The Interrelation of Eucharist and Marriage: The Mission of the Parish in Forming Communicants and Spouses in Holiness
Eucharist and holy matrimony are foundational
practices of the Orthodox Church, obviously celebrated with great
frequency. Unfortunately, many
communicants and spouses do not perceive their deep interrelation and profound
spiritual significance. In a time when
popular practices and attitudes concerning marriage and sexuality reflect
contemporary cultural trends far more than Orthodox teaching, a crucial calling
of the parish is to draw on the resources provided by these sacraments to
enable husband and wife to make their common life a sign of the salvation of
the world.
The
challenges in doing so are great. It is
widely accepted today in western culture that marriage and sexuality concern
nothing more than the consent of autonomous individuals to order their intimate
and familial affairs as they see fit.
The same may be said of religious affiliation, which serves the
preferences of individuals for meeting their perceived needs in a spiritual
setting that increasingly resembles a commercial marketplace. Trends in both
areas underwrite an individualistic view of life for which God becomes
irrelevant or an idol crafted in one’s own image.
This
paper makes three primary claims about the interrelation of Eucharist and
marriage in response to these cultural dynamics. First, Orthodoxy understands Eucharist and
marriage to enact covenantal communions that change the very identity of those
who share in them. Together with these new identities come obligations to
fulfill the calling that participation brings.
Second, Eucharist and marriage involve physical actions that transcend
the merely physical in their significance.
They thus contradict the Gnostic tendency to separate “body” and
“person” so common in both past and present cultural sensibilities, especially
with reference to sexuality. Third, both
sacraments share a common motif of sacrifice, as husband and wife wear the
crowns of martyrdom in holy matrimony as they offer themselves and one another
to the Lord with whom they commune in the Eucharist. The interrelation of these holy mysteries
concerns the fulfillment of the human
person and, ultimately, of the creation itself in Christ.
The first
theme of covenantal communion, which is shared by Eucharist and marriage, is
present from the beginning of the biblical narrative with reference to the
relationship between man and woman. The
Genesis reference to marriage as a “one flesh” union concerns not merely the
momentary joining of bodies, but the full personal union of two people, created
as male and female in the image and likeness of God. Jesus Christ interpreted this passage in Matthew
19:6 with reference to the permanence appropriate to marriage: “So they are no longer two, but one
flesh. What God has joined together, let
no one separate.” References in the Old
Testament to Yahweh as the husband of Israel, and of His faithfulness to her
despite her infidelity, are surely more consistent with a view of marriage as
an abiding covenant than as a merely legal contract easily dissolved when a
party does not meet its requirements.
(Hos. 2:19ff.)
Since
Christ compared the heavenly kingdom to a wedding feast with some frequency,
and performed His first sign in John’s gospel at a marriage banquet,
commonalities between Eucharist and marriage should not be surprising. The
covenantal nature of marriage is not arbitrary, but reflects the intimate union
of man and woman as “one flesh.” For
example, in his response to the sexual libertines of Corinth, St. Paul argues
that even casual sexual encounters with prostitutes accomplish this one flesh
union. Sexual intimacy is so profound
that he compares its gravity to joining oneself with Christ. He asks rhetorically “Shall I therefore take
the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one
body with her? For as it is written ‘The
two shall become one flesh.’ But he who
is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” (1 Cor. 6: 15-17) For St. Paul, profound matters of identity
are at stake in all acts of sexual intimacy, for they concern our participation
in covenantal relations with the Lord and with another human being.
Likewise,
St. Paul stressed to the Corinthians that the Eucharist enacts a deep personal
union both with Christ and one another in His Body, the Church. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it
not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of
Christ. Because there is one bread, we
who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (10:16-18)
Eucharistic communion with the Lord is so real that participating in it
unworthily, “without discerning the body,” brings judgment and even death. (11: 28-30)
Even as we can profane the martial nature of intercourse by relations with
prostitutes or other forms of promiscuity, we can profane the Eucharist by not
being rightly in communion with the Lord and other members of the His Body, the
Church. Such actions fall short of the
covenantal nature of both sacraments.
Those who perform them disorient themselves from the fulfillment of the
salvific purposes God seeks to accomplish through these holy mysteries.
Since St.
Paul presents both marriage and the Eucharist as such profound acts of union,
it is not surprising that he uses the marital imagery of “one flesh” in
Ephesians 5: 31-32 as a sign of the relationship between Christ and the
Church. Likewise in 2 Corinthians 11:2,
he states that he “I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to
her one husband.” Various church fathers
make similar connections between marriage, Eucharist, and the Church. For example, after describing how the “one
flesh” union of marriage includes husband, wife, and child, St. John Chrysostom
notes that “Our relationship to Christ is the same; we become one flesh with
Him through communion…” St. Nicholas Cabasilas also affirmed also that, through
the Eucharist and the other holy mysteries, “Christ comes into us and dwells in
us, He is united to us and grows into one with us” such that we “become one
flesh with Him.” Such references
indicate that the marital union of husband and wife is so profound that it is a
fitting image for both the sacramental and ecclesial dimensions of the
Christian life. As Vigen Guroian notes,
The
Orthodox Church describes sexual intercourse as synousia, a term which means
consubstantiality. Husband and wife are
joined together as one in holy matrimony.
They are an ecclesial entity, one flesh, one body incorporate of two
persons who in freedom and sexual love and through their relationship to Christ
image the triune life of the Godhead and express the mystery of salvation in
Christ’s relationship to the Church.
For man
and woman to “express the mystery of salvation in Christ’s relationship to the
Church” is to fulfill their primordial calling as those created in the image
and likeness of God. Their communion
with one another is to become a sign of their communion with the Lord in the
Eucharist and the Church. They are no
longer isolated individuals, but members of a “one flesh” union that joins them
profoundly to the spouse, the Lord, and His Body.
A second
theme connecting Eucharist and marriage is that they both involve physical
actions which have a significance that extends beyond the merely physical. As St. Paul instructed the Corinthians, even
momentary physical joining with a prostitute results in a unity parallel in
significance to one’s unity with Christ. The physical gestures of intercourse obviously
have a decisive shaping role in the lives of people in so many ways, both for
good and for bad. Simply to describe
such actions with biological precision does not convey their full
significance—spiritually, morally, psychologically, or socially. Indeed, such
disparate acts as adultery, rape, incest, and faithful conjugal union are not
distinguished merely by descriptions of bodily actions.
Likewise,
an account of the physical movements involved in the Eucharist does not plumb
the depths of their meaning. As Fr.
Alexander Schmemann taught, an absolute division of symbol and reality in
sacramental theology is contrary to the experience of the Church, for the
sacraments manifest, realize, and reveal what they symbolize. It is through participation in them that
human beings participate in the life of God in a way that is both real and
mystical. Paul Evdokimov made the similar point that the Holy Mysteries “do not
merely give, but contain, grace and are channels; they are at the same time the
instruments of salvation and salvation itself, as is the Church.” While the Eucharist involves the same
physical capacities for eating and drinking as are used at any meal, its
significance is nothing short of “one flesh” union with Christ in the heavenly
banquet.
In a
parallel fashion, it is impossible to separate with complete clarity the
physical joining of husband and wife in intercourse from any other dimension of
their shared life. Their physical union
is inextricably entwined with the various dimensions of their relationship,
including parenthood and the multilayered aspects of their identity as a couple
and members of a family. The physical
symbol of their union manifests the reality of their marriage as persons at a
deep level. Likewise, the eating and
drinking of the Eucharist is an epiphany of true participation in the life of
the Lord and His heavenly kingdom. This close identification is reflected in
Christ’s teaching, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53)
In both marriage and Eucharist, physical gestures function as epiphanies
of grace and full participation in the life of another. To regard them as anything less than
manifestations of covenantal communion is to degrade their significance.
These
claims reflect the Incarnational theology of Orthodoxy, as Jesus Christ is both
fully divine and fully human. Divinity,
then, is not a stranger to physicality, but joined with it in the Person of
Christ. The God-Man performed many
physical signs and gestures that conveyed the fullness of God’s kingdom for
those enduring bodily struggles such as hunger, sickness, and even death. In this light, salvation is not an escape
from physicality, but its fulfillment, restoration, and ultimate transformation
in the heavenly reign.
As St.
Paul taught, the Lord’s bodily resurrection is the “first fruits” of hope for
the blessing of the entire creation, including its material aspects, in the
eschatological Kingdom. (1 Cor. 15:20) In arguing that “the body is not for
fornication, but for the Lord,” he appeals to Christ’s resurrection as the
basis of our hope to also be raised up by God.
In contrast to the Gnostic inclinations of his libertine opponents, St.
Paul reminds the Corinthians that their bodies are both members of Christ and
temples of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor.
6:15, 19). Since God intends whole human
beings—body, soul, and spirit– to participate in heavenly glory, how one lives
in the physicality of the body plays a decisive role in one’s faithfulness to
the incarnate Son of God, now risen and ascended bodily into heaven.
In this
context, the body is neither intrinsically evil nor spiritually
irrelevant. And given Christ’s use of
the wedding feast as an image of the heavenly banquet, as well as the marital
imagery of Revelation (e.g., 19:7-9, 21:2) for the consummation of all things,
it is certainly not merely coincidental that the fulfillment of the
relationship between man and woman has figured so prominently in the
eschatological hope of Christianity from its origins. From the “one flesh”
language of Genesis to the marriage banquet of the Lamb in Revelation, God
brings those created male and female in His image and likeness more fully into
communion with Him and one another. Their “one flesh” union finds its
fulfillment in the heavenly banquet in which husband and wife participate
already as they wear the crowns of the Kingdom.
They stand together in the unfolding narrative of the fulfillment of
God’s gracious intensions for human beings to become participants in the loving
communion of the Holy Trinity.
God’s
salvation is the fulfillment, not the annihilation, of His good creation,
including the physical dimensions of our existence. Especially with reference
to marriage, Chrysostom taught that the desires of husband and wife for one
another are not simply evil, but a dimension of human nature “still basically
good after the Fall.” Because “Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled,”
Chrysostom chided husbands for excusing themselves from services after intimate
union with their wives. His affirmed
that God has created man and woman as “ontologically ideal counterpart[s].”
Indeed, “husband and wife are one body in the same way as Christ and the Father
are one.” Marriage provides a “safe haven” for the fulfillment of desire and
the most intimate union of man and woman “to be a living image, or icon, of the
marriage of Christ the Bridegroom with His Bride, the Church.” Here the “one flesh” union of husband and
wife finds its natural and eschatological culmination.
Physical
hunger and thirst, together with the social and communal dimensions of table
fellowship, also find their completion in the heavenly banquet in which
communicants participate mystically in the Eucharist. Even as marriage plays a key role in the
biblical drama, so do meals. The Passover seder is the Jews’ ongoing
participation in the salvation of the Hebrew people from slavery and death in
Egypt at the time of the Exodus. In the context of Passover, Christ reveals
that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. To eat His flesh and drink His blood is to
participate in a new covenant of deliverance from death itself. The requirement of nourishment for physical
existence becomes the basis for profound spiritual imagery which underwrites
the importance of bodily actions for matters beyond what they typically signify
in this world. In the context of
historic Christian faith, marital union and table fellowship both become
channels of participation in God’s reign.
The third
theme of commonality for the Eucharist and marriage is that of sacrifice. The connection is obvious with reference to
the Eucharist in which communicants receive the Body and Blood of the true
Passover Lamb. Participation in the
spiritual sacrifice of the Eucharist calls and enables communicants to join
themselves to the one offering of the Son as they lift up every dimension of their lives to the Holy
Trinity for blessing and fulfillment.
Perhaps
less explicit are the sacrificial themes of marriage, though they are also
profound. For example, St. Paul teaches
that spouses should “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” and
that husbands should love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her.” (Eph. 5:21ff) In becoming “one flesh,” both spouses
sacrifice the identity of autonomous individuals and enter into a joint
ascetical struggle of dying to their self-centeredness out of love for the
other. In this sense, Chrysostom notes
that “it is possible for us to surpass all others in virtue by becoming good
husbands and wives.”
The
challenges of offering their common life to the Lord– in all its interpersonal,
economic, and physical aspects—presents a myriad of a opportunities for spiritual
growth to the man and the woman, both as unique persons and as a couple. Faithful marriage places their erotic love
in a context directed toward the Kingdom, to the fulfillment of all human
desire in union with the Holy Trinity.
From the marriage service itself, in which husband and wife wear
martyrs’ crowns of the Kingdom, their union is directed toward theosis, the
fulfillment of their primordial calling together in the image and likeness of
God. As Guroian comments,
God has
intended from all eternity that she [the Church] and Christ should be united as
Bride and Groom so that the world might be saved from sin and death. Christian marriage is a sign and foretaste of
a world reconciled in Christ to God.
That is no mere analogy, but belongs to the deepest symbolism that God
has built into the fabric of his creation.
God created and constituted man and woman as complementary beings who in
union constitute a single humanity, a single Adam-Eve existence. In marriage, man-and-woman-together is a sacramental
sign of the union of Christ and the Church.
Christian
marriage is an ongoing participation in the Eucharist, in the heavenly wedding
banquet that manifests God’s salvation.
The humble physical elements of bread and wine find fulfillment as the
Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and become our participation in the
life of heaven. Likewise, the intimate
personal union of man and woman becomes in holy matrimony their entrance to the
heavenly realm, their participation by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity as
distinct persons sharing a common life and love. For human beings to do that requires profound
asceticism as they become more fully communicants and participants in Christ’s
sacrifice for the life of the world.
Their
ascetical offering helps to restore man and woman to their natural state in
God’s image and likeness. St. John of Damascus taught that “Repentance is the
returning from the unnatural to the natural state, from the devil to God,
through discipline and repentance.” The return to the natural state is a
process of the healing of the soul from slavery to the passions, which requires
in marriage a sacrificial offering of both spouses in accordance with God’s
salvific purposes. There certainly is a
difference between desire in accord with humanity’s God-given nature and the
passions that disorient and distort those desires. For example, Chrysostom
observed that “The body has a natural desire, not however for fornication, or
for adultery, but simply for sexual intercourse. The body has a natural desire not for
gluttony, but simply for nourishment, and not for drunkenness, but simply for
drink.” The sacrificial offering of marriage directs
those innate desires to their proper end of bringing man and woman more fully
in union with one another and with the Lord.
St.
Gregory Palamas describes insightfully the ascetical struggle of sacrifice:
Will not
the passionate part of the soul, as a result of this [ascetical] violence, be
also brought to act according to the commandments? Such forcing, by dint of habituation, makes
easy our acceptance of God’s commandments, and transforms our changeable
disposition into a fixed state. This
condition brings about a steady hatred towards evil states and dispositions of
the soul; and hatred of evil duly produces the impassibility which in turn
engenders love for the unique Good. Thus one must offer to God the passionate
part of the soul, alive and active, that it may be a living sacrifice.
Such
asceticism is neither an escape from nor a repudiation of the body, but instead
the participation of the body—as well as the whole person– in holiness. As Palamas noted, “so, too, in the case of
those who have elevated their minds to God and exalted their souls with divine
longing, their flesh also is being transformed and elevated, participating
together with the soul in the divine communion, and becoming itself a dwelling
and possession of God; for it is no longer the seat of enmity towards God, and
no longer possesses desires contrary to the Spirit.” While this statement
arises from a monastic context, it is certainly applicable to those who live in
the world, including married couples. Marital asceticism does traditionally
concern restraint in matters of intimacy, but it is surely not limited to them.
Through the many struggles of their shared life, husband and wife possess an
almost limitless number of opportunities to deny themselves out of love for one
another, their children, and family members.
For example, Chrysostom advised married couples to
Pray
together at home and go to Church; when you come back home, let each ask the
other the meaning of the readings and prayers.
If you are overtaken by poverty, remember Peter and Paul, who were more
honored than kings or rich men, though they spent their lives in hunger and
thirst. Remind one another that nothing
in life is to be feared, except offending God.
If your marriage is like this, your perfection will rival the holiest of
monks.
Fr.
Stanley Harakas observes that marriage and family provide the context “in which
most Orthodox Christians…grow toward theosis.”
Given the great challenges presented to holiness by difficulties
encountered in family life, he notes that a relationship which images the
loving union of the Holy Trinity is possible only when the spouses
intentionally offer themselves to God as the “third partner” in the marriage.
In such a context, husband and wife may “contribute to making the home—for
parents and children alike—a workshop for growth toward theosis.”
The
common Orthodox ascetical practice of periodic abstinence from marital
relations must be seen in proper context, for it does not imply that sexual
union is sinful or should be repudiated by all married couples. Fr. John Chryssavgis notes that the petitions
of the wedding service itself present chastity as “the integrity of the human
person” open to the couple, not simply as physical virginity. In prayers that recall fertile married couples
from the Old Testament and pray for similar blessings for the bride and groom,
the service “shows no reservation towards sexuality, no trace of despicability,
or even suspicion.” From its
first centuries, the Church has rejected Gnostic and Manichean condemnations of
the goodness of the physical body, as well as of sexual union in marriage. St. Gregory the Theologian affirmed marriage
with great rhetorical force:
Are you
not yet wedded to flesh? Fear not this
consecration; you are pure even after marriage.
I will take the risk of that. I
will join you in wedlock. I will dress
the bride. We do not dishonor marriage
because we give a higher honor to virginity.
I will imitate Christ, the pure Groomsman and Bridegroom, as He both
wrought a miracle at a wedding and honored wedlock by His presence. Only let marriage be pure and unmingled with
filthy lusts. This only I ask: receive safety from the Gift and give to the
Gift the oblation of chastity in its due season, when the fixed time of prayer
comes around.
Marital
fasting is a tool for directing the desires of husband and wife to God and for
the healing of unhealthy passions. When
couples agree to abstain from relations in order to devote themselves to more
focused prayer for a period of time, they direct their desire for communion
ultimately to the heavenly banquet of which their marital union is a sign. They recognize that even the most blessed
marriage on earth does not manifest fully the “one flesh” union with one
another and with God to which they are called.
As H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., notes, the marital fast enables spouses
to “seek enjoyment without being distracted by a self-indulgence that turns
one’s heart from God…The goal is to delight in God’s creation without being
mastered by this delight, to find in this enjoyment rightly taken an
opportunity through which to pass beyond this enjoyment to His Kingdom…” The
point is not legalism, but eschatological hope for greater participation in the
life of God by the man and woman who wear the crowns of the Kingdom. Evdokimov notes on these matters that “the
Church offers only elements for a basis of judgment. She exerts no constraint; her task is to free
man [and woman] from all forms of enslavement in order to make him [and her]…
free citizen[s] of the Kingdom.”
A
parallel with the Eucharist is helpful here.
Fasting from food does not imply that the fruits of the earth are
evil. The problem is that corrupt human
beings typically have unnatural attachments to food, drink, and other sources
of pleasure. Fasting provides an
opportunity to reorient one’s desires for fulfillment from the stomach to the
Lord and to keep the blessing of physical nourishment in its proper place.
Moreover, the innate human desires for food and drink are not evil in
themselves. But they certainly are
corrupted and play a paradigmatic role in the disintegration of humanity from
the beginning of the biblical narrative.
In the Eucharist, however, the very purposes of physical nourishment are
fulfilled and restored as bread and wine become our participation in the life
and fellowship of heaven.
In order
to feast rightly at the heavenly banquet, we must fast at times from lesser
ones. Self-restraint with reference to physical appetites is necessary for the
celebration of the Eucharist. The servers
must certainly refrain from consuming the gifts before the service begins. The self-restraint of fasting from other food
and drink in preparation for the Eucharistic feast does not imply that the
desire to satisfy daily hunger and thirst are somehow sinful, but instead
reorients our appetites toward communion with God and one another. As with marriage, some level of sacrifice is
necessary in order to participate in the fullness of the blessings already
foreshadowed in the world as we know it.
While Eucharist and marriage do not call those who participate in them
to abstain completely from the bodily pleasures of nourishment or intimacy,
they do call for spouses and communicants to join their lives more fully to the
one offering of the Son, which requires ascetical struggle in various
forms. In both holy mysteries, humble
human gifts become our true personal participation in the heavenly banquet.
The
greatest challenges in integrating Eucharist and marriage are not theoretical,
as the texts of the services and the writings of ancient and contemporary
teachers describe them clearly. In our
ever changing world, however, it is difficult to form men, women, and youth in
ways that enable them to embrace the deep connections of these holy
mysteries. Perhaps a first step in that
direction is to resist the division between “religion” and “real life” so
commonly assumed in modern western culture. The conventional wisdom, adopted at
least in practice by many Orthodox, is that the distinctive teachings of the
faith amount to little more than sectarian idiosyncrasies that must be
relegated to the private sphere, where they become matters of mere personal
preference that have little to do with fulfilling the nature of the human
person. If Orthodox Christians are to make a credible witness to the new life
of the Kingdom, they must be formed through their parishes and families to
embrace a distinctive vocation. They
must do so, not as a matter of arbitrary sectarian preference or escape from
reality, but as a persuasive sign that the path they pursue is truly the
salvation of the world. Parishioners must show in their own lives that
Eucharist and marriage serve the healing of human brokenness, not simply
religious ceremonies or antiquated customs.
In order
for the laity to live out this vocation with integrity, clergy, catechists, and
other teachers must instruct them on the deep interrelatedness of Eucharist and
marriage. Since these holy mysteries are
frequently celebrated and quite familiar to parishioners, there is no shortage
of opportunities to challenge the laity to grow in their understanding of how
they impact daily life. It is also
necessary to identify and reject popular ideas and practices that corrupt the
beliefs and behavior of so many parishioners on questions of marriage,
sexuality, and family. If the Church
does not address these matters explicitly and effectively, it should not be
surprising when the dominant ethos of our times influences parishioners
profoundly and negatively.
Of equal
importance is the need to present the ascetical dimensions of the Eucharist
life and of marriage in ways that are not reduced to legalism or rote
traditionalism. Since the matters at
stake very much concern bodily appetites, parishioners will find strength in
fighting their passions and reorienting their natural desires in holy ways
through appropriate forms of self-denial with food and other sources of
pleasure.
The
Eucharistic theology of Schmemann is helpful at this point, for he teaches that
the world
to come in which we participate in the Divine Liturgy is our same world,
already perfected in Christ, but not yet in us.
And since God has created the world as food for us and given us food as
means of communion with Him, of life in Him, the new food of the new life which
we receive from God in His Kingdom is Christ Himself. He is our bread—because from the very
beginning all our hunger was a hunger for Him and all our bread was a symbol of
Him, a symbol that had to become reality….and all food, therefore, must lead us
to Him.
Christ
did not obliterate hunger, food, or the body.
Instead, He fulfilled them, making them more real as channels of
participation in the blessedness of the Kingdom. It is incumbent upon those who
receive the Eucharist to display a life in this world which bears witness to
Christ’s divinization of the human being. Our participation in the Eucharistic
offering is not limited to the service of the Divine Liturgy, but must permeate
every dimension of our life in the world, including what secular society thinks
of as the “real life” matters at stake in sex, marriage, and family. Otherwise,
we have failed to embrace the truth that “Christ has offered all that exists…We
are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist.” Hence,
Schmemann claims that the calling of the priesthood is “to reveal to each
vocation its priestly essence, to make the whole life of all men the liturgy of
the Kingdom, to reveal the Church as the royal priesthood of the redeemed world.”
Schmemann
teaches that the same is true of holy matrimony, for the entrance of bride and
groom into the Church “does not merely symbolize, but indeed is the entrance of
marriage into the Church, which is the entrance of world into ‘the world to come’,
the procession of the people of God—in Christ—into the Kingdom.” The glory of
humankind as the king of creation in Genesis finds fulfillment in each new
family blessed as “a kingdom, a little church, and therefore a sacrament of and
way to the Kingdom.” The spouses’ crowns of martyrdom reject the idolization of
the family—and of romance, sex, social respectability, personal happiness and
of other worldly values—and serve as signs of the ultimate reality in which
their marriage enables them to participate. The common vocation of human beings
is also that of married people: “to follow Christ in the fullness of His
priesthood: in His love for man and the
world, His love for their ultimate fulfillment in the abundant life of the
Kingdom.”
In a
world with very different understandings of what marriage is about, Orthodoxy
calls husbands and wives to live eucharistically. The Church today must discern
how to form communicants and spouses who recognize and embrace the deep
interrelation of Eucharist and marriage as signs of the salvation of the
world. To do so is not only for the
extraordinarily pious or merely a charming idiosyncrasy of a particular
religious or ethnic heritage. It is,
instead, an imperative that arises from our very nature as human beings in the
image and likeness of God, who invites man and woman to dine at the heavenly
banquet and to wear the martyrs’ crowns of those who find new life in His
Kingdom.
By Fr.
Philip LeMasters
Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/easternchristianinsights/2016/01/13/747/
