Prologue V

[5.] The belt tied around their loins repels all impurity and declares, It is good for a man not to touch a woman’ (I Cor. 7:1).

The belt is a symbol of chastity because it wraps around the loins where the sensual desire (symbolically) resides. The freely chosen rejection of marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven is a characteristic property of monasticism. Let us allow Evagrius to interpret and explain himself:

In Jeremiah, it is said, ‘And you shall not take to yourself a wife in this place, for thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters born in this place: “They shall die a foul death” ‘ [Jer. 16. 2-4]. Here is what the word reveals: that (according to the Apostle) ‘the married man is concerned about things of this world, how he may please his wife’, and he is divided; ‘and the married woman is concerned about this world, how she may please her husband’ [1 Cor. 7, 33-34]. It is also clear that ‘they shall die a foul death’ was said by the prophet not just about the sons and daughters who come from a married life. It was also said about those sons and daughters who are begotten in the heart (that is fleshly thoughts and desires) that they shall die in the foul and sickly and enfeebled arrogance of this world and not be prepared for heavenly and eternal life. ‘But the unmarried’, he says, ‘is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord [1 Cor. 7. 32] and will produce the ever blooming and deathless fruits of heavenly life.

Such is the monk, and it is fitting that the monk be thus: abstaining from a wife, having neither son nor daughter in the heart, as mentioned above. Not only that, but he should also be Christ’s soldier not material, not concerned, set apart from business considerations and actions – as the Apostle also said: ‘No soldier embroils himself in the affairs of life, so that he may please the one to whom he signed on’ [2 Tim. 2. 4]. Let the monk make progress in these things, especially as he is one who has given up all the things of this world, and hurries toward the beautiful and good trophies of stillness. How beautiful and opportune! It’s yoke is easy and its burden light’ [Mt 11. 30]: the life is sweet, the struggle delightful.

For those of us who are married (clergy or not) this tells us not to turn our spouses into an idol and not be married to the world – for spiritually we are the ‘Bride of Christ.’

+ Fr. Gregory Wassen