, for the sake of God and piety, and forced, in illness or old age - is not regarded as a terrible catastrophe, when, in the opinion of many suffering, one can only live out one's life, drinking whiskey and cognac and looking on TV, something that you yourself can no longer realize in any form, but which still causes some kind of impulses in your decrepit body. Fortunately, the Church does not have such a view of the family life of a person.

On the other hand, the essence question asked may be related to the fact that there are certain kinds of restrictions that are supposed to be expected from people of faith. But in fact, these restrictions lead to the fullness and depth of the marriage union, including the fullness, depth and happiness in intimate life, which people who change their companions from today to tomorrow, from one night party to another, do not know. And that holistic fullness of giving oneself to each other, which a loving and faithful married couple knows, will never be known by collectors of sexual victories, no matter how they swagger on the pages of magazines about cosmopolitan girls and men with pumped up biceps.

It cannot be said that the Church does not love them... Its position must be formulated in completely different terms. Firstly, always separating sin from the person who commits it, and not accepting sin - and same-sex relationships, homosexuality, sodomy, lesbianism are sinful in their very essence, which is clearly and unequivocally mentioned in the Old Testament - the Church refers to a person who sins with pity, for every sinner leads himself away from the path of salvation until such time as he begins to repent of his own sin, that is, to move away from it. But what we do not accept and, of course, with all the measure of rigidity and, if you like, intolerance, what we rebel against is that those who are the so-called minorities begin to impose (and at the same time very aggressively) their attitude to life, to the surrounding reality, to the normal majority. True, there is a certain kind of area of ​​human existence where, for some reason, minorities accumulate to the majority. And therefore, in the media, in a number of sections of contemporary art, on television, we now and then see, read, hear about those who show us certain standards of modern "successful" existence. This is the kind of presentation of the sin of the poor perverts, unfortunately overwhelmed by it, sin as a norm, which you need to be equal to and which, if you yourself fail, then at least you need to consider it as the most progressive and advanced, this kind of worldview, definitely unacceptable for us.

Is the participation of a married man in the artificial insemination of an outside woman a sin? And does this amount to adultery?

The resolution of the jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000 speaks of the unacceptability of in vitro fertilization when it is not about the married couple itself, not about the husband and wife, who are barren due to certain ailments, but for whom this kind of fertilization can be a way out. Although there are limitations here too: the ruling only deals with cases where none of the fertilized embryos are discarded as secondary material, which is still largely impossible. And therefore, it practically turns out to be unacceptable, since the Church recognizes the full value of human life from the very moment of conception - no matter how and when it happens. That's when this kind of technology becomes a reality (today they apparently exist somewhere only at the most advanced level of medical care), then it will no longer be absolutely unacceptable for believers to resort to them.

As for the participation of a husband in the fertilization of a stranger, or a wife in bearing a child for some third person, even without the physical participation of this person in the fertilization, of course, this is a sin in relation to the entire unity of the Sacrament of the marriage union, the result of which is the joint birth of children, for the Church blesses a chaste, that is, an integral union, in which there is no flaw, there is no fragmentation. And what more can break this marriage union than the fact that one of the spouses has a continuation of him as a person, as the image and likeness of God outside this family unity?

If we talk about in vitro fertilization by an unmarried man, then in this case, the norm of Christian life, again, is the very essence of intimacy in a marital union. No one has canceled the norm of church consciousness that a man and a woman, a girl and a young man, should strive to preserve their bodily purity before marriage. And in this sense, it is even impossible to think that an Orthodox, and therefore chaste, young man would give up his seed in order to impregnate some strange woman.

And if newlyweds who have just married find out that one of the spouses cannot live a full sexual life?

If an incapacity for marital cohabitation is discovered immediately after marriage, moreover, this is a kind of inability that can hardly be overcome, then according to church canons it is the basis for divorce.

In the case of impotence of one of the spouses, which began from an incurable disease, how should they behave with each other?

You need to remember that over the years something has connected you, and this is so much higher and more significant than the small ailment that you have now, which, of course, should in no way be a reason to allow yourself some things. Secular people allow such thoughts: well, we will continue to live together, because we have social obligations, and if he (or she) can’t do anything, but I still can, then I have the right to find satisfaction on the side. It is clear that such logic is absolutely unacceptable in a church marriage, and it must be cut off a priori. This means that it is necessary to look for opportunities and ways of filling one's married life in a different way, which does not exclude affection, tenderness, and other manifestations of affection for each other, but without direct marital communication.

Is it possible for a husband and wife to turn to psychologists or sexologists if something is not going well with them?

As for psychologists, it seems to me that a more general rule applies here, namely: there are such situations in life when the union of a priest and a churchly doctor is very appropriate, that is, when the nature of mental illness gravitates in both directions - and in the direction of spiritual illness, and towards medical. And in this case, the priest and the doctor (but only a Christian doctor) can provide effective assistance to both the whole family and its individual member. In cases of some psychological conflicts, it seems to me that the Christian family needs to look for ways to resolve them in themselves through the awareness of their responsibility for the ongoing disorder, through the acceptance of the Church Sacraments, in some cases, perhaps through the support or advice of the priest, of course, if there is a determination on both sides, both husband and wife, in case of disagreement on this or that issue, rely on the priestly blessing. If there is this kind of unanimity, it helps a lot. But running to the doctor for a solution to what is a consequence of the sinful fractures of our soul is hardly fruitful. Here the doctor will not help. As for assistance in the intimate, sexual area by the relevant specialists who work in this field, it seems to me that in cases of either some physical handicaps or some psychosomatic conditions that prevent the full life of the spouses and need medical regulation, it is necessary just see a doctor. But, by the way, of course, when today they talk about sexologists and their recommendations, most often it is about how a person can get as much pleasure for himself with the help of the body of a husband or wife, lover or mistress and how to adjust his bodily composition so that the measure of carnal pleasure becomes larger and larger and lasts longer and longer. It is clear that a Christian who knows that moderation in everything - especially in pleasures - is an important measure of our life, will not go to any doctor with such questions.

But it is very difficult to find an Orthodox psychiatrist, especially a sex therapist. And besides, even if you find such a doctor, maybe he only calls himself Orthodox.

Of course, this should not be a single self-name, but also some reliable external evidence. It would be inappropriate to list specific names and organizations here, but I think that whenever it comes to health, mental and bodily, you need to remember the gospel word that “the testimony of two people is true” (John 8, 17), that is, we need two or three independent testimonies confirming both the medical qualifications and the ideological closeness to Orthodoxy of the doctor we are addressing.

What methods of contraception does the Orthodox Church prefer?

None. There are no such contraceptives on which there would be a seal - “by permission of the Synodal Department for Social Work and Charity” (it is he who is engaged in the medical service). There is no and cannot be such contraceptives! Another thing is that the Church (suffice it to recall its latest document "Fundamentals of the Social Concept") soberly distinguishes between methods of contraception that are absolutely unacceptable and allowed out of weakness. Absolutely unacceptable are abortive contraceptives, not only the abortion itself, but also that which provokes the expulsion of a fertilized egg, no matter how quickly it happens, even immediately after the conception itself. Everything that is connected with this kind of action is unacceptable for the life of an Orthodox family. (I will not dictate lists of such means: whoever does not know is better not to know, and who knows, he understood without that.) As for other, say, mechanical methods of contraception, then, I repeat, I do not approve and in no way considering contraception as the norm of church life, the Church distinguishes them from those absolutely unacceptable for those spouses who, due to weakness, cannot bear total abstinence during those periods of family life when, for medical, social, or some other reasons, childbearing is impossible. When, for example, a woman, after a serious illness or due to the nature of some kind of treatment, it is during this period that pregnancy is highly undesirable. Or for a family in which there are already quite a lot of children, today, according to purely everyday conditions, it is unacceptable to have another child. Another thing is that before God, refraining from childbearing every time should be extremely responsible and honest. It is very easy here, instead of considering this interval in the birth of children as a forced period, to descend to pleasing ourselves, when sly thoughts whisper: “Well, why do we need this at all? Again, the career will be interrupted, although such prospects are outlined in it, and then again a return to diapers, to lack of sleep, to seclusion in our own apartment "or:" Only we have achieved some kind of relative social well-being, we began to live better, and with the birth of a child we will have to give up a planned trip to the sea, a new car, some other things.” And as soon as this kind of crafty arguments begin to enter our lives, it means that we need to immediately stop them and give birth to the next child. And one must always remember that the Church calls on Orthodox Christians who are married not to consciously refrain from having children, neither because of distrust of God's Providence, nor because of selfishness and desire for an easy life.

If the husband demands an abortion, up to a divorce?

So, you need to part with such a person and give birth to a child, no matter how difficult it may be. And this is exactly the case when obedience to her husband cannot be a priority.

If a believing wife, for some reason, wants to have an abortion?

Put all your strength, all your understanding into preventing this, all your love, all your arguments: from resorting to church authorities, the advice of a priest to simply material, practical, whatever arguments. That is, from a stick to a carrot - everything, just not to. allow murder. Definitely, abortion is murder. And murder must be resisted to the last, regardless of the methods and ways in which this is achieved.

Is the attitude of the Church towards a woman who, during the years of godless Soviet power, had an abortion, unaware of what she was doing, the same as towards a woman who is now doing and already knows what she is getting into? Or is it still different?

Yes, of course, because according to the Gospel parable known to all of us about the slaves and the steward, there was a different punishment - for those slaves who acted against the will of the master, not knowing this will, and those who knew everything or knew enough and nevertheless did . In the Gospel of John, the Lord speaks of the Jews: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22). So here is one measure of the guilt of those who did not understand, or even if they heard something, but inwardly, did not know in their hearts what a lie was in this, and another measure of guilt and responsibility of those who already know that this is murder ( it is difficult today to find a person who does not know that this is so), and, perhaps, they even recognize themselves as believers, if they later come to confession, and nevertheless they go for it. Of course, not before church discipline, but before one's soul, before eternity, before God - here is a different measure of responsibility, and, therefore, a different measure of the pastoral-pedagogical attitude towards such a sinner. Therefore, both the priest and the entire Church will look differently at a woman brought up by a pioneer, a Komsomol member, if she heard the word “repentance”, then only in relation to stories about some dark and ignorant grandmothers who curse the world, if she heard about Gospel, then only from the course of scientific atheism, and whose head was stuffed with the code of the builders of communism and other things, and to that woman who is in the current situation, when the voice of the Church, directly and unequivocally testifying to the truth of Christ, is heard by everyone.

In other words, the point here is not a change in the attitude of the Church towards sin, not some kind of relativism, but the fact that people themselves are in varying degrees of responsibility in relation to sin.

Why do some pastors believe that marital relations are sinful if they do not lead to childbearing, and recommend abstaining from physical intimacy in cases where one spouse is non-church and does not want to have children? How does this compare with the words of the Apostle Paul: “do not deviate from one another” (1 Cor. 7:5) and with the words in the rite of marriage “marriage is honorable and the bed is not filthy”?

It is not easy to be in a situation where, say, an unchurched husband does not want to have children, but if he cheats on his wife, then it is her duty to avoid bodily cohabitation with him, which only indulges his sin. Perhaps this is exactly the case that the clergy warn about. And each such case, which does not involve childbearing, must be considered very specifically. However, this does not in any way abolish the words of the wedding rite “marriage is honest and the bed is not bad”, just this honesty of marriage and this badness of the bed must be observed with all restrictions, warnings and admonitions, if they begin to sin against them and retreat from them.

Yes, the apostle Paul says that “if they cannot abstain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to be inflamed” (1 Cor. 7:9). But he saw in marriage undoubtedly more than just a way to direct his sexual desire in a legitimate direction. Of course, it’s good for a young man to be with his wife instead of fruitlessly inflaming up to thirty years and earning himself some kind of complexes and perverse habits, therefore, in the old days, they got married quite early. But, of course, not everything about marriage is said in these words.

If a 40-45-year-old husband and wife who already have children decide not to give birth to new ones, does this mean that they should give up intimacy with each other?

Starting from a certain age, many spouses, even those who are churched, according to the modern view of family life, decide that they will not have any more children, and now they will experience everything that they did not have time when they raised children in their younger years. The Church has never supported or blessed such an attitude towards childbearing. Just like the decision of a large part of the newlyweds to first live for their own pleasure, and then have children. Both are a distortion of God's plan for the family. Spouses, for whom it is high time to prepare their relationship for eternity, if only because they are closer to it now than, say, thirty years ago, again immerse them in corporeality and reduce them to what obviously cannot have continuation in the Kingdom of God . It will be the duty of the Church to warn: there is danger here, if not a red, then a yellow traffic light is on here. Upon reaching mature years, to put in the center of your relations that which is auxiliary, of course, means to distort them, perhaps even destroy them. And in the specific texts of certain pastors, not always with the measure of tact as one would like, but in fact quite correctly, this is said.

In general, it is always better to be more temperate than less. It is always better to strictly fulfill the commandments of God and the Charter of the Church than to interpret them condescendingly towards oneself. Interpret them condescendingly towards others, and try to apply them to yourself with full measure of severity.

Are carnal relationships considered sinful if the husband and wife have come to an age when childbearing becomes absolutely impossible?

No, the Church does not consider those marital relations when childbearing is no longer possible as sinful. But he calls on a person who has reached maturity and either retained, perhaps even without his own desire, chastity, or, on the contrary, who had negative, sinful experiences in his life and who wants to marry at sunset, it is better not to do this, because then he it will be much easier to cope with the urges of your own flesh, without striving for what is no longer appropriate simply by virtue of age.

To abstain or not, spouses must decide for themselves

On March 14, Great Lent began. The time when every Orthodox refuses temptations in order to fully devote himself to the spiritual principle. Limits himself in food, alcohol, entertainment. Everything is clear with lean and modest food, but what about marital duties? How strict is the ban?

That is why fasting was given in order to abstain from all pleasures for spiritual purification, - explains the priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Alexey Fedyanin. - It is necessary to refrain from fasting in everything: in food, and from intimacy, and from idle pastime. But it all depends on the mutual understanding of the spouses: if scandals in the family start from abstinence during fasting, nothing good will come of it.

Confirms that abstinence is a recommendation, but still not a strict prohibition, priest Andrew on the Orthodox portal "Great Lent". Here is his answer to the question “What if a man demands intimacy because he does not fast himself?”:

Regarding marital abstinence apostle paul wrote: “Husband show his wife due favor; like a wife to her husband. The wife has no power over her body, but the husband; likewise, the husband has no power over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for exercise in fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you with your intemperance” (1 Cor, ch. 7).

It is impossible to accept conjugal duty in fasting as a kind of "peculiar feat", as is sometimes advised, because marital communication is not sinful in itself, but, on the contrary, is blessed by God. It should be fun, not forced.

In addition, the spouses themselves can and should answer such a question, guided by the words of the Apostle Paul, and not a third person, whether it be an acquaintance, a priest or anyone else.

without sin

Sex outside of marriage is sinful; all major world religions agree on this. And at any time, regardless of the post. That is, sexual intercourse is not considered a dirty affair, only if it occurs between spouses. That is among the parishioners who did not make any vows. What about the priests? Can they THIS? Yes, but not all.

Orthodoxy: black and white

Orthodox clergy are of two types: white and black. Representatives of the white - deacons and priests - can marry and produce children. They enter into marriage as very young seminarians, because they must do this before taking holy orders. By the way, a single priest will not receive a parish. He will have more reasons for abstinence than a parishioner. For example, a priest should not allow marital intimacy on the eve of the Liturgy. If the wife dies or they get divorced (which, under some circumstances, is possible), he cannot remarry.

Black clergy - monks - should forget about carnal pleasures. However, the highest ranks in the church hierarchy go only to them.

Millions of women around the world wept over the saga "The Thorn Birds", which describes the miserable life of Maggie Cleary, who managed to fall in love with the Catholic priest Ralph de Bricassard (actors Rachel WORDE and Richard CHAMBERLAIN)

Catholicism: no, that's all!

In the Roman Catholic Church, without exception, all priests take a vow of celibacy before taking the priesthood and observe celibacy all their lives - that is, they refrain from carnal relations. Recent times more and more often there are proposals to lift the strict ban: especially when there are sex scandals involving Catholic priests. Greek Catholics have married priests and monks who have renounced carnal pleasures.

Judaism: obliged to marry

A rabbi not only can, but must marry. The Torah says that it is bad for a person to be alone, and a married person can fulfill the important commandment “Be fruitful and multiply!”. Any Jewish woman is suitable for the role of a spouse, and if anything, the marriage is dissolved according to the same laws that apply to everyone. There are restrictions on intimate life: several certain days a month, even legal spouses cannot touch each other.

Islam: just like everyone else

In this religion, no distinction is made between an ordinary Muslim and an imam (mullah). Therefore, a clergyman can also have up to four wives, if he is able to provide for each of them equally. Islam states that sexual satisfaction cannot be separated from love, mutual respect, emotional attachment, otherwise human behavior will not differ from the behavior of cattle. The Prophet warned spouses not to jump into bed like birds without proper foreplay, which involves an expression of love and tenderness. During fasting, Muslims are forbidden to have sex during the daytime, but at night - please.

Buddhism: lama is not a monk

Buddhist monks must take a vow of celibacy. But there are lama gurus, teachers who are not required to be monks. Therefore, occasionally, but there are married lamas.

Buddhist monks have no time for women - you need to improve martial arts

Two in one flesh: Love, sex and religion Bozhenov Alexander Vyacheslavovich

Fasting and marital relations

Fasting and marital relations

We have already said that the Church has never dealt with this purely intimate issue in canon law, leaving it to the decision of the spouses. No canonical or canonically authoritative canon equates marital fasting with bodily fasting and does not speak of sin in the case of marital relations during fasting. The only exception is marital fasting before communion (5th canon of Timothy of Alexandria). But even it was always understood only as some kind of ascetic recommendation, not implying any prohibitions or punishments for violation. Some ancient Christians even opposed such recommendations. In confirmation of this, we can cite excerpts from the already cited “Apostolic Decrees”, which is quite rigorous in relation to the “voluptuousness” of the document:

“But if anyone observes and performs the Jewish rites regarding the eruption of semen, the flow of semen in a dream, lawful intercourse, let them tell us whether they stop praying or touching books, or partaking of the Eucharist in those hours and days when they are subjected to any such thing. ? If they say that they cease, then it is obvious that they do not have the Holy Spirit in themselves ... For neither lawful copulation, nor childbirth, nor the flow of blood, nor the flow of seed in a dream can defile the nature of a person or excommunicate the Holy Spirit from him, but only wickedness and illegal activities.

Thus, the compilers of the Apostolic Decrees did not consider “lawful intercourse” to be a basis for non-communion, and therefore, to no extent sinful, for: children ... Love them, we say, as your members, as your bodies; for it is written thus: “God testified between you and between the woman of your youth, and she is your partner; He did not create you alone, but in her is the remnant of your spirit; and keep your spirit, and do not leave the wife of your youth."

So, husband and wife, copulating according to lawful marriage and rising from the common bed, let them pray without observing anything: they are clean, even if they have not washed themselves. But whoever corrupts and defiles another's wife, or defiles himself with a whore, he, having risen from her, even though he poured out the whole sea or all the rivers, cannot be pure.

It can be noted that St. John Chrysostom adhered to a similar position in his commentary on the words of the Apostle Paul: “What does this mean? The wife must not, he says, abstain against the will of her husband, and the husband must not abstain against the will of his wife. Why? Because from this abstinence comes great evil; from this often there were adulteries, fornications, and domestic disorders. For if some, having their own wives, give themselves over to adultery, how much more will they give themselves over to it if they are deprived of this consolation. Well said: do not deprive yourself; for to abstain to one against the will of another is to deprive, but not to the will. So, if you take something from me with my consent, it will not be deprivation for me; deprives the one who takes against the will and by force. Many wives do this, violating justice and thereby giving their husbands a pretext for debauchery and all leading to frustration. Unanimity should be preferred to everything; it matters most. If you want, we will prove it by experience. Let the wife of two spouses abstain, while the husband does not want it. What will happen? Will he not commit adultery, or, if he does not commit adultery, will he not grieve, worry, be irritated, angry, and cause much trouble to his wife? What is the use of fasting and abstinence when love is violated? No. How much grief will inevitably arise from this, how much trouble, how much strife! If in a house a husband and wife do not agree with each other, then their house is no better than a ship overwhelmed by the waves, on which the helmsman does not agree with the ruler of the helm. Therefore, the apostle says: do not deprive yourself of each other, only by agreement for a time, but continue in fasting and prayer. Here he means prayer performed with special care, for if he forbade those who copulate to pray, then how could the commandment to pray unceasingly be fulfilled? Therefore, it is possible to copulate with a wife and pray: but with abstinence, prayer is more perfect. It is not easy to say: Yes, pray, but: Yes, continue in prayer, because the marriage business only distracts from this, and does not produce defilement. And get together together, so that Satan does not tempt you. Lest they think that this is a law, it also adds a reason. What? Don't let Satan tempt you. And in order to know that it is not the devil who is only guilty of adultery, he adds: "by your intemperance" (Conversation 19 on 1 Corinthians 7:1-2).

It seems that the canonical position of the Church can be expressed as follows: it is good and beneficial for the soul to refrain from conjugal communion during the days of fasting, but this should not be against the will of one of the spouses. How long this abstinence should last, no one can decide, except for the spouses' own conscience. The only church restriction is the recommendation to abstain from carnal intercourse of spouses on the night before communion.

The issue raised by us was discussed by Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev in his Internet publication “There is no guard rule for marital relations” (.

Secondly, in the words “Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for the exercise in fasting and prayer”, there are no words “in fasting” in the most ancient manuscripts. “The authoritative modern textual biblical scholar Metzger says that this was added for ascetic purposes (see ch. Metzger W. A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament. Stuttgart, 1994, p. 488). “The increase “for fasting” is available only in a very small number of manuscripts” (Explanatory Bible. Vol. 11, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 48). Neither the Latin nor the ancient Armenian texts of the New Testament know this insert.

Thirdly, the word "exercise" in the original "shole" literally means "leisure", leisure time, reading. “So, for the apostle Paul, the rejection of sexual intimacy is a form of rest from each other. Rest is prayer. Sexual intimacy is a duty."

Fourth, the apostle Paul relaxed Jewish religious restrictions on married life. "But subsequent church practice tightened the Jewish restrictions even more."

Fifthly, the prescription of the breviary: “Abstain from women throughout the holy Great Lent. If he falls with his wife during the holy fast, the whole fast of obscenity” (Trebnik, Ch. 26) - “this is a late and purely Russian insertion made by Metropolitan. Petro Mohyla in the third Kiev edition of the Nomocanon ( Pavlov A. Nomocanon at the Big Trebnik. Moscow, 1897, p. 166-167)".

Sixthly, the Russian canonists of the Middle Ages hesitated on this issue. So, the Novgorod Bishop Nifont (XII century) said: “What do you teach to abstain from wives in fasting? Sin to you for this ”(Questions of Kirik, 57 // Smirnov S. Old Russian confessor. Research from the history of church life. M., 1914, pp. 113-114). And Metropolitan Georgy was more strict: “In fasting, it would be good to keep one’s wife, but otherwise it cannot be observed for the first week and the last” (Writing by Metropolitan George of Russia and Theodos // Materials for the history of ancient Russian penitential discipline. (Texts and notes) / / Smirnov S. Old Russian Confessor, Research from the History of Church Life, M., 1914, p. 40). The Solovetsky helmsman of 1493 indicates that during the entire Fedorov week, at vespers and at the liturgy, “they eat bread with cabbage, radish, spun peas, and drink a single cup of small kvass. And who would not drink all the fasting and refrain from his wives by no means, and on Saturday and a week, eat fish twice a day.

Let us add to what has been said that the position of those who claim that marital relations are possible only when weddings are allowed is completely unjustified. church calendar. According to the famous authoritative canonist of the past, St. Simeon of Thessalonica (+1429), the ban on weddings is due to the fact that due to fasts or upcoming festive services, a marriage feast cannot be held, and not at all because marital communication is prohibited these days. You can also approach the opposite. If we introduce a ban on marital relations during fasting, holidays and other important church dates, this leads to the fact that there are a little more than 100 such days in a year, which leads to the "mechanization" of married life, pushes people to cheat and creates problems leading to the destruction of a marriage.

It is also necessary to dwell on the point of view that is popular in our time about the inferiority of children conceived in fasting. This statement is not based on anything other than "women's fables". According to the teaching of the Church, children do not bear the guilt of their fathers. And all intimidation fundamentally contradicts the very spirit of evangelical freedom, which advises and recommends, but does not impose.

By the way, even in the Old Russian Church the superstitious idea that children conceived during fasting would become cursed was clearly disputed. Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev, in the already cited article, cites the answer of Bishop Nifont, in which he proposes to burn those books that say that if a child is conceived on a fast or on a holiday, then he will either be a thief, or a fornicator, or a robber.

Thus, “in the presence of clear and soft apostolic words, in the absence of ancient canonical and patristic prohibitions on marital communication during fasting, and despite the fact that in the late Middle Ages the discussion on this subject was conducted for centuries, there can be only one conclusion: if spouses want to abstain, then this is their feat (although sometimes it may turn out to be unreasonable). But if, at the request of one or even more so of both spouses, they “give each other their due” during fasting, then this cannot in any way be a reason for imposing penance on them.

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Is modern man in his marital relationship able to fulfill the various and numerous church prescriptions of carnal abstinence?

Why not? Orthodox people have been trying to fulfill them for two thousand years. And among them there are many who succeed. In fact, all carnal restrictions have been prescribed to a believing person since the Old Testament times, and they can be reduced to a verbal formula: nothing too much. That is, the Church simply calls us not to do anything against nature.

- However, nowhere in the Gospel does it say about the abstinence of a husband and wife from intimacy during fasting?

The entire Gospel and the entire tradition of the Church, dating back to apostolic times, speak of earthly life as a preparation for eternity, of moderation, abstinence, and sobriety as the inner norm of Christian life. And anyone knows that nothing captures, captivates and binds a person like the sexual area of ​​his being, especially if he releases it from internal control and does not want to remain sober. And nothing is so devastating if the joy of being together with a loved one is not combined with some abstinence.

It is reasonable to appeal to the centuries-old experience of being a church family, which is much stronger than a secular family. Nothing preserves the mutual desire of husband and wife for each other so much as the need at times to refrain from marital intimacy. And nothing kills like that, does not turn it into making love (it is no coincidence that this word arose by analogy with playing sports), as the absence of restrictions.

- How hard is it for a family, especially a young one, this kind of abstinence?

It depends on how people went to marriage. It is no coincidence that before there was not only a social and disciplinary norm, but also church wisdom that a girl and a young man abstained from intimacy before marriage. And even when they were engaged and were already connected spiritually, there was still no physical intimacy between them. Of course, the point here is not that what was certainly sinful before the wedding becomes neutral or even positive after the Sacrament. And the fact that the need for abstinence of the bride and groom before marriage, with love and mutual attraction to each other, gives them a very important experience - the ability to refrain when it is necessary in the natural course of family life, for example, during the wife’s pregnancy or in the first months after the birth of a child, when most often her aspirations are not directed to physical intimacy with her husband, but to taking care of the baby, and she is simply not physically capable of this. Those who, during the period of grooming and the pure passage of girlhood before marriage, prepared themselves for this, acquired a lot of essential things for their future married life. I know in our parish such young people who, due to various circumstances - the need to graduate from a university, obtain parental consent, acquire some kind of social status - went through a period of a year, two, even three before marriage. For example, they fell in love with each other in the first year of university: it is clear that they still cannot create a family in the full sense of the word, nevertheless, for such a long period of time they go hand in hand in purity as a bride and groom. After that, it will be easier for them to refrain from intimacy when it turns out to be necessary. And if the family path begins, as, alas, it now happens even in church families, with fornication, then periods of forced abstinence do not pass without sorrows until the husband and wife learn to love each other without bodily intimacy and without props that she gives. But it needs to be learned.

Why does the apostle Paul say that in marriage people will have "affliction according to the flesh" (1 Cor. 7:28)? But don't lonely and monastics have sorrows according to the flesh? And what specific sorrows are meant?

For monastics, especially novice ones, sorrows, mostly spiritual, accompanying their feat, are associated with despondency, with despair, with doubts about whether they have chosen the right path. For the lonely in the world, this is a bewilderment about the need to accept the will of God: why are all my peers already rolling wheelchairs, and others are already raising their grandchildren, and I am all alone and alone or alone and alone? It is not so much carnal as spiritual sorrows. A person living a lonely worldly life, from a certain age, comes to the fact that his flesh subsides, dies, if he himself does not forcibly inflame it through reading and watching something indecent. And people living in marriage do have "sorrows according to the flesh." If they are not ready for the inevitable abstinence, then they have a very difficult time. Therefore, many modern families break up while waiting for the first baby or immediately after his birth. After all, without going through a period of pure abstinence before marriage, when it was achieved exclusively by a voluntary feat, they do not know how to love each other temperately when this has to be done against their will. Like it or not, and the wife is not up to the desire of her husband during certain periods of pregnancy and the first months of raising a baby. It was then that he begins to look to the side, and she gets angry at him. And they do not know how to painlessly pass this period, because they did not take care of this before marriage. After all, it is clear that for a young man it is a certain kind of grief, a burden - to abstain next to his beloved, young, beautiful wife, the mother of his son or daughter. And in a sense, it is more difficult than monasticism. It is not at all easy to go through several months of abstinence from physical intimacy, but it is possible, and the apostle warns about this. Not only in the 20th century, but also to other contemporaries, many of whom were from pagans, family life, especially at its very beginning, was drawn as a kind of chain of solid amenities, although this is far from being the case.

Is it necessary to try to fast in a marital relationship if one of the spouses is unchurched and not ready for abstinence?

This is a serious question. And, apparently, in order to correctly answer it, you need to think about it in the context of the wider and more significant problem of marriage, in which one of the family members is not yet a fully Orthodox person. Unlike previous times, when all spouses were married for many centuries, since society as a whole was Christian until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, we live in completely different times, to which the words of the Apostle Paul apply more than ever, that "an unbeliever The husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband" (1 Cor. 7:14). And it is necessary to refrain from each other only by mutual agreement, that is, in such a way that this abstinence in marital relations does not lead to an even greater split and division in the family. Here, in no case should you insist, let alone put forward any ultimatums. A believing family member must gradually lead his companion or life partner to the fact that they will someday come together and consciously to abstinence. All this is impossible without serious and responsible churching of the whole family. And when this happens, then this side of family life will fall into its natural place.

The Gospel says that "the wife has no power over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband has no power over his own body, but the wife" (1 Cor. 7:4). In this regard, if during fasting one of the Orthodox and churched spouses insists on intimacy, or does not even insist, but simply gravitates towards it in every possible way, while the other would like to maintain purity to the end, but makes concessions, then should he to repent of this, as in a conscious and free sin?

This is not an easy situation, and, of course, it should be considered in relation to different states and even to different ages of people. It is true that not all newlyweds who get married before Shrovetide will be able to go through Great Lent in complete abstinence. All the more keep and all other multi-day posts. And if a young and ardent husband cannot cope with his bodily passion, then, of course, guided by the words of the Apostle Paul, it is better for the young wife to be with him than to give him the opportunity to "ignite". He or she who is more moderate, temperate, more able to cope with himself, will sometimes give up his own desire for purity in order, firstly, that the worst that occurs due to bodily passion does not enter the life of another spouse, firstly secondly, in order not to give rise to splits, divisions and thereby not to endanger family unity itself. But, however, he will remember that it is impossible to seek quick satisfaction in his own compliance, and in the depths of his soul rejoice at the inevitability of the current situation. There is an anecdote in which, frankly, far from chastity advice is given to a woman who is being abused: firstly, relax and, secondly, have fun. And in this case, it's so easy to say: "What should I do if my husband (rarely wife) is so hot?" It's one thing when a woman goes to meet someone who cannot yet bear the burden of abstinence with faith, and another thing when, spreading her arms - well, if it doesn't work out otherwise - she herself does not lag behind her husband. Yielding to him, you need to be aware of the measure of responsibility assumed.

If a husband or wife, in order to be peaceful in the rest, sometimes has to give way to a spouse who is not weak in bodily aspiration, this does not mean that you need to go into all serious trouble and completely abandon this kind of fast for yourself. You need to find the measure that you can now fit together. And, of course, the leader here should be the one who is more temperate. He must take upon himself the responsibility of wisely building bodily relationships. Young people cannot keep all the fasts, which means that they should abstain for some fairly tangible period: before confession, before communion. They cannot do the whole Great Lent, then at least the first, fourth, seventh weeks, let others impose some restrictions: on the eve of Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, so that one way or another their life would be tougher than usual. Otherwise, there will be no feeling of fasting at all. Because then what is the point of fasting in terms of food, if emotional, mental and bodily feelings are much stronger, due to what happens to a husband and wife during marital intimacy.

But, of course, there is a time and place for everything. If a husband and wife live together for ten, twenty years, go to church and nothing changes, then here a more conscious member of the family needs to persevere step by step, even to the point of demanding that even now, when they have lived to gray hair, children have been raised, soon grandchildren will appear, some measure of abstinence to bring to God. After all, we will bring to the Kingdom of Heaven that which unites us. However, it will not be carnal intimacy that will unite us there, for we know from the Gospel that “when they rise from the dead, then they will neither marry nor give in marriage, but will be like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25), otherwise that managed to grow during family life. Yes, first - with props, which is bodily intimacy, opening people to each other, making them closer, helping to forget some grievances. But over time, these props, necessary when the building of marital relations is built, must fall away without becoming scaffolding, because of which the building itself is not visible and on which everything rests, so that if they are removed, it will fall apart.

What exactly does the church canon say about when spouses should refrain from physical intimacy, and at what time not?

There are some ideal requirements of the Church Charter, which should define the specific path that each Christian family faces in order to fulfill them informally. The Charter presupposes abstinence from marital intimacy on the eve of Sunday (that is, Saturday evening), on the eve of the triumph of the twelfth feast and Lenten Wednesday and Friday (that is, Tuesday evening and Thursday evening), as well as during many days of fasting and fasting days - preparation for the reception of the Saints of Christ Mystery. This is the ideal norm. But in each specific case, the husband and wife must be guided by the words of the Apostle Paul: “Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for exercise in fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you with your intemperance. However , this is said by me as a permission, and not as a command" (1 Cor. 7:5-6). This means that the family must grow to the day when the measure of abstinence taken by the spouses from bodily intimacy will in no way harm and reduce their love, and when all the fullness of family unity will be preserved even without props of physicality. And it is precisely this integrity of spiritual unity that can be continued in the Kingdom of Heaven. After all, from the earthly life of a person, that which is involved in eternity will be continued. It is clear that in the relationship of husband and wife, it is not carnal intimacy that is involved in eternity, but that which it serves as an aid to. In a secular, worldly family, as a rule, there is a catastrophic change of orientation, which cannot be allowed in a church family, when these props become the cornerstone.

The path to such an increase must be, firstly, mutual, and secondly, without jumping over steps. Of course, not every spouse, especially in the first year of their life together, can be told that they must go through the entire Nativity fast in abstinence from each other. Whoever can accommodate this in harmony and moderation will reveal a profound measure of spiritual wisdom. And on the one who is not yet ready, it would be imprudent to place burdens unbearable on the part of a more temperate and moderate spouse. But after all, family life is given to us in a temporary extension, therefore, starting with a small measure of abstinence, we must gradually increase it. Although a certain measure of abstinence from each other "for the exercise in fasting and prayer" the family must have from the very beginning.

For example, every week on the eve of Sunday, a husband and wife turn away from marital intimacy, not out of fatigue or busyness, but for the sake of more and higher in communion with God and with each other. And Great Lent should, from the very beginning of marriage, except for some very special situations, strive to pass in abstinence, as the most crucial period of church life. Even in legal marriage, carnal relations at this time leave an unkind, sinful aftertaste and do not bring the joy that should be from marital intimacy, and in everything else detract from the very passage of the field of fasting. In any case, such restrictions should be in place from the first days of married life, and then they must be expanded as the family matures and grows.

Does the Church regulate the methods of sexual contact between a married husband and wife, and if so, on what basis and where exactly is this mentioned?

Probably, when answering this question, it is more reasonable to first talk about some principles and general premises, and then rely on some canonical texts. Of course, by consecrating marriage with the Sacrament of the wedding, the Church sanctifies the whole union of a man and a woman - both spiritual and bodily. And there is no hypocritical intention, dismissive of the bodily component of the marital union, in a sober church worldview. This kind of neglect, belittling precisely the physical side of marriage, reducing it to the level of what is only allowed, but which, by and large, should be shunned, is characteristic of the sectarian, schismatic or extra-church consciousness, and if it is ecclesiastical, then only painful. This needs to be very clearly defined and understood. As early as the 4th-6th centuries, the decrees of church councils said that one of the spouses who avoids bodily intimacy with the other because of the abhorrence of marriage is subject to excommunication from Communion, but if this is not a layman, but a cleric, then deposition from the dignity. That is, the disdain of the fullness of marriage, even in the canons of the church, is unequivocally defined as improper. In addition, the same canons say that if someone refuses to recognize the validity of the Sacraments performed by a married clergyman, then such a person is also subject to the same punishments and, accordingly, excommunication from receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ, if he is a layman, or deprivation of dignity, if he is a cleric. . This is how high the church consciousness, embodied in the canons included in the canonical code, according to which believers must live, places the bodily side of Christian marriage.

On the other hand, the church consecration of the marital union is not a sanction for indecency. As the blessing of a meal and prayer before a meal is not a sanction for gluttony, for overeating, and even more so for drunkenness with wine, the blessing of marriage is in no way a sanction for permissiveness and a feast of the body - they say, do whatever you want, in whatever quantities and at any time. Of course, a sober church consciousness, based on Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, is always characterized by the understanding that in the life of the family - as in general in human life - there is a hierarchy: the spiritual should dominate the bodily, the soul should be higher than the body. And when the bodily begins to occupy the first place in the family, and only those small centers or areas that remain from the carnal are assigned to the spiritual or even the spiritual, this leads to disharmony, to spiritual defeats and great life crises. In relation to this message, there is no need to cite special texts, because, opening the Epistle of the Apostle Paul or the works of St. John Chrysostom, St. Leo the Great, St. Blessed Augustine - any of the Fathers of the Church, we will find any number of confirmations of this thought. It is clear that it was not canonically fixed in itself.

Of course, the totality of all bodily restrictions for a modern person may seem rather difficult, but in church canons we are indicated the measure of abstinence that a Christian must come to. And if in our life there is a discrepancy to this norm - as well as to other canonical requirements of the Church, we, at least, should not consider ourselves dead and prosperous. And not to be sure that if we abstain during Great Lent, then everything is fine with us and everything else can be ignored. And that if marital abstinence takes place during fasting and on the eve of Sunday, then one can forget about the eve of fasting days, which would also be good to come as a result. But this path is individual, which, of course, must be determined by the consent of the spouses and by reasonable advice from the confessor. However, the fact that this path leads to temperance and moderation is defined in the Church's consciousness as an unconditional norm in relation to the arrangement of married life.

As for the intimate side of marital relations, here, although it does not make sense to discuss everything publicly on the pages of the book, it is important not to forget that for a Christian those forms of marital intimacy are acceptable that do not contradict its main goal, namely, childbearing. That is, this kind of union of a man and a woman, which has nothing to do with the sins for which Sodom and Gomorrah were punished: when bodily intimacy is performed in that perverted form, in which childbirth can never and never occur. This was also mentioned in a fairly large number of texts, which we call "rulers" or "canons", that is, the inadmissibility of this kind of perverted forms of marital communication was recorded in the Rules of the Holy Fathers and partly in church canons in the later era of the Middle Ages, after Ecumenical Councils.

But I repeat, since this is very important, the carnal relations of a husband and wife are not sinful in themselves and are not considered as such by the church consciousness. For the Sacrament of the wedding is not a sanction for sin or some kind of impunity in relation to it. In the Sacrament, that which is sinful cannot be sanctified; on the contrary, that which is good and natural in itself is elevated to a perfect and, as it were, supernatural degree.

Having postulated this position, we can draw the following analogy: a person who has worked a lot, must have done his work - no matter whether physical or intellectual: a reaper, a blacksmith or a soul catcher - having come home, of course, has the right to expect from a loving wife a delicious lunch, and if the day is not modest, then it can be a rich meat soup, and a chop with a side dish. There will be no sin in the fact that after the labors of the righteous, if you are very hungry, ask for supplements and drink a glass of good wine. This is a warm family meal, looking at which the Lord will rejoice and which the Church will bless. But how different it is from the family relationship where husband and wife choose instead to go somewhere social, where one delicacy follows another, where the fish is made to taste like a bird, and the bird tastes like an avocado, and so that it does not even remind you of its natural properties, where guests, already fed up with various dishes, begin to roll the grains of caviar across the sky to get additional gourmet pleasure, and from the dishes offered by the mountains they choose when an oyster, when a frog leg, in order to somehow tickle their dulled taste buds with other sensory sensations, and then - as it has been practiced since ancient times (which is very characteristically described in the feast of Trimalchio in Petronius' Satyricon) - having habitually caused a gag reflex, free the stomach in order not to spoil one's figure and be able to indulge in dessert too. This kind of self-indulgence in food is gluttony and a sin in many respects, including in relation to one's own nature.

This analogy can be extended to marital relations. What is a natural continuation of life is good, and there is nothing bad or impure in it. And what leads to the search for more and more pleasures, one more, another, third, tenth point in order to squeeze out some additional sensory reactions from your body - this, of course, is improper and sinful and that cannot be included in the life of an Orthodox family.

What is acceptable in sexual life and what is not, and how is this criterion of admissibility established? Why is oral sex considered vicious and unnatural, since highly developed mammals with complex social lives have this kind of sexual relationship in the nature of things?

By itself, the formulation of the question implies the clogging of modern consciousness with such information, which it would be better not to know. In the former, in this sense, more prosperous times, children during the period of mating animals were not allowed into the barnyard so that they would not develop abnormal interests. And if you imagine a situation, not even a hundred years, but fifty years ago, could we find at least one in a thousand people who would be aware that monkeys are engaged in oral sex? Moreover, would you be able to ask about it in some acceptable verbal form? I think that drawing knowledge from the life of mammals about this particular component of their existence is at least one-sided. In this case, the natural norm for our existence would be to consider both polygamy, characteristic of higher mammals, and the change of regular sexual partners, and if we bring the logical series to the final, then the expulsion of the fertilizing male, when he can be replaced by a younger and physically stronger . So those who want to borrow the forms of organization of human life from higher mammals must be ready to borrow them to the end, and not selectively. After all, reducing us to the level of a herd of monkeys, even the most highly developed, implies that the stronger will displace the weaker, including in sexual terms. Unlike those who are ready to consider the final measure of human existence as one with that which is natural for higher mammals, Christians, without denying the co-nature of man with another created world, do not reduce him to the level of a highly organized animal, but think as a higher being.

It is not customary to speak openly about certain functions of the reproductive organs, unlike other physiological functions of the human body, such as food, sleep, and so on. This area of ​​life is especially vulnerable, many mental disorders are associated with it. Is this due to original sin after the fall? If yes, then why, because original sin was not prodigal, but was a sin of disobedience to the Creator?

Yes, of course, original sin mainly consisted in disobedience and violation of God's commandment, as well as in impenitence and impenitence. And this totality of disobedience and impenitence led to the falling away of the first people from God, the impossibility of their further stay in paradise and all those consequences of the fall that entered human nature and which in the Holy Scriptures are symbolically referred to as putting on "leather robes" (Gen. 3:21 ). The Holy Fathers interpret this as the acquisition by human nature of stoutness, that is, bodily flesh, the loss of many of the original properties that were given to man. Sickness, fatigue, and many other things entered not only into our spiritual, but also into our bodily composition in connection with the fall. In this sense, the physical organs of a person, including organs associated with childbearing, have become open to diseases. But the principle of modesty, the concealment of the chaste, namely the chaste, and not the hypocritically puritanical silence about the sexual sphere, first of all comes from the deep reverence of the Church for man as before the image and likeness of God. Just like not showing off what is most vulnerable and what most deeply binds two people, which makes them one flesh in the Sacrament of marriage, and gives rise to another, immeasurably sublime connection and therefore is the object of constant enmity, intrigues, distortion on the part of the evil one. . The enemy of the human race, in particular, fights against that which, being pure and beautiful in itself, is so significant and so important for the inner correct being of a person. Understanding all the responsibility and gravity of this struggle that a person is waging, the Church helps him through keeping modesty, silence about what should not be spoken about publicly and what is so easy to distort and so difficult to return, because it is infinitely difficult to turn acquired shamelessness into chastity. Lost chastity and other knowledge about oneself, with all the desire, cannot be turned into ignorance. Therefore, the Church, through the secrecy of this kind of knowledge and the inviolability of it to the soul of a person, seeks to make him uninvolved in the multitude of crafty contrived perversions and distortions of what is so majestic and well-organized by our Savior in nature. Let us listen to this wisdom of the two-thousand-year existence of the Church. And no matter what culturologists, sexologists, gynecologists, all kinds of pathologists and other Freudians tell us, their name is legion, let us remember that they tell lies about a person, not seeing in him the image and likeness of God.

In this case, what is the difference between a chaste silence and a sanctimonious one? Chaste silence presupposes inner dispassion, inner peace and overcoming, what St. John of Damascus spoke of in relation to the Mother of God, that She had a pure virginity, that is, virginity both in body and soul. The sanctimonious-puritan silence presupposes the concealment of what a person himself has not overcome, what boils in him and what he even if he struggles with, is not an ascetic victory over himself with the help of God, but hostility towards others, which is so easily spread to other people, and some of their manifestations. While the victory of his own heart over the attraction to what he is struggling with has not yet been achieved.

But how to explain that in Holy Scripture, as in other church texts, when the Nativity, virginity is sung, then the reproductive organs are directly called by their proper names: the loins, the bed, the gates of virginity, and this in no way contradicts modesty and chastity? And in ordinary life, say someone like that aloud, that in Old Slavonic, that in Russian, it would be perceived as indecent, as a violation of the generally accepted norm.

This just says that in the Holy Scriptures, in which these words are in abundance, they are not associated with sin. They are not associated with anything vulgar, carnally exciting, unworthy of a Christian, precisely because in church texts everything is chaste, and it cannot be otherwise. For the pure, everything is pure, the Word of God tells us, but for the impure, the pure will be impure.

Today it is very difficult to find a context in which this kind of vocabulary and metaphor could be placed and not harm the soul of the reader. It is known that the largest number of metaphors of physicality and human love in the biblical book of the Song of Songs. But today, the worldly mind has ceased to understand - and this did not even happen in the 21st century - the story of the love of the Bride for the Bridegroom, that is, the Church for Christ. In various works of art since the 18th century, we find the carnal aspiration of a girl for a boy, but in essence this is a reduction of Holy Scripture to the level, at best, just a beautiful love story. Although not in the most ancient times, but in the 17th century in the city of Tutaev near Yaroslavl, a whole chapel of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ was painted with the plots of the Song of Songs (these frescoes are still preserved). And this is not the only example. In other words, back in the 17th century, the clean was clean for the clean, and this is another evidence of how deeply man has fallen today.

They say: free love in a free world. Why is this word used in relation to those relationships that, in the church's understanding, are interpreted as fornication?

Because the very meaning of the word "freedom" is perverted and it has long been invested in a non-Christian understanding that was once accessible to such a significant part of the human race, that is, freedom from sin, freedom as unbound by low and base, freedom as the openness of the human soul for eternity and for Heaven , and not at all as its determinism by its instincts or the external social environment. Such an understanding of freedom has been lost, and today freedom is primarily understood as self-will, the ability to create, as they say, "what I want, I turn back." However, behind this is nothing more than a return to the realm of slavery, subjugation to your instincts under the miserable slogan: seize the moment, enjoy life while you are young, pluck all the permitted and illicit fruits! And it is clear that if love in human relations is the greatest gift of God, then to pervert love, to introduce catastrophic distortions into it, is the main task of that original slanderer and parodist-perverter, whose name is known to each of those who read these lines.

Why are the so-called bed relations of married spouses no longer sinful, and the same relations before marriage are referred to as "sinful fornication"?

There are things that are sinful by nature, and there are things that become sinful as a result of breaking the commandments. Suppose it is sinful to kill, rob, steal, slander - and therefore it is forbidden by the commandments. But by its very nature, eating food is not sinful. It is sinful to enjoy it excessively, therefore there is fasting, certain restrictions on food. The same applies to physical intimacy. Being legally consecrated by marriage and put in its proper course, it is not sinful, but since it is forbidden in a different form, if this prohibition is violated, it inevitably turns into "fornication."

From Orthodox literature it follows that the bodily side dulls the spiritual abilities of a person. Why, then, do we have not only a black monastic clergy, but also a white one, obliging the priest to be in a marriage union?

This is a question that has long troubled the Universal Church. Already in the ancient Church, in the II-III centuries, an opinion arose that the more correct path was the path of a celibate life for all the clergy. This opinion prevailed very early in the western part of the Church, and at the Council of Elvira at the beginning of the 4th century it was voiced in one of its rules, and then under Pope Gregory VII Hildebrand (XI century) it became predominant after the falling away of the Catholic Church from the Church Ecumenical. Then obligatory celibacy was introduced, that is, obligatory celibacy of the clergy. The Eastern Orthodox Church took the path, firstly, more in line with Holy Scripture, and secondly, more chaste: not regarding family relationships, only as a palliative from fornication, a way not to inflame beyond measure, but guided by the words of the Apostle Paul and considering marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the image of the union of Christ and the Church, she originally allowed marriage for deacons, presbyters, and bishops. Subsequently, starting from the 5th century, and in the 6th century already completely, the Church forbade marriage to bishops, but not because of the fundamental inadmissibility of the marriage state for them, but because the bishop was not bound by family interests, family cares, concerns about his own and his own. so that his life, connected with the whole diocese, with the whole Church, would be completely devoted to it. Nevertheless, the Church recognized the state of marriage as permissible for all other clerics, and the decrees of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, the Gandrian 4th century and the 6th century Trull, directly state that a clergyman who avoids marriage due to abhorrence should be prohibited from serving. So, the Church looks at the marriage of clerics as a marriage of chastity and abstinence and the most consistent with the principle of monogamy, that is, a priest can be married only once and must remain chaste and faithful to his wife in the event of widowhood. What the Church treats with condescension in relation to the marriage relations of the laity should be fully realized in the families of priests: the same commandment about childbearing, about accepting all the children whom the Lord sends, the same principle of abstinence, predominantly avoiding each other for prayer and post.

In Orthodoxy, there is a danger in the very estate of the clergy - in the fact that, as a rule, the children of priests become clergymen. There is a danger in Catholicism, since the clergy are always being recruited from the outside. However, there is an upside to the fact that anyone can become a cleric, because there is a constant influx from all walks of life. Here, in Russia, as in Byzantium, for many centuries the clergy were actually a certain class. There were, of course, cases of taxable peasants entering the priesthood, that is, from the bottom up, or vice versa - representatives of the highest circles of society, but then for the most part into monasticism. However, in principle, it was a family business, and there were flaws and dangers here. The main falsehood of the Western approach to the celibacy of the priesthood lies in the very abhorrence of marriage as a state that is condoned for the laity, but intolerable for the clergy. This is the main lie, and the social order is a matter of tactics, and it can be assessed in different ways.

In the Lives of the Saints, a marriage in which husband and wife live like brother and sister, for example, like John of Kronstadt with his wife, is called pure. So - in other cases, the marriage is dirty?

Quite a casuistic question. After all, we also call the Most Holy Theotokos the Most Pure, although in the proper sense only the Lord is pure from original sin. The Mother of God is the Most Pure and Immaculate in comparison with all other people. We also speak of a pure marriage in relation to the marriage of Joachim and Anna or Zechariah and Elizabeth. The conception of the Most Holy Theotokos, the conception of John the Baptist is also sometimes called immaculate or pure, and not in the sense that they were alien to original sin, but in the fact that, compared to how it usually happens, they were abstinent and not fulfilled. excessive carnal desires. In the same sense, purity is spoken of as a greater measure of chastity of those special callings that were in the lives of some saints, an example of which is the marriage of the holy righteous father John of Kronstadt.

- When we talk about the immaculate conception of the Son of God, does this mean that ordinary people have it viciously??

Yes, one of the provisions of the Orthodox Tradition is that the seedless, that is, immaculate, conception of our Lord Jesus Christ happened precisely so that the incarnated Son of God would not be involved in any sin, for the moment of passion and thereby distortion of love for one's neighbor is inextricably linked with the consequences of the fall, including in the ancestral region.

- How should spouses communicate during the wife's pregnancy?

Any abstinence is then positive, then it will be a good fruit, when it is not perceived only as a denial of anything, but has an internal good content. If spouses during the wife’s pregnancy, having abandoned bodily intimacy, begin to talk less with each other, and watch TV more or swear in order to give some outlet to negative emotions, then this is one situation. It is different if they try to pass this time as intelligently as possible, deepening spiritual and prayerful communion with each other. After all, it is so natural when a woman is expecting a baby, to pray more to herself in order to get rid of all those fears that accompany pregnancy, and to her husband in order to support her wife. In addition, you need to talk more, listen more attentively to the other, look for different forms of communication, and not only spiritual, but also spiritual and intellectual, which would dispose the spouses to be together as much as possible. Finally, those forms of tenderness and affection with which they limited the closeness of their communication when they were still bride and groom, and during this period of married life, should not lead to an aggravation of their carnal and bodily relations.

It is known that in case of some illnesses, fasting in food is either completely canceled or limited, are there such situations in life or such illnesses when the abstinence of spouses from intimacy is not blessed?

There are. Only it is not necessary to interpret this concept very broadly. Now many priests hear from their parishioners who say that doctors recommend men with prostatitis to "make love" every day. Prostatitis is not the newest disease, but only in our time a seventy-five-year-old man is prescribed to constantly exercise in this area. And this is in such years when life, worldly and spiritual wisdom should be achieved. Just as other gynecologists, even with a far from catastrophic illness, women will definitely say that it is better to have an abortion than to bear a child, so other sex therapists advise, in spite of everything, to continue intimate relationships, even if they are not marital, that is, morally unacceptable for a Christian , but, according to experts, necessary to maintain bodily health. However, this does not mean that such doctors should be obeyed every time. In general, one should not rely too much on the advice of only doctors, especially in matters related to the sexual sphere, since, unfortunately, very often sexologists are frank carriers of non-Christian worldviews.

The advice of a doctor should be combined with advice from a confessor, as well as with a sober assessment of one's own bodily health, and most importantly, with an internal self-assessment - what a person is ready for and what he is called to. Perhaps it is worth considering whether this or that bodily ailment is allowed to him for reasons that are beneficial for a person. And then make a decision regarding abstaining from marital relations during fasting.

- Caress and tenderness are possible during fasting and abstinence?

Possible, but not those that would lead to a bodily uprising of the flesh, to kindling a fire, after which you need to fill the fire with water or take a cold shower.

- Some people say that the Orthodox pretend that there is no sex!

I think that such an idea of ​​an external person about the view of the Orthodox Church on family relations is mainly due to his unfamiliarity with the real church worldview in this area, as well as a one-sided reading, not so much of ascetic texts, in which this is almost not mentioned at all, but of texts either modern near-church publicists, or unglorified ascetics of piety, or, what happens even more often, modern bearers of secular tolerant-liberal consciousness, distorting the church's interpretation of this issue in the media.

Now let's think about what real meaning can be attached to this phrase: the Church pretends that there is no sex. What can be understood by this? That the Church puts the intimate area of ​​life in its proper place? That is, it does not make of it that cult of pleasures, that only fulfillment of being, which can be read about in many magazines in shiny covers. So it turns out that a person's life continues insofar as he is a sexual partner, sexually attractive to people of the opposite, and now often the same sex. And as long as he is such and can be claimed by someone, it makes sense to live. And everything revolves around it: work to earn money for a beautiful sexual partner, clothes to attract him, a car, furniture, accessories to furnish an intimate relationship with the necessary surroundings, etc. etc. Yes, in this sense, Christianity clearly states that sexual life is not the only content of human existence, and puts it in an adequate place - as one of the important, but not the only and not the central component of human existence. And then the rejection of sexual relations - both voluntary, for the sake of God and piety, and forced, in illness or old age - is not regarded as a terrible catastrophe, when, in the opinion of many suffering, one can only live out one's life, drinking whiskey and cognac and looking on TV, something that you yourself can no longer realize in any form, but which still causes some kind of impulses in your decrepit body. Fortunately, the Church does not have such a view of the family life of a person.

On the other hand, the essence of the question asked may be related to the fact that there are certain kinds of restrictions that are supposed to be expected from people of faith. But in fact, these restrictions lead to the fullness and depth of the marriage union, including the fullness, depth and happiness in intimate life, which people who change their companions from today to tomorrow, from one night party to another, do not know. And that holistic fullness of giving oneself to each other, which a loving and faithful married couple knows, will never be known by collectors of sexual victories, no matter how they swagger on the pages of magazines about cosmopolitan girls and men with pumped up biceps.

- What is the basis for the categorical rejection of sexual minorities by the Church, her dislike for them?

It cannot be said that the Church does not love them... Its position must be formulated in completely different terms. Firstly, always separating sin from the person who commits it, and not accepting sin - and same-sex relationships, homosexuality, sodomy, lesbianism are sinful in their very essence, which is clearly and unequivocally mentioned in the Old Testament - the Church refers to a person who sins with pity, for every sinner leads himself away from the path of salvation until such time as he begins to repent of his own sin, that is, to move away from it. But what we do not accept and, of course, with all the measure of rigidity and, if you like, intolerance, what we rebel against is that those who are the so-called minorities begin to impose (and at the same time very aggressively) their attitude to life, to the surrounding reality, to the normal majority. True, there is a certain kind of area of ​​human existence where, for some reason, minorities accumulate to the majority. And so in the media, in a number of sections of contemporary art, on television, we now and then see, read, hear about those who show us certain standards of modern "successful" existence. This is the kind of presentation of the sin of the poor perverts, unfortunately overwhelmed by it, sin as a norm, which you need to be equal to and which, if you yourself fail, then at least you need to consider it as the most progressive and advanced, this kind of worldview, definitely unacceptable for us.

Is the participation of a married man in the artificial insemination of an outside woman a sin? And does this amount to adultery?

The resolution of the jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000 speaks of the unacceptability of in vitro fertilization when it is not about the married couple itself, not about the husband and wife, who are barren due to certain ailments, but for whom this kind of fertilization can be a way out. Although there are limitations here too: the ruling only deals with cases where none of the fertilized embryos are discarded as secondary material, which is still largely impossible. And therefore, it practically turns out to be unacceptable, since the Church recognizes the full value of human life from the very moment of conception - no matter how and when it happens. That's when this kind of technology becomes a reality (today they apparently exist somewhere only at the most advanced level of medical care), then it will no longer be absolutely unacceptable for believers to resort to them.

As for the participation of a husband in the fertilization of a stranger, or a wife in bearing a child for some third person, even without the physical participation of this person in the fertilization, of course, this is a sin in relation to the entire unity of the Sacrament of the marriage union, the result of which is the joint birth of children, for the Church blesses a chaste, that is, an integral union, in which there is no flaw, there is no fragmentation. And what more can break this marriage union than the fact that one of the spouses has a continuation of him as a person, as the image and likeness of God outside this family unity?

If we talk about in vitro fertilization by an unmarried man, then in this case, the norm of Christian life, again, is the very essence of intimacy in a marital union. No one has canceled the norm of church consciousness that a man and a woman, a girl and a young man, should strive to preserve their bodily purity before marriage. And in this sense, it is even impossible to think that an Orthodox, and therefore chaste, young man would give up his seed in order to impregnate some strange woman.

And if newlyweds who have just married find out that one of the spouses cannot live a full sexual life?

If an incapacity for marital cohabitation is discovered immediately after marriage, moreover, this is a kind of inability that can hardly be overcome, then according to church canons it is the basis for divorce.

- In the case of impotence of one of the spouses, which began from an incurable disease, how should they behave with each other?

You need to remember that over the years something has connected you, and this is so much higher and more significant than the small ailment that you have now, which, of course, should in no way be a reason to allow yourself some things. Secular people allow such thoughts: well, we will continue to live together, because we have social obligations, and if he (or she) can’t do anything, but I still can, then I have the right to find satisfaction on the side. It is clear that such logic is absolutely unacceptable in a church marriage, and it must be cut off a priori. This means that it is necessary to look for opportunities and ways of filling one's married life in a different way, which does not exclude affection, tenderness, and other manifestations of affection for each other, but without direct marital communication.

- Is it possible for a husband and wife to turn to psychologists or sexologists if something is not going well with them?

As for psychologists, it seems to me that a more general rule applies here, namely: there are such situations in life when the union of a priest and a churchly doctor is very appropriate, that is, when the nature of mental illness gravitates in both directions - and in the direction of spiritual illness, and towards medical. And in this case, the priest and the doctor (but only a Christian doctor) can provide effective assistance to both the whole family and its individual member. In cases of some psychological conflicts, it seems to me that the Christian family needs to look for ways to resolve them in themselves through the awareness of their responsibility for the ongoing disorder, through the acceptance of the Church Sacraments, in some cases, perhaps through the support or advice of the priest, of course, if there is a determination on both sides, both husband and wife, in case of disagreement on this or that issue, rely on the priestly blessing. If there is this kind of unanimity, it helps a lot. But running to the doctor for a solution to what is a consequence of the sinful fractures of our soul is hardly fruitful. Here the doctor will not help. As for assistance in the intimate, sexual area by the relevant specialists who work in this field, it seems to me that in cases of either some physical handicaps or some psychosomatic conditions that prevent the full life of the spouses and need medical regulation, it is necessary just see a doctor. But, by the way, of course, when today they talk about sexologists and their recommendations, most often it is about how a person can get as much pleasure for himself with the help of the body of a husband or wife, lover or mistress and how to adjust his bodily composition so that the measure of carnal pleasure becomes larger and larger and lasts longer and longer. It is clear that a Christian who knows that moderation in everything - especially in pleasures - is an important measure of our life, will not go to any doctor with such questions.

But it is very difficult to find an Orthodox psychiatrist, especially a sex therapist. And besides, even if you find such a doctor, maybe he only calls himself Orthodox.

Of course, this should not be a single self-name, but also some reliable external evidence. It would be inappropriate to list specific names and organizations here, but I think that whenever it comes to health, mental and bodily, you need to remember the gospel word that "the testimony of two people is true" (John 8:17), that is, we need two or three independent testimonies confirming both the medical qualifications and the ideological closeness to Orthodoxy of the doctor we are addressing.

- What methods of contraception does the Orthodox Church prefer??

None. There are no such contraceptives on which there would be a seal - "by permission of the Synodal Department for Social Work and Charity" (it is he who is engaged in the medical service). There is no and cannot be such contraceptives! Another thing is that the Church (suffice it to recall her latest document "Fundamentals of the Social Concept") soberly distinguishes between methods of contraception that are absolutely unacceptable and allowed out of weakness. Absolutely unacceptable are abortive contraceptives, not only the abortion itself, but also that which provokes the expulsion of a fertilized egg, no matter how quickly it happens, even immediately after the conception itself. Everything that is connected with this kind of action is unacceptable for the life of an Orthodox family (I will not dictate lists of such means: whoever does not know is better not to know, and who knows, he understood without it). As for other, say, mechanical methods of contraception, then, I repeat, without endorsing and not in any way considering contraception as the norm of church life, the Church distinguishes them from those absolutely unacceptable for those spouses who, due to weakness, cannot bear total abstinence during those periods of family life, when, for medical, social or some other reasons, childbearing is impossible. When, for example, a woman, after a serious illness or due to the nature of some kind of treatment, it is during this period that pregnancy is highly undesirable. Or for a family in which there are already quite a lot of children, today, according to purely everyday conditions, it is unacceptable to have another child. Another thing is that before God, refraining from childbearing every time should be extremely responsible and honest. Here it is very easy, instead of considering this interval in the birth of children as a forced period, to descend to pleasing ourselves, when sly thoughts whisper: “Well, why do we need this at all? Again, the career will be interrupted, although such prospects are outlined in it, and here again a return to diapers, to lack of sleep, to seclusion in our own apartment" or: "As soon as we have achieved some kind of relative social well-being, we began to live better, and with the birth of a child we will have to abandon the planned trip to the sea, from a new car, from what other there are things." And as soon as this kind of crafty arguments begin to enter our lives, it means that we need to immediately stop them and give birth to the next child. And one must always remember that the Church calls on Orthodox Christians who are married not to consciously refrain from having children, neither because of distrust of God's Providence, nor because of selfishness and desire for an easy life.

- If the husband demands an abortion, up to a divorce?

So, you need to part with such a person and give birth to a child, no matter how difficult it may be. And this is exactly the case when obedience to her husband cannot be a priority.

- If a believing wife, for some reason, wants to have an abortion?

Put all your strength, all your understanding into preventing this, all your love, all your arguments: from resorting to church authorities, the advice of a priest to simply material, practical, whatever arguments. That is, from a stick to a carrot - everything, just not to. allow murder. Definitely, abortion is murder. And murder must be resisted to the last, regardless of the methods and ways in which this is achieved.

Is the attitude of the Church towards a woman who, during the years of godless Soviet power, had an abortion, unaware of what she was doing, the same as towards a woman who is now doing and already knows what she is getting into? Or is it still different?

Yes, of course, because according to the Gospel parable known to all of us about the slaves and the steward, there was a different punishment - for those slaves who acted against the will of the master, not knowing this will, and those who knew everything or knew enough and nevertheless did . In the Gospel of John, the Lord speaks of the Jews: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin" (John 15:22). So here is one measure of the guilt of those who did not understand, or even if they heard something, but inwardly, did not know in their hearts what a lie was in this, and another measure of guilt and responsibility of those who already know that this is murder ( it is difficult today to find a person who does not know that this is so), and, perhaps, they even recognize themselves as believers, if they later come to confession, and nevertheless they go for it. Of course, not before church discipline, but before one's soul, before eternity, before God - here is a different measure of responsibility, and, therefore, a different measure of the pastoral-pedagogical attitude towards such a sinner. Therefore, both the priest and the entire Church will look differently at a woman brought up by a pioneer, a Komsomol member, if she heard the word "repentance", then only in relation to stories about some dark and ignorant grandmothers who curse the world, if she heard about Gospel, then only from the course of scientific atheism, and whose head was stuffed with the code of the builders of communism and other things, and to that woman who is in the current situation, when the voice of the Church, directly and unequivocally testifying to the truth of Christ, is heard by everyone.

In other words, the point here is not a change in the attitude of the Church towards sin, not some kind of relativism, but the fact that people themselves are in varying degrees of responsibility in relation to sin.

Why do some pastors believe that marital relations are sinful if they do not lead to childbearing, and recommend abstaining from physical intimacy in cases where one spouse is non-church and does not want to have children? How does this compare with the words of the Apostle Paul: "do not deviate from one another" (1 Cor. 7:5) and with the words in the rite of wedding "marriage is honorable and the bed is not filthy"?

It is not easy to be in a situation where, say, an unchurched husband does not want to have children, but if he cheats on his wife, then it is her duty to avoid bodily cohabitation with him, which only indulges his sin. Perhaps this is exactly the case that the clergy warn about. And each such case, which does not involve childbearing, must be considered very specifically. However, this does not in any way abolish the words of the wedding rite “marriage is honest and the bed is not bad”, just this honesty of marriage and this badness of the bed must be observed with all restrictions, warnings and admonitions, if they begin to sin against them and retreat from them.

Yes, the apostle Paul says that "if they cannot restrain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to be inflamed" (1 Cor. 7:9). But he saw in marriage undoubtedly more than just a way to direct his sexual desire in a legitimate direction. Of course, it’s good for a young man to be with his wife instead of fruitlessly inflaming up to thirty years and earning himself some kind of complexes and perverse habits, therefore, in the old days, they got married quite early. But, of course, not everything about marriage is said in these words.

If a 40-45-year-old husband and wife who already have children decide not to give birth to new ones, does this mean that they should give up intimacy with each other?

Starting from a certain age, many spouses, even those who are churched, according to the modern view of family life, decide that they will not have any more children, and now they will experience everything that they did not have time when they raised children in their younger years. The Church has never supported or blessed such an attitude towards childbearing. Just like the decision of a large part of the newlyweds to first live for their own pleasure, and then have children. Both are a distortion of God's plan for the family. Spouses, for whom it is high time to prepare their relationship for eternity, if only because they are closer to it now than, say, thirty years ago, again immerse them in corporeality and reduce them to what obviously cannot have continuation in the Kingdom of God . It will be the duty of the Church to warn: there is danger here, if not a red, then a yellow traffic light is on here. Upon reaching mature years, to put in the center of your relations that which is auxiliary, of course, means to distort them, perhaps even destroy them. And in the specific texts of certain pastors, not always with the measure of tact as one would like, but in fact quite correctly, this is said.

In general, it is always better to be more temperate than less. It is always better to strictly fulfill the commandments of God and the Charter of the Church than to interpret them condescendingly towards oneself. Interpret them condescendingly towards others, and try to apply them to yourself with full measure of severity.

Are carnal relationships considered sinful if the husband and wife have come to an age when childbearing becomes absolutely impossible?

No, the Church does not consider those marital relations when childbearing is no longer possible as sinful. But he calls on a person who has reached maturity and either retained, perhaps even without his own desire, chastity, or, on the contrary, who had negative, sinful experiences in his life and who wants to marry at sunset, it is better not to do this, because then he it will be much easier to cope with the urges of your own flesh, without striving for what is no longer appropriate simply by virtue of age.

Maxim Kozlov, archpriest
According to the brochure "The Last Fortress. Conversations about Family Life"
Moscow. Publishing House of the Church of the Holy Martyr Tatiana, 2004.

Questions about bodily abstinence during fasting are from the category of those that concern not only many spouses, but also young people who are just about to get married. As a rule, people are embarrassed to ask such questions to the priest in the temple. However, it is very difficult to answer them by mail, without knowing anything about life experience, the degree of churching of the questioners, and relationships in their families. Therefore, in this article we will simply try to figure out: why does the Church place such a high value on marital continence? What did the holy fathers and modern ascetics think about this?

It is well known that fasting in Orthodoxy has never been perceived as a kind of diet, as abstinence from a certain kind of food. The main content of fasting is bringing a person closer to God through fervent prayer, good deeds, fighting evil within oneself and limiting what distracts us from preparing for eternity.

Fasting is called upon to restore the normal hierarchy of values: spiritual needs and the life of the soul in general must always prevail over the aspirations and demands of the body. This does not mean at all that everything related to the bodily nature is sinful and should be abolished - you just need to correctly place the accents: what is important in a person’s life, and what is secondary.

fasting time- this is the time of the liberation of the soul from the oppression of bodily needs and pleasures, which, as you know, enslave the spirit and put a person on the same level with the animal world. Therefore, from ancient times, Christians with families tried to fast not only in prayer and abstinence from meat and dairy foods, but also limited themselves in marital relations, thereby bringing a good sacrifice to God.

Why does the Church place such high value on marital abstinence, and what benefits can it bring to the family? For clarity, I will use the mathematical method of "proof by contradiction" ...

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of intimate relationships in a person's life: they affect the most hidden depths of the personality. Millions of novels, poems and songs are the anthem of love. When it truly flares up in the heart, everything around is transformed and illuminated by some special, unearthly radiance.

However, after the fall, intimate relationships, like all human nature, bear a heavy seal of distortion and deformation. Remarkable English thinker and writer Clive Staples Lewis wrote that any sin is “a distortion of the energy that God breathed into us... The Lord wants to create Music with our help, but we are false. He wants to draw a self-portrait, we turn it into a caricature.

Of course, in itself the sexual need is no more moral or immoral than, say, the need for food. Another thing is the behavior of people in meeting needs. If intimate relationships do not contradict the commandments of the Gospel, then the grace of God sanctifies them. Otherwise, anomalies arise in marital relations: perversions, infidelity, mental and physical illnesses come.

There are wonderful words in the Bible: “Many have died of satiety, but he who is temperate will add life to himself”(Sir. 37, 34). And this applies not only to food, but to everything that fills a person's life, including marriage.

Satiation inevitably pushes a person in search of new vivid sensations, deprives bodily communication of an aura of tenderness, sensitivity and reverence for his beloved half. And then people look for a way out where there is none: in debauchery and depravity, infidelity and betrayal, and they go further and further into a dead end... Where is the way out?

"Everything needs a measure"- truly infinitely wise words. But how to apply them to this delicate topic? Where can one find a true and authoritative criterion of where the permissible ends and the sinful begins? It is reasonable to turn to the centuries-old experience of church families, which are much stronger than secular families.

Since ancient times, the Church has urged its children to make it their rule and norm to abstinence on the days of all four fasts, on the eve of great feasts, before participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and also on the eve of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday throughout the year. Apostle Paul wrote about it like this: “Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for the exercise in fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you with your intemperance”(1 Corinthians 7:5). Such abstinence is a real feat, which people took upon themselves for the sake of God by mutual agreement, and from which they received great benefit.

Violation of these norms is dangerous not only for parents, but also for their descendants. Somehow reverend Leonid Optinsky hosted spouses who had a mentally ill son. The saint explained that this illness was the punishment of the Lord for their sexual intemperance on the eve of major church holidays. Reverend Seraphim of Sarov said that due to non-observance of the moral purity of marital relations during fasts and fasting days, children may be born stillborn. And wives often die in childbirth if they do not honor church holidays and Sundays.

Rev. Nil the Myrrh-streaming in his "Posthumous Teachings" specifically warned women against intimacy with their husbands during pregnancy. This threatens the physical health of the child and causes him great spiritual harm. Note that the scientific literature also discourages intercourse during the first and last two to three months of pregnancy. In this case, of course, not spiritual consequences are taken into account, but only the course of embryonic development.

For those who at first find these tips too difficult, I would like to quote the wise words of the famous Athos ascetic of our days Schemamonk Paisios of the Holy Mountain: “Marriage is a topic that cannot be clearly defined, since all people cannot live according to the same pattern. There are those who, having entered into a marriage union, gave birth to one, two, three children, and then live in purity. Others enter into marital intimacy only during childbearing, and the rest of the time they live like brother and sister. Others abstain only during the period of fasting, and then have a close relationship. Some people can't even do that. There are those who have fellowship in the middle of the week to be clean three days before Divine Communion and three days after Divine Communion. Some stumble even here. I believe that it is wrong to marry only in order to eat, sleep and have carnal pleasures, for all this is carnal, and a person is not only flesh, but also a spirit. The flesh is to aid in the sanctification of the soul, and not to destroy the soul.”

There is an opinion that interruptions in sexual life harm the body. But even from a medical point of view, this is a delusion: according to the observations of the world-renowned Austrian physician and psychologist Viktor Frankl, complete abstinence or temporary renunciation of sexual life is absolutely harmless. On the contrary, during abstinence, people retain valuable internal energy and experience a powerful spiritual and intellectual upsurge.

And finally, I would like to say that the temporary restriction of marital affection is the best way to maintain the trepidation of the relationship and ensure that the beloved half is always desired and the only one. Nothing preserves the mutual desire of husband and wife for each other so much as the need at times to abstain from marital intimacy. And nothing kills, does not turn marital intimacy into making love, as the absence of restrictions.

Priest Jacob Korobkov