Dear Friends,

Homily on Marriage

By Saint John Chrysostom

...let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife that she reverence her husband. (Eph. 5:33)

A certain wise man, when enumerating which blessings are the most important included “a wife and husband who live in harmony" (Sir. 25:1). In another place he emphasized this: “A friend or a companion never meets one amiss, but a wife with her husband is better than both.” (Sir. 40:23). From the beginning God in His providence has planned this union of man and woman, and has spoken of the two as one: male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27), and there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28).

There is no relationship between human beings so close as that of husband and wife, if they are united as they ought to be. When blessed David was mourning for Jonathan, who was of one soul with him, what comparison did he use to describe the loftiness of their love? Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women (II Sam. 1:26). The power of this love is truly stronger than any passion; other desires may be strong, but this one alone never fades. This love (eros) is deeply planted within our inmost being. Unnoticed by us, it attracts the bodies of men and women to each other, because in the beginning woman came forth from man, and from man and woman other men and women proceed.

Can you see now how close this union is, and how God providentially created it from a single nature? He permitted Adam to marry Eve, who was more than sister or daughter; she was his own flesh! God caused the entire human race to proceed from this one point of origin. He did not, on the one hand, fashion woman independently from man, otherwise man would think of her as essentially different from himself. Nor did He enable woman to bear children without man; if this were the case she would be self-sufficient.

Instead, just as the branches of a tree proceed from a single trunk, He made the one man Adam to be the origin of all mankind, both male and female, and made it impossible for men and women to be self-sufficient. Later, He forbade men to marry their sisters or daughters, so that our love would not be limited to members of our families, and withdrawn from the rest of the human race. All of this is implied in Christ’s words: He who made them from the beginning made them male and female (Matt. 19:4).

A selection from On Marriage and Family Life by St. John Chrysostom, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986

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With prayers.
Hayr Simeon
July 29, 2007