Where Orthodox men are found. How to get married according to the will of God

I feel sorry for this girl. She was looking, most likely, for a person, but she found a traffic light (from Greek, literally - a light-bearer).
Oleg, if you seriously test people with Shugaev’s books and Dushenov’s films about the insidious Talmudic Jews who made Holy Rus' drunk, and even resist the dissolution of weak souls in the spirit of this world, contact a specialist in the psychology of teenagers.
I didn’t understand the most important thing - if you really love someone, then why does the question arise at all: “But why not look for someone more Orthodox, or so that the legs are more authentic, or dad is richer?”
It is very wise that you are going to decide on marriage in two years. There is absolutely no need to rush. Good luck.

Why do you feel sorry for her? Don't you want another person to believe? I don't see anything wrong. I don't test it! I want her to understand what Orthodoxy is and, as a result, understand what kind of person I am.

I showed up at a church where several couples were banned from marrying. One couple was like: the guy is a believer, the girl is not a believer. Then, over time, a believing guy came and, according to the rumors of the parishioners, “he cannot (forbid) to marry a non-believer, let her come to church, and then, over time, they will be married.”

So is it possible to marry a non-believer? I have my own answers to this question, but I would like to take into account the opinions of other people.

So is it possible to marry a non-believer?
There is no prohibition against such marriages in the New Testament. Moreover, there are the following words of the Apostle: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.”

Can a believer after a divorce with a living wife marry a second time. Already on another girl? Is this considered adultery?

Can a believer marry a non-believer?

If you are a Christian, married to an unbeliever, God's Word says you must stay married (see 1 Cor. 7:12, 13). But if you are a single (single) Christian and are considering marrying a non-Christian, don't do it. God's Word says, "Kneel not under another's yoke" (2 Corinthians 6:14).

The most important relationship for a Christian is, of course, the relationship with Jesus Christ. Everything else is secondary. So, if a believer marries a non-believer, he or she decides to ignore what God says. And as you know, it is not wise not to pay attention to God's Word, especially in matters of starting a family.

There is no spiritual unity between the believer and the unbeliever. Not even a hint of it. Why? Because the Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, while the unbeliever is not in the presence of the spirit.

Can a believer, a young man /single/, marry an unbeliever? The Bible is categorical on this issue. Words from 1 Cor. 7:39 "... free to marry whomever she wants, only in the Lord ..." indicate that marriage can only be concluded between "their own by faith." "In the Lord" means "one who belongs to the Lord." The union between a believer and an unbeliever can be and continue if, already in marriage, one of the parties has come to faith in the Lord. If the "unbelieving" side agrees to live with the "believer" /spouse, spouse/, then he /she/ should not leave her /him/. 1 Cor. 7:12-14.
1 Cor. 6:12 "Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial."

How successful the union between the believer /representative of God's people / and the unbeliever /heathen / turned out to be can be read in detail in the book of Judges from the 13th to the 16th chapters. What this alliance turned out to be for the Nazarene Samson is known. Notorious.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO MARRY A NON-BELIEVER?

It is curious that the question is usually asked about marriage. Girls in a patriarchal society can't afford to be picky? Or does “reasonable man” simply refer primarily to women, as every reasonable man fears deep down? There is an easy answer to this question. One must live the church life so fully that there are no unbelievers, neither men nor women, among the contacts. Completely fellow believers!

There is a humorous answer to this question; : and you can’t marry believers, especially believers. It is impossible to marry at all, and those who, when looking at a loved one, are able to think about religion, cannot marry twice. That's when a person goes crazy with love like an ant during a deer rut, when he stops asking permission, then - then you can't get married either, but then the person no longer asks permission;

Is it worth believing a married man ... Tell me how to understand whether a married man loves his mistress or not and is he going to divorce his wife?

And what do you think, is it possible to trust a man who has already betrayed one woman in his life? It all depends on why he initially found a mistress and how he treats his wife.

He lived in a civil marriage for 4 years, relatives put pressure on him and they scheduled a wedding, he went on a business trip and met another, and he didn’t even insist on sex, he just asked to see at least 5 minutes, I didn’t want to meet at all, because I didn’t see any prospects , we live in different cities, I'm 7 years older. In general, the bed was after a week of dating 1 time, he left and that's it, SMS correspondence, calls, etc. began.

Thanks for the kind words and for the great question.

As you understand, most of the problems associated with marriage and family cannot have an unambiguous solution, and it is impossible to give simple advice.

Indeed, the apostle Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians: “If an unbeliever wants to get divorced, let him get divorced; brother or sister in such cases are not related; the Lord has called us to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15)

But it is important to note that this one verse, which allows for such a divorce, is bordered by several verses motivating the preservation of such a marriage:

“12 But to the rest I say, and not the Lord, if any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she is willing to live with him, then he must not leave her; 13 And a wife who has an unbelieving husband, and he agrees to live with her, must not leave him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy... 16 How do you know, wife, that you will not save your husband?

One of my young and non-believing friends asked for advice. He has been friends with a girl for about four years, with whom he studies in the same group at the institute. They have a wonderful relationship and in the last year he proposed to her, but she refused because she believed seven years ago and does not want to marry a non-believer. He agrees to marry, but she does not want to marry an unbeliever and wants him to believe first, but he does not believe. What can you advise him.

…..Dear Stanislav, what fellowship can a believer have with an unbeliever, or light with darkness.
…..All unbelievers, without exception, live according to the will of the evil one (Eph.2,1-3). They will not listen to your advice by definition - unbelievers.
…..There is only one word written for unbelievers in the Bible, namely: repent and believe in the Gospel.
…..Moreover, the Bible (God) does not consider the coexistence of unbelievers to be marriage and does not say anything about it, except, perhaps, the so-called mixed marriages.

Good afternoon, our dear visitors!

Every girl dreams of getting married. Some are obsessed with the idea, others are quietly waiting. The question is, should a girl worry about the fact that she is not married? And is it worth getting married just for show?

We live in a society, among people. Therefore, one way or another, we become unwitting witnesses of various women's destinies. One way or another, but we communicate with women and see the development of their destinies, whether it be: our sisters, close and distant relatives, work colleagues, classmates, classmates, and just acquaintances.

The Lord endowed man with a mind, and not to use it is a sin. Therefore, any vital issues should be approached with intelligence and prudence.

In the old days there was no such thing as divorce. And not at all because in the old days the spouses loved each other so much, but because they approached marriage with all responsibility, realizing that they would have to live their whole lives with their future husband. It doesn't matter if he drinks or hits you; whether he will be poor or just a loser; whether you love him or not.

Marriage, in those days, was perceived as the will of God, which one should obey, because in that submission there is salvation and eternal life. Accordingly, the girls did not look for suitors themselves, but prayed to God that He Himself would send them that groom with whom they would find true family happiness for themselves.

There were no divorces in those distant times also because in difficult life situations, wives always turned to God for help, and the Lord certainly helped them, gave them patience and strength to endure certain life hardships and troubles encountered in family life.

It is in our time that they forgot about God, and if a woman does not like something in family life, then she immediately files for divorce. But if she had asked God for help, sincerely, relentlessly, with humility and contrition, then the Lord would certainly have given her the strength to survive one or another difficult life circumstance.

The Lord is always with us, always ready to help us, you just need to want to accept His Divine help, open your heart to Him, entrust your life to Him.

And if you want the Lord to keep you on all paths of your life, protect you, give you strength and patience, strength and courage, then you should trust God with your life as early as possible, even before your marriage, that is, give God the opportunity to give you the bridegroom with whom you will live in a God-blessed union and inherit eternal life!

This is the key to family happiness - to build your future life together with God, for God's sake and for God.

Repeatedly we become witnesses of how girls, obsessed with the desire to get married as soon as possible - really marry - for the first person they meet, for show, to brag to their friends, and for fear of being left alone.

In most cases, such a marriage lasts no more than two or three years. Then - divorce. And then - the lonely life of a "stale" lonely woman, whom no one is looking at anymore. Is it worth flogging a fever because of two or three years of family life?

Our holy Church gives every girl the opportunity to pray for the gift of family happiness, it is called: “The Prayer of a Maiden for an Honest Marriage.” And this prayer should be read daily by every girl who wants to become a faithful wife and caring mother.

And the Lord, through sincere and persistent prayer, will surely grant the girl a good groom, who, in consequence, will become a good family man and an exemplary father. The only secret is that it is desirable not to have someone specifically in mind, for example, here, they say, I want Vasya or Petya. And you only need to want the one whom God will give, relying in everything on the will of God.

Many girls worry that they even have nowhere to meet a young man, since they themselves do not go anywhere - and this does not matter! There is a known case where the young people just met in the subway, began to meet, and then created a strong Orthodox family.

Many Orthodox girls lead a modest lifestyle, and because of this they worry that they simply have nowhere to meet their future potential husband - but what about the Temple? Again, the case is well-known when a girl and a young man met in the Temple: after the evening service, the young man offered the girl to take her home - and so an acquaintance began, and then - a happy marriage, sanctified by the blessing of God. After all, not only one main thing is to get to know someone, but the main thing is where to get acquainted!

When a girl relies on the will of God in everything, the groom will find her everywhere, for the Lord will show him where his future wife is. I also remember a case when a seminarian was looking for a good Orthodox girl to create a strong family. He prayed daily and often traveled to the holy relics revered in his city, asking for the saint's prayers in search of a future wife.

Approaching the relics themselves, he caught up with one girl standing next to him in line, and also praying before the holy relics of the saint of God that he would help her, a simple modest girl who wants to get married by the will of the Lord, to find quiet family happiness. So they met, next to the relics of the saint. And very soon, after their first meeting, they got married.

So the Lord gives us happiness if we ask Him for it! The only thing that needs to be done for a girl who has a desire to get married is to pray daily with a diligent prayer to the Lord, for granting her a pious spouse. And wherever she is, whatever she does, her future husband will definitely find her!

Let's remember the Old Testament righteous women: Rachel, whom Jacob met while still approaching Harran, at the well where Rachel brought the sheep to water; or the Old Testament Ruth, who, because of a feeling of hunger, once went to his fields to gather ears.

They found a family hearth by the will of God, for they did not specifically look for grooms for themselves - well, they did not water the sheep or gather ears in smart clothes!

This is how we are with you, we don’t know and don’t know when a fateful meeting will happen to us. But, as experience shows, it is precisely at the moment when we least hope for a miracle - that is when it happens to us!

Prayer of a maiden for an honest marriage

ABOUT All-good Lord, I know that my great happiness depends on my loving You with all my soul and with all my heart and on fulfilling Your holy will in everything. Govern yourself, O my God, my soul and fill my heart: I want to please You alone, for You are the Creator and my God. Save me from pride and pride: let reason, modesty and chastity adorn me. Idleness is contrary to You and gives rise to vices, give me a desire for diligence and bless my labors. Your law commands people to live in an honest marriage, bring me, Holy Father, to this title consecrated by You, not to please my desire, but to fulfill Your destiny, for You Yourself said: it is not good for a man to be alone and, having created a wife for him to help, blessed them to grow, multiply and populate the earth. Hear my humble prayer, from the depths of a girl's heart sent to You: give me an honest and pious spouse, so that in love with him and in harmony we glorify You, the merciful God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and forever and ever. Amen.

Discussion: 4 comments

How about a Greek Catholic guy?
I met a good young man, at first I saw a cross, I decided for myself that I was Orthodox. As it turned out, he was a Greek Catholic.
And another question, are the Masons a danger to us?

Answer

1. Hello, Natalia!
   Different religions are a serious problem in relationships. Therefore, evaluate your spiritual strength, to what extent you can cope with all the difficulties that will surely stand in your way. This is also connected with visiting the temple, wedding, baptism of children. The faith of the spouses is still desirable to be one. Therefore, before marriage, resolve this issue with him.
   Masons, to put it mildly, dislike Christians. But a person with sincere faith and firm hope in the will of God should not be afraid of any of their influence. With God blessing!

   Answer

What should be the case with a young man and is there a special prayer for the gift of a spouse?

Answer

1. Prayer of a young man for the gift of a pious bride.
   Prayer to Archangel Raphael.
   “O holy great Archangel Raphael, stand before the throne of God! You, by the grace of the almighty doctor of our souls and bodies, were given to you, the righteous husband Tobit healed from bodily blindness, and his son Tobias, traveling to him, saved you from the evil spirit. I sincerely pray to you, be a guide in my life, save the enemy from all visible and invisible, heal my mental and bodily illnesses, direct my life to repentance for sins and to do good deeds. O holy great Raphael the Archangel! hear me (name), a sinner praying to you, and make me worthy in this and the future life to thank and glorify our common Creator in endless ages of ages.

   Answer

1. What is the difference between falling in love and love, between love and passion?

As a rule, passion is what is for myself, what is for me, what I want, without which I cannot, and love is what I am ready to give to another. Even in the pre-Christian era, Aristotle gave an exact definition of love: it is “the desire for the good of another.” And for a Christian, love is life for the good of another. And if he says: I want him (her) not just earthly happiness, but good eternity, and I don’t need anything else - this is love. And if he says that he wants the same thing, but only with him and take it out and put it down, then this is passion. And further. Love can turn out to be a tragedy, an internal drama for a person in case of inseparability or in the event of a terrible illness of a loved one, and passion is a misfortune that a person brings into the life of another, from which he suffers first of all, and only he himself insofar as.

2. Love, falling in love, to which almost all fiction is devoted, are sent down to man from God, and passion as a kind of bundle of energy, a biochemical reaction - from the evil one?

For the most part, what fiction writes about is still passion. And passion, which, being absolutized, becomes a blasphemous perversion from the evil one, a diabolical parody of what love should be. If the main thing in true love is the sacrifice of oneself for the sake of another, and above all for the eternal good of the other, then in passion it is the possession of another and the desire to have it for oneself. Clive Staples Lewis writes about this very deeply and accurately in his brilliant book “Letters of a Troublemaker”, putting into the mouth of the accomplice of the demon of evil Gnusik various kinds of reasoning that testify to a fundamental misunderstanding by the spirits of malice of what is called Christ's love. In their understanding, love is only a desire to possess and, having destroyed another, make him his own property, while Christian love comes from a fundamentally different beginning.

This does not mean at all that the attraction, emotional, spiritual, spiritual, bodily, that a young man and a girl, a man and a woman feel for each other, is something condemned by the Church and unacceptable for an Orthodox Christian. But this means that the recognition of the priority of loving-passionate striving over all other values ​​of life, including immutable moral ones, is incompatible with true Christianity. Many defenders of such a worldview - from Tolstoy to Bulgakov, from even Solzhenitsyn in The Red Wheel to the still so popular Coelho - usually cite in his justification the words of the Savior spoken by Him to a harlot who was forgiven much, for "she loved much" (Lk. 7, 47). But behind this justification is a fundamental unwillingness to read the Gospel as it is written, because these words clearly speak of love for God, which covers many sins of man. And when he really gets rid of his passions, they become nothing both in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the person himself, who follows the path of spiritual growth not only by head understanding and strong-willed efforts. So these words of Holy Scripture are not about passion and not about amorousness.

As for passion, it certainly manifests itself in a certain kind of biochemical reactions and in the very biophysics of the human body, but this does not explain everything. Since a person is a psychophysical and spiritual-corporeal being, everything that happens to him in his spiritual existence, naturally, is reflected in his bodily composition. But not vice versa. This does not mean that by swallowing this or that pill, causing one or another change in the composition of the blood, lymph or some organs of the body, you can fall in love with another person. It is possible to prolong, as fans of the “blue pill” now well know, sexual intercourse, but you cannot fall in love, just as you cannot overcome your passion, thanks only to some medical procedures.

In Orthodox literature, much has been written about the difference between the Christian and secular understanding of what in Russian is denoted by the same word - love. Let’s name at least “Hundreds on Love” by St. Maximus the Confessor, “Hymns about Divine Love” by St. Simeon the New Theologian, or the reasoning of Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) in the “Fundamentals of the Art of Holiness”.

3. Is the mutual love of the bride and groom obligatory?

No. And it is not even absolutely necessary to desire this, if by love we understand what this word usually means in worldly consciousness as a kind of passionate infatuation with another person. This kind of idealization of his mental and bodily qualities does not allow him to see his beloved as he is, which most often leads to fairly quick consequences - grief in family life, when the illusion or idolization dissipates, and you need to live with a real person, and not with that which you imagined. Therefore, the most prudent and kindness is an even, calm acceptance of another, joy about another, one’s chosen one, a sober, but not flat, not boring, not petty-bourgeois awareness that it is he who is the one whom I want to see next to me and to whom I myself I will try not to be a cross and a burden for his whole life. This is the sound basis for the Christian family. There is no need to create a cult out of passionate love, which has been forming in the non-church consciousness over the centuries. Much stronger than this love is that true conjugal love, when people year after year go through the path of joint acceptance of joys, and troubles, and age-related infirmities and at the same time do not betray each other, they remain together to the end. This is love, which is immeasurably higher than any passion, even if it becomes the basis for creating a family. And this kind of love can be found and, as a rule, is more likely to be found when there is no excessive passion at the beginning of family life. Although I am not saying that youthful, what is called crazy, love cannot then develop into a real serious feeling. Certainly it can. But you do not need to see it as an indispensable condition for creating a family. And if you just treat your chosen one evenly, kindly and calmly and it’s good for you to be with him, but you don’t burn with passion for him, and when you are together, the stars don’t bloom in constellations above your heads, then this is not an obstacle to creating a family . And you do not have to wait for someone else with whom you would like to experience this. I repeat: do not make a cult out of your own love.

4. Some people have been waiting for a great feeling for years, while others choose their spouse from those who are nearby. Who is right?

Of course, it would be unreasonable to “feed” the romanticism of “Scarlet Sails” to your daughter: wait for a handsome prince who will sail on a ship and take you “to a country far away”, where you will be unusually happy with him and surrounded by everything that only a person dreams of . This is an inappropriate extreme. The other, on the contrary, is extreme pragmatism, that in general there should be no feeling, but only a rational calculation: the young man’s age is suitable, his appearance seems to be fearless, his social status is close and nothing in character. Well, here we should have a pie and for the wedding. That is why we will see how to start family life. This is the other extreme.

Probably, for the majority of young Orthodox people, the path lies in the middle: on the one hand, spiritual (albeit not always spiritual) emotional attachment to a person, striving for him, on the other hand, an assessment of the fact that we are united in the main thing, that there are no fundamental worldviews between us. disagreements. And when this coincides, then this is the most sober, wisest approach to arranging family life.

5. What if it seems that you are not capable of love at all, is it necessary to continue to wait and hope to meet the person you need?

It depends what you mean by love. If by love we understand what is described in “Eugene Onegin” and even more so in “Romeo and Juliet” or even in “A Hero of Our Time”, then, of course, it is better not to wait for such emotional states. Perhaps it is fortunate that the Lord does not visit with such passions, which in secular literature are called love. Not necessarily rough-carnal, more often, at least until the 20th century, spiritual, but all these are passions. And therefore, one should not in any way wait and, all the more so, feed their expectation in oneself. But if by the lack of love or the inability to love it, we mean emotional spiritual repulsion from some person who, according to all logical arguments, seems to be good for us, but whom the soul does not accept and do not want to be close to him, and you count the minutes when he or she finally leaves, then, of course, it is extremely undesirable to rape yourself and force you to associate your life with him.

Those who, with faith and hope in God, can live, praying, asking, waiting for the meeting that the Lord will send, will find this meeting. This is evidenced by the entire experience of the life of the Church.

6. When we choose a life partner, who controls this choice - the Lord or ourselves, and what is decisive - Divine or human?

It is impossible to answer this question outside the context of the general Christian worldview, out of connection with a general understanding of the relationship between the Providence of God, the will of God and the freedom of each individual person. Ultimately, we believe, speaking in philosophical language, in the antinomy that nothing happens in this world apart from the Providence of God, as it is said in the Gospel: “… even the hairs on your head are all numbered” (Mt. 10, 30). Nothing determines a person's behavior to such an extent as to consider him free from responsibility for what he does in his life.

In the field of soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, this general principle is formulated by the words of the apostle and evangelist John: “God ... gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3, 16). In the drier language of theology, this is called “the conditional predestination of all of us to salvation,” that is, God’s desire to save each person and giving him the opportunity in any life circumstances, even the most seemingly cramped and difficult to overcome, to make that inner choice that will not deprive salvation, just as he did not deprive the thief on the cross at the last moment of his existence. And the Monk Peter of Athos said that God saves a person not without the person himself, that is, not without his inner response and self-determination.

This general principle applies to Christian marriage. A person chooses a life partner himself or his relatives along with him (which was more in the old days and what happens less and less now). And in this sense, each person is free, since the choice that he makes always corresponds to the measure of his inner aspirations, the measure of his spiritual readiness. A pious and firm in faith young man, especially a seminarian, will not look for a bride in a nightclub. He just won't be there. And if at three o'clock in the morning, accidentally passing by, he sees a girl who came out for a smoke break between dances, then even if she seemed extremely attractive to him, he would go further. And vice versa, the majority of modern students of secular universities, leading a churchly shallow or completely non-church way of life, will not want to see their wife a pupil of the regency or icon painting school of the Moscow Theological Academy for financial, ideological, and carnal reasons. Therefore, as a rule, there is no accidental choice, and even if this kind of accident occurs, it means that it was predetermined by something that is in the depths of a person’s soul, contrary to the external way of his life, and in fact, it turns out that his soul does not reach for what he lives. If this is not the case, then the spark of God will not ignite.

But the freedom of choice of a person does not mean the absence of the Providence of God, the will of God. Sometimes it turns out to be unprofitable for people who outwardly suit each other in everything to be together. It happens that the Lord, through obstacles that suddenly arise, loving His children and wishing them salvation, does not allow a marriage to be created, which, it would seem, by human standards should have taken place. In this sense, I want to recall a story that illustrates this kind of situation. It happened in the mid 80s of the last century. One young, cheerful, beautiful, pious girl, the daughter of a very deep and serious scholar, who later became a priest, was preparing herself for an honest marriage in the Lord, and with the blessing of her spiritual father, with the consent of her parents, she found a groom, who was also a church member from childhood and was raised in a Russian family emigrants outside our Fatherland and who agreed to move to the Soviet Union and stay with her. This marriage at that time was supposed to be especially solemn. A veil was brought from Paris, five or six meters long, and it was supposed to be carried by parish children. And the day was already appointed, and the guests were called, and the pies were baked. And no one knows why, a week before the Wedding, the groom disappeared, leaving a short note in which he wrote that he was refusing marriage. For the girl, this then ended in a serious illness, something like tuberculosis, a long treatment, so that she fully recovered only a year and a half later.

What is this? Injustice, undeserved cruel punishment coming from a deep, sincere, pious person? Outwardly, it seems so. But only another five or six years passed, and the former bride took monastic vows. And now she is the abbess of one of the monasteries, preparing girls for a different service and for a different Bridegroom, leading many people who gather around this monastery for salvation. And now it is clear that that story with the failed wedding happened according to the Providence of God. And when this happens, neither the advice of the confessor, nor the blessing of the parents, nor the absence of external obstacles for this marriage to be concluded, in themselves cannot yet be a guarantee. And we must always leave such a place for the will of God in our lives, not only formally, but also internally. So, at the beginning of the liturgy, the words are pronounced: “Make time for the Lord” (time for the Lord to act). In our life there should always be a time and a place for God to act, because He knows when, to what, to what degree of depth of service each of us can be brought. That girl would have been a very good wife, but she became a wonderful abbess and, God willing, she will serve the Church of God for many more years. This is how it happens that human freedom and the will of God are combined.

7. But if the Providence of God exists and the Lord predetermines events, directing the life path of a person with His hand, then why is the Wedding allowed in those cases when the marriage ends in divorce and the Lord knows this for sure? Why are circumstances not sent that upset the wedding?

Why aren't the kinds of climate changes being sent that would prevent earthquakes, tsunamis, or admonishment to sleepy pilots that would help avoid a plane crash, or much, much more? Because the Providence of God does not imply the computer setting of some puppets, like it happens in virtual games, even if it is a multi-level “Civilization”, which the current generation loves so much. The Lord, according to the words of St. John of Damascus, foresees everything, but does not predetermine everything. He arranges the events of our lives in such a way that we always have the opportunity to choose. We made ten bad choices today, but for the eleventh time we still have a chance to take a step towards the good. This is the predestination of our life, that even if a person goes downhill all the time, and on this path the Lord will not forcibly stop him by the hand, but every time he will give him a chance to change, and so on until the very end. This can happen through internal dispensations, maybe through sorrows and illnesses, maybe through joys, through new meetings. And this is what is predetermined by the Lord in a person's life, so that every time we have the possibility of salvation. But, of course, it is not necessary to understand the Providence of God literally, that, say, these two people must certainly come together and create a strong family.

8. There is a well-known Moscow tradition: young people who decide to get married go to the German cemetery, pray at the grave of the elder Zosima. How can one explain that after such a prayer, when a blessing from above was clearly felt, soon after the Wedding, the marriage is upset? It is not clear: was it then the will of God for marriage or not?

Indeed, there is such a good custom to pray to the righteous of the twentieth century, Schema-Archimandrite Zosima, who, like many other saints, was given the grace to help those who wish to marry to understand God's will about themselves: to be together or not. And if so, then so that their union would be formed good and pious, if not, then so that they would not part as enemies, with irritation and inner anguish, but so that their hearts would peacefully calm down. But grace is a given help that does not force our will, and this should be well understood, especially for those who, for example, having prayed at the tomb of an old man with faith and received an indication to create a family through certain life circumstances, then destroy this family with their own hands. . What is there to nod at the Providence of God? Didn't these people themselves make it fragments of a broken trough? This is precisely the freedom that no blessing can take away and that the first people on earth had. And we know – despite the fact that they had the full measure of God's mercy, all the blessing of God's gifts – into what they turned their freedom. We know what this first family became, as St. John Chrysostom, the original small Church, calls it. And after all, we ourselves do not live in a fairy tale, we understand that the story does not end with the Wedding, but only begins. Sometimes it happens that young people, even after overcoming various kinds of worldly obstacles and praying to the Lord, the Mother of God, some saints, finally get married, but then they find that they lose the desire to fight their own sins. Indeed, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the family breaks up only because people stop fighting with their passions, and only in one case - for some other reason.

9. It is not uncommon that people who seem to be neither miserable nor inferior remain lonely. Are they themselves to blame for the fact that they once rejected or simply did not notice those whom God sent them, or was such a fate destined for them?

It happens that a person does not see what God sends to him and does not accept it as such. And especially when his soul is seized by what seems to him love, but in fact is an improper insult, addiction to another person, passion. When he (she) draws in his heart, for the most part, a fictitious image of his chosen one, who most often rejects the feeling offered to him, then, allowing himself the sweet longing of rejection, in which, with all tears and despondency, there is also inner sweetness, he does not see the one who is nearby with him and with whom hand in hand he could go through life. But if we keep in mind more global meanings, then, of course, not all the prospects of life are visible to us from here. It is no coincidence that the Apostle Paul says: “Now we see, as it were, through a dim glass, guessingly ...” (1 Cor. 13, 12), and only in the future life, when “God be all in all” (1 Cor. 15, 28 ), His plan will be revealed to us clearly, including in relation to the earthly path and the fate of each person. Now we wonder why such a kind and pious woman did not find a life partner? But God knows what temptations she might have had, and how her character would have changed if she had been the mother of a family. Therefore, a Christian is one who, in any life situation, trusts the Providence of God.

10. Sometimes it seems that here he (she) is the only one forever, and then disappointment begins. And it happens that you like several young people at once. How to choose the right groom (bride) and understand which of them is suitable for you as a life partner?

One of the most reliable ways to find out the seriousness of a relationship is to test it with time. We often, from excessive itching, which is called “too unbearable to marry,” invent something for ourselves. And if this something is subjected to at least a six-month test, then nothing will remain of it. Therefore, here you can give simple advice: do not make any fateful decisions during this time, and then you will see what the present, and what the month will not withstand with strong emotional experiences.

11. Can a girl take the initiative in finding a future husband?

Not to madness, not to being hung around the neck of one, second, third. As a rule, the worst thing, even in a worldly sense, is this call, visible in the eyes, this itch of imminent marriage: quickly, quickly, quickly marry someone! And if not for this, then for another. And really, this itch or this search, whatever you call it, is very felt by the opposite sex. Probably, in relation to the pious, timid young man who fell on the heart of an Orthodox girl, she can take a reasonable measure of initiative - think about a possible situation where they could initially meet, for example, being next to each other in a church shop and looking at books. And there is no sin in this. But taking matters into your own hands and directing your own marriage is hardly worth it.

12. Some believe that it is unacceptable for an Orthodox girl to use cosmetics and change her hair color in order to enhance a purely feminine attractiveness. Is this misleading or does it make any sense?

I think the less makeup the better. After all, it is not by external braiding of hair and not by changing one's appearance with the help of blush and lipstick or, God forbid, some kind of surgical interventions, the same plasticity of the face, one should win the heart of another person. And if he fell in love with you as a brunette, then why become a blonde? And if only a blonde is good for him, then repainting in the hope that in five years, when he will already get used to you, you will walk with a natural hair color, this means from the very beginning to lay such disappointments under the foundation of your own relationship and, in general, somehow it does not hurt to deeply appreciate your chosen one. But the right thing is - either he will accept you for who you are, or you don’t need to associate life with such a person at all. This applies equally to other external embellishments. The natural cleanliness and goodness of clothes - this is the most befitting appearance for an Orthodox Christian.

13. Now we have sexuality or, rather, sex appeal, which has become almost the main topic of television, newspapers and magazines, is revered almost as the main human value, especially among young people, including some of the believers.

Alas, the media influence even those who understand that they are guided by a completely non-Orthodox worldview. They inspire us with confidence that falling in love is fornication and sex. And they say that it is natural and therefore good. And although we, as Christians, do not agree that this is good, we agree with the sign of equality. However, the main lie of such a formulation of the question is not in the assessment of “good - bad”, but in what lies behind this equal sign.

In fact, the mutual feelings of two young people of the opposite sex, with their desire to follow the law of God, grow into accepting and recognizing the image of God in each other, in order to admire and love in the other the most perfect individuality with which the Lord endowed him. And in this there is not, and cannot be, anything in itself bad, unkind, and impure.

14. What indispensable virtues should the chosen one have in order not to make a mistake in his choice?

What are the advantages? But love is not for dignity. Fortunately, the deepest, most meaningful love in the world is the love of God for man. As we know, the Lord came to earth not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and one lost sheep is cared for more than the other ninety-nine prosperous ones. And in this sense, in the love of a man and a woman there is a reflection of Divine love. You can love in spite of the infirmities and sins of a person, since there is something in him that resonates in your soul, and you, despite all the turbidity, see in him the image and likeness of God.

Another thing is how to approach the choice of the bride and groom? There is one fairly surefire way to test yourself here - look at how he or she communicates with their parents and decide whether they like it or not. After all, there is a very high probability that in fifteen or twenty years, or even earlier, your current chosen one will communicate with you in the same way or in a very similar way. And if you see that, despite any conflicts, quarrels, resentments, he has patience and love for his parents, a desire not to fence himself off from them, that he has indulgence for their weaknesses, then this can be very important reason for choosing a life partner.

And besides, you need to look at the parents themselves: when choosing a bride, first of all, at her mother, when choosing a groom, at his father. If the mother of the bride does not cause rejection and rejection in the groom (which does not necessarily mean tender love), then this is another very big plus for determining the future wife. Not many years will pass, and she will usually look quite like her mother. The same can be said about the groom in relation to his father. But, of course, all this is not at all necessary. Life is not reducible to such rigid rules. And yet he who listens to these two pieces of advice may be able to avoid many mistakes and sorrows.

15. Whom do you need to pray to meet a worthy life partner?

In itself, the desire to beg, and not just find a future spouse (wife) is very correct. Indeed, church experience says that a good life partner is begged for, and not found in places of leisure, through marriage announcements, or even thanks to a restrained examination of young people standing with you at worship. You need to pray, and the Lord will arrange everything. And here it is important to understand not so much to whom to pray, but how to pray. After all, you can ask for help in this vital matter to be provided to you, and you can also the Savior Himself, and the Mother of God, whose protection extends over every pure Christian family, and the saint whose name you bear, and those saints who revealed example of Christian marriage. Well, let's say, the Monks Peter and Fevronius of Murom or the holy royal martyrs - Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. There are other saints who have shown a marvelous example of pure Christian marriage. You can also pray to those saints to whom your heart is most attached. But it is important, firstly, to pray with some effort, that is, not just to say once: “Holy Saints Peter and Fevronia, send me a good husband!” - and forget about it, but bear this prayer as labor for some time, recognizing for yourself the vital and priority that you seriously and responsibly ask God or His saints. Secondly, you need to pray with faith that the Lord hears this request and that our prayer is not “just in case”, since in parallel we are making many organizational efforts to solve this problem. And if we do not move this prayer to the ninth or tenth place in the system of our internal priorities, then, most likely, it will be heard and fulfilled. And God will send a good and believing life partner.

16. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to find an Orthodox girl outside the church, but how can a young man get to know her here, especially with the aim of creating a Christian family?

It is not surprising that an Orthodox girl cannot be found outside the church. And not only in our days, but also before, because if a girl does not go to church, then she is not Orthodox. Therefore, this is quite a natural logic even for the time when everyone was formally, as it were, Orthodox. How to meet in the temple? But is the life of a church parish limited only to divine services? There are always some things for those who want to help, from very simple ones: cleaning, assistance with restoration, repair - to pilgrimage trips, church charity, care for the orphans and the poor. It seems that while doing this kind of business, you will most likely find a reason and an opportunity to talk and communicate with the one that you would like to see as a future companion of life together.

17. If the future life partner is a parishioner of the same church, will not spiritual attachment to her “interrupt” the mood for prayer during the service?

If a young man really loves a parishioner of the church he himself goes to, then there is nothing embarrassing about this and should in no way distract from prayer and church services. Do all Orthodox husbands and wives, when they are in the service, only think about each other? No, of course, they try to pray about what the Church calls them to pray about.

18. Are men supposed to stand on the right in church and women on the left? Is it possible not to observe this rule for lovers, especially for the bride and groom, and stand in the service together?

Indeed, there is such a tradition, dating back to Byzantine times, when men stood in one half of the temple, women in the other, so as not to be distracted by each other, but reverently pray, remembering that they came to church for prayer, and not for any reason. some other additional communication.

In monasteries and in other comfortable churches, where there is enough space and there is a desire for this by the parishioners and the clergy themselves, this rule is observed to this day. However, we have no reason to consider it an absolute requirement of the Church Charter, and in this sense we should not be indignant to excess when it is not adhered to too strictly and parishioners are accommodated according to the availability of space in the temple. Those who are very embarrassed by this can be advised to go to those monasteries and churches where this separation is observed.

As for the husband and wife, the bridegroom and the bride, then if you can stand side by side and think not about each other, but about worship, then stand. And if you are constantly distracted by the one you love so much and to whom you so want to become closer and dearer, then it is better to stand apart. But personally, it seems to me that it is better for strongly loving spouses to be in different halves of the temple.

19. There are such words in Scripture: “Let your wives be silent in the churches… If they want to learn something, let them ask their husbands about it at home; for it is indecent for a woman to speak in church.”(1 Cor. 14:34-35). But in our time, it often happens that parishioners in the church make remarks to men, especially young ones, which does not contribute to their search for purely Orthodox brides.

In this case, the words of the apostle Paul are interpreted incorrectly. He says that “let the wives be silent in the churches,” meaning refraining from preaching, teaching in the Church, since it is fitting for the priesthood to testify in it: it is precisely this that ascends to the apostles who received the blessing for preaching. The Council of 1917-1918, by the way, also allowed the involvement of the laity, but not the laity, in preaching. So the words of the apostle Paul say something else. Teaching in front of those standing nearby during the service is a sign of low church culture. I do not think that only parishioners do this, and sometimes even parishioners do not behave quite correctly. It's just that this impression is formed because in our churches today there are much more women than men. Another thing is that this should not be welcomed in either case. Every believer must understand that a reasonable and correct way to help a person who does not behave quite correctly in church is not to rebuke him with a loud whisper during the Cherubic Hymn or the Eucharistic Canon, not to look at him menacingly if he passes a candle during reading Gospel or bows on Sunday, but wait until the end of the service, and when the person is left alone, go up to him at the exit and, asking for forgiveness, in the spirit of peace and love, say what he is unconditionally sure of.

20. Is it necessary to stop a love feeling for you if you do not reciprocate the person, but it seems to you that your communication can lead him to faith?

It seems to me that this is too unscrupulous, internally dishonest attitude towards a person. There is no need to bring people to God and the Church in such indirect ways. There is something in this that is nominally called Jesuitism. Therefore, it will be much more honest for a believer not to allow a person who has loving feelings for him to harbor illusions. And in the end, for this honesty, combined with pity and condescension, he will be more grateful that he can open the way to the Church for him faster than any other tricks, even if they are aimed at good.

21. Is friendship possible between a young man and a girl without any further prospects for a common family?

Of course, if this is an honest friendship, and not friendship on the part of one and a painful choice on the part of the other, that if we have no prospects for the future, then we will at least become friends.

22. Some girls, desperate to find a church-going groom in a church environment, say that it is better to marry just a good man, and then bring him to church. Is there any rationale for this?

If there is such a measure of acceptance, although not the most desired groom, but still not the most overwhelming, since no one is found in the church, then yes. However, this path is very dangerous. Because what can be the subtext behind such a question? Like, until now, no one from the church has married me, and I’m already twenty-five, so I can stay too long in the girls, I’ll pick up, before it’s too late, some more or less decent, even if I don’t know life in Churches. With such an everyday logic, mistakes and defeats will not keep you waiting. And the risk here is painfully high, moreover, with one's fate, one's life. After all, many sorrows are inevitable on this path, for the soul of a person is brought up by many sorrows when entering the church fence.

23. How can a young man bring a girl he likes to the Orthodox faith?

First of all, through one's own confession - in the gospel sense - of one's own faith. You don’t need to cowardly hide and hide it, fearing that if you immediately lay out the girl you like, what commandments you are trying to live by and what rules of behavior to follow, then she will either consider you a fool, or you will never succeed with her, and therefore, it is better later, when she settles down to you, gradually open up to her. No, it is important to decide from the very beginning: let her accept you as you are, even without understanding almost anything of what you are trying to convey to her, and not sharing. And if she is able to love you, knowing that you are an Orthodox Christian, then your relationship has hope for the future. And if in order to please her, you need to hide your Christian views so deeply that it cannot be found in any way, then this is a dead end. In other words, there is no need to be ashamed of the fact that on Wednesday and Friday, even at a party, you will not eat meat, that when you pass by the temple you will cross yourself, and when you make an appointment, you will say that you are going to vigil on Saturday evening, on Sunday morning - for the liturgy and only by the middle of the day will you be free. Such frank testimonies of one's faith without embarrassment, without figures of silence, without any reservations will only arouse interest in a deep, serious and good person, and, perhaps, his path to Orthodoxy will begin step by step. If this does not happen, then it will be easier for you to understand that your own attitude towards the chosen one was rather a kind of blinding by external qualities, behind which there is nothing particularly deep, and you will part. But in this case, it will also be for the good.

24. If the bride and groom belong to different Christian denominations and neither he nor she wants to change their faith, shouldn't this prevent starting a family?

If we turn to the church practice of recent centuries, then our Church allows matrimonial union with those Christians whose baptismal validity it recognizes and who, upon entering the fence of the Orthodox Church, are received by the second or third rank - that is, through Repentance and through Chrismation. These are Catholics, traditional Protestants: Lutherans, Anglicans and Calvinists, the bulk of our Old Believers, as well as ancient Eastern Christians: Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians and the like. In this case, the Sacrament of the Wedding can be performed, and this marriage union is recognized as valid. But of course, before an Orthodox Christian or a Christian woman enters into marriage with a non-Orthodox person, one should soberly assess its consequences. Experience shows that, as a rule, such a union has a chance for the future if it is a union of a religiously strong person, rooted in the life of the Church, with a person who only traditionally belongs to one or another non-Orthodox denomination and belongs to it by birth . Well, he's a Swede - and he's a Lutheran; he is Spaniard and he is Catholic; he is an Armenian - and he is a member of the Armenian Gregorian Church - by his place of birth, but not by conviction, not by the principled acceptance of everything that is characteristic of this confession, including those delusions that are rooted in it. In this case, that member of the marital union, who is religiously more consistent and serious, can determine the upbringing of children in the family. Anyone for whom confessional affiliation is just some convention, a feature of national culture, will be inclined to allow both the baptism of children in another Church and their churching in the way that it should be carried out by a churchly more responsible spouse. But here, too, there can be pitfalls, their sorrows. A person who is only formally religious can gradually descend to an atheistic consciousness and begin to experience hostility to the religious upbringing of children, no longer as a Catholic or a Protestant, but simply as a bearer of a modern secular worldview - in fact, as an atheist, or a deist, or an agnostic. And here serious problems can arise, but, in general, they can be overcome. The situation is more complicated when two religiously consistent people meet. But, let's say, even before the birth of children, this can somehow be resolved: I pray like this, you pray like that; I go to the temple, confess and take communion, you go to a meeting with the Baptists, and you sing the hymn “Come, come to me, my Jesus”; then we meet for dinner and don't touch on our denominational differences. Well, when will the children be born? How to educate them? Is fasting a necessary institution or is it a medieval fanaticism that is not necessary for anyone and for anything? Confession, Communion, Anointing of the Sick - are these Sacraments or are they false human institutions that make no sense? Is an icon an image that leads to the Prototype, or is it an idol that deserves to be chopped with an ax, as the Protestants did? It is clear that now there is no such iconoclastic pathos (suffice it to recall the magnificent Western European cathedrals with sculptures of Catholic saints with severed heads or gouged out eyes), but there is such an attitude towards the icon ...

And the mother will tell the child one thing, and the father another. Well, do not make the soul of your own child a field of struggle between two worldviews! .. What responsibility do we take on ourselves and what risk do we expose the soul of our own child! And all this must be soberly assessed before deciding on an alliance with a non-Orthodox beloved, no matter what virtues, real or imaginary, our current disposition and aspirations endow him with. An Orthodox person, when arranging his marital union, has no right to be irresponsible, relying on the well-known “maybe” and “probably”, “somehow it will be formed”. Somehow this kind of thing does not form. If they are formed in our life, then only by effort, labor, fasting, prayer, feat and, in the end, sorrows. For someone who is initially ready with love, patience to accept all this in another person and clearly realizes that all these discords will enter his life, then there is hope to overcome them. And if there is no such love and there is no such understanding of the future, then you need to think a hundred times before entering into an interfaith marriage!

25. Is the marriage of an Orthodox girl and a young Old Believer man, which was entered into in the Old Believer Church, a sin?

In the last few centuries, virtually all local Orthodox Churches, out of economy, that is, out of indulgence to human infirmities, allow marriages of Orthodox people with non-Orthodox Christians, unless they are extreme heretics (Mormons or Jehovists). Marriage with an Old Believer should be considered as a legal church marriage if the Sacrament of the Wedding is performed in the Orthodox Church. If we are guided by the spirit of church canons, and they contain a rule that an unrevoked decision of the highest church authority is valid, then there is no reason to recognize the validity of the Old Believer priesthood. Two branches of the Old Believers-priests received their priesthood equally illegally, and in this sense we have no canonical grounds to say that the Sacraments are actually performed there, including Weddings. Therefore, once the family has been created, one could advise the young spouses to accept the legal wedding in the fence of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, it will be a kind of touchstone, on which it will be possible to check: how does the husband feel about Orthodoxy? By this, he will testify that he recognizes the grace and salvation of the Sacraments performed in the fence of the holy Orthodox Church.

26. Can an Orthodox girl date a Jew?

Of course it can. Why not? But it is better not to meet in order to create a marital union. If your chosen one does not take off his kippah, walks with sidelocks and beats his head against the Wailing Wall, then what hope can there be for a single marital union blessed by the Church? It’s another matter if we are talking about a Jew who was born in a Jewish family, but is not a convinced Jew, and belonging to this particular creed is simply a fact of national affiliation for him, and who likes a good and sincere person, so his chosen one has hope that after some time he can convert from Judaism to Christianity, then, with all these reservations, the creation of a family as a small Church, I think, is possible. But here, too, an indispensable condition must be fulfilled: first to the fence of the Church, and then plans for a future marital union. And not vice versa: they say, after the wedding, the wife will quietly church her husband.

27. Should an Orthodox Christian woman who falls in love with a Muslim marry him?

It is impossible to say something comforting or easily resolving this life situation. The path for an Orthodox Christian woman can certainly be one: finding unity in faith before marriage with a Muslim, and not the illusion or fantasy hope that he will somehow come to Christ later. Marriage with a non-Orthodox Christian or a heterodox person, but religiously indifferent (for example, he comes from India, but does not recognize himself as belonging to any denomination), gives hope that later the spouse will come to the fence of the Church already in the process of family life. But with a person who is strongly aware of himself confessionally (Muslim, Jew, practicing Buddhist), unanimity as a condition of marriage should be achieved before that. And here it is necessary to bear the heroic cross of unceasing prayer so that the Lord turns the heart of the chosen one to the path of true faith and repentance for his wickedness, for any false faith in one way or another is wickedness before God. Let the last threshold be the thought that the children will become Muslims. How to think about the salvation of the souls of your children, knowing that they did not receive baptism, but circumcision? That they rush to the Mysteries of Christ not on Sunday, but on Friday for prayer? That the Lord Jesus Christ is not the Son of God for them, but one of the prophets?

28. Are those right who believe that the marriage of a Russian girl with a Negro is impossible?

If the Negro is Orthodox, then, of course, they are wrong, because in the Church of God all divisions are overcome: social, class, interethnic, class - whatever. And by the grace of God they are overcome both in the Church with a capital letter, and in the small Church - in the family. People who are united in the main thing - in the Orthodox faith, by a feat and mutual effort can overcome all other divisions that exist between them, say, if she is an Eskimo, and he is an Ethiopian.

If we are talking about marriage with a person not just of a different skin color, but consciously belonging to a different religious and cultural tradition, then you should seriously think about it. After all, the inhabitants of the African continent more often profess Islam or national pagan cults than orthodox Christianity. And in this case, the marriage of an Orthodox and a person belonging to a different religion can hardly be approved. After all, in her family life, a Christian wife will not get away from the question of what faith, in what religious tradition their children will be brought up. Moreover, leaving for Sudan, Zimbabwe or Mozambique and finding herself torn off from her national, cultural, religious roots, how can she resist the Christian upbringing of her children there?

But is it necessary to subject your soul to such a terrible test: in your mature years, in your old age, look at your children and grandchildren who have become Gentiles, and know that you can’t do anything anymore?

29. What if the bride's parents are against their daughter going to church?

If the bride is of age, which, in general, happens in most cases, take this as a test before marriage, which now needs to be endured. And to understand that if parents are against their daughter going to church as a bride, then they will not welcome her to defend worship even as a wife. And therefore, it would be completely wrong for the groom to decide now in order to get married as soon as possible without hindrance - let his chosen one not go to church until the wedding, they say, but only then we will begin to live with our own mind. Yes, nothing will come of it! And the degree of conflict in relations with parents, which will certainly take place, will then be even higher. Therefore, here from the very beginning it is necessary to follow an uncompromising line: to be firm in the confession of faith, although soft in treatment. Do not puff up unbelieving future relatives, do not swear with them because of this, but simply unconditionally stick to your own: not responding to personal insults, even targeted attacks, behave as an Orthodox person should.

30. If parents are sure that their son or daughter is entering into an unsuccessful marriage, which will be unhappy, should they somehow intervene?

31. In the old days, parents picked brides and grooms for their sons and daughters. Is this possible nowadays?

I think yes, if it is done with a certain measure of tact. Previously, when obedience and respect for parents were considered a virtue, then the parental approach in this matter could be more direct and frank: here is your bride, and if you please, decide on your attitude towards her! Now, of course, you can only implicitly create some situations of communication in which this thread of sympathy, mutual acceptance could arise. But God forbid to engage in this too frontal method. If you do not count on your tact, it is better to shy away from any action than to try to impose someone, even at the level of the council, pushing through a seemingly successful candidate in every sense. Parental obsession can cause worse consequences for a relationship that is starting than stepping aside with prayerful standing before the Lord so that He sends a good companion or companion to a child who has already grown up.

32. Can a Christian take upon himself the responsibility of bringing together young souls, in other words, engaging in matchmaking?

If you mean individual matchmaking, if your friends decided for you, or if one of the sympathetic relatives suggested that these girl and boy are suitable for each other, then all the same, it is inevitable here - as if from the outside - the entry of strangers into another life. But the family is such a delicate organism! And the meeting of two people who have in themselves the image and likeness of God is such a miracle that any kind of attempt to rationalize the arrangement of someone's family carries some kind of flaw, some kind of wormhole.

If we mean those who in the synodal era of our Church were called matchmakers, and now they organize some dating services, so that even special Orthodox websites have appeared, then in relation to them I always have a question: how do they define the Orthodoxy of the clients who apply - Symbol of Faith Are they forced to read or do they require a certificate from the parish that a person goes to confession, takes communion? Right, it's not easy. Just by name? If a person how would declare his religiosity? Well, today there is such a wide range of what is considered in society - to be Orthodox. In general, a lot of questions immediately arise here. True, I do not want to say that it is completely unacceptable to resort to the help of such services, but nevertheless, having learned beforehand how they check, if not churchliness, then at least the conscientiousness and integrity of those who turn to them. But finally, two people meet who know that they are being introduced, and it is assumed that they should like each other based on certain criteria that are written in their profiles: she is a brunette, under thirty, without children, a Muscovite, with a higher education, he is a blond, a philologist, does not smoke, does not drink, speaks English ... And so the criteria they named coincided. And everything else, perhaps, does not match. There is so much that is inexpressible in words, so much super-complex and vulnerable, that it seems to me that it is better to stay away from attempts to arrange your family life through an appeal to this kind of advisers and advisers until the very end. Well, if it’s really hard to be alone, if a person, for the sake of overcoming loneliness, is ready to do what he accepts, tolerate even someone who doesn’t respond in any way or almost in no way in his heart, then okay. But it's always better to just pray. Experience says that a good groom, a good bride are not found, but begged for. It is better to pray, and the Lord will send.

33. But the prayer that the daughter would marry, that the son would marry, does not mean some kind of our dictate in relation to the will of God?

You can pray, but each time remembering the words of the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father! .. not as I want, but as You” (Matt. 26, 39), “... not My will, but Yours be done” ( Luke 22:42). And if parents do not see in their child the motivation for monasticism, then praying that the Lord sends him a good life partner is natural for both mother and father. This prayer is good and correct.

34. Is the blessing of parents on marriage obligatory?

It is extremely desirable, and in this sense, even if there are some disagreements, a Christian son or Christian daughter will try to resolve them before marriage.

35. But can the wedding be carried out without the blessing of the parents?

It is good when a parental blessing is given for marriage. There is a very great joy in this, a very great fullness and, perhaps, even in a certain situation - at least in part - the rejection of self-will. In any case, in creating our own family, we take into account the opinion of the parents. And so, of course, if not the choice made by the parents, which is now extremely rare, then at least the acceptance by the parents of a companion or companion of our life is a very good preliminary condition for the future peace and well-being of marriage. But it is also impossible to say that now this is an indispensable condition and canonical requirement of the Church. If parents do not give their blessing to marriage for reasons of a secondary nature, and not for reasons relating to faith and morality, then the children are not bound by their instructions. Back in the 19th century, St. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, proceeding from our canon law, said that in the event of an unjustified refusal of parents to bless a marriage, say, for economic reasons, due to certain social and national prejudices, a young man and a girl intending to enter into marriage are not bound by this parental refusal. In our time, when believing bride and groom can have unchurched parents or even quite hostile to the Church and therefore perceive a believing life partner of their daughter or son a priori negatively, consider it your duty to first convince your parents, and only then there is no need to marry .

Z6. The Apostle Paul said that the wife “will be saved through childbearing…” (1 Tim. 2:15). How does this compare with his statement that “he who marries his maiden does well; but he who does not give out does better” (1 Cor. 7:38)? And does not the one who “does better” by not marrying off his daughter deprive her of her salvation through childbearing? Is there a contradiction here?

There is no contradiction, because, according to the words of the apostle, there are two fundamental ways of salvation for a believer - the monastic path and the path of family life. And it is one thing to reject it out of selfishness and the search for an easy life, which leads us away from salvation. Another thing is the rejection of family life, not because of the abhorrence of it, but because of the desire for something higher and more, which not everyone can accommodate, but only some.

37. God said: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:22), and why then do many, including monastics, renounce family life?

As in many other cases, this quotation torn from the Scriptures does not say anything by itself. Here we can recall that Satan also tempted the Savior with biblical quotations taken out of context. In Soviet times, atheism teachers liked to tell their students that the Bible said there was no God. Yes, there are such words “there is no God” in it, but they are torn out from the phrase: “The fool has said in his heart:“ there is no God ”(Ps. 13, 1). Similarly, in this case, when only these biblical words are cited: “be fruitful and multiply,” it is understood that the very choice of monastic life is doubtful, as if there is no such thing as what the Apostle Paul said “regarding virginity,” who writes that for the total consecration of one’s life, it is better for God to “remain thus”, in a celibate state, but those who cannot do this, “let such marry” (1 Cor. 7, 26, 36). Yes, there is a natural human union of two people, but there is something that is higher than nature, to which, in fact, a Christian is called: to rise above this life. And this measure, which exceeds the usual norms, is not given to everyone. According to the word of Holy Scripture, “Whoever can accommodate, let him accommodate” (Matt. 19, 12), that is, only the one to whom it is available, let him go this way. Monasticism has never been the norm for everyone. But only for those who want (and their heart burns with this) to give to God all of themselves, all their lives, without semitones and without dividing it with something else. The Apostle Paul directly says: “The unmarried man cares about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married one takes care of the things of the world, how to please his wife ... the unmarried one takes care of the Lord's things, how to please the Lord, in order to be holy both in body and spirit; but the married woman takes care of the things of the world, how to please her husband” (1 Cor. 7, 32-34). But this does not mean that a person's life cares will certainly lead him away from God. Through limiting oneself for the sake of other people, a person can also come to bear his cross and meet Christ in life. However, one who has taken the path of completely renouncing himself from worldly and even family ties and - what is there - not only crosses, but also the joys and pleasures associated with them (and not only certainly bodily, but also spiritual, because the feeling of one's own Inclusion in the union consecrated by the Sacrament of the Marriage, the love of another so warms the heart), one who voluntarily renounced all this in order to abide in the love of Christ, which is the ideal of true monasticism, truly acts in accordance with the highest calling of man.

38. Does the desire to remain a bachelor or unmarried not necessarily involve monastic chastity?

Without taking monastic vows, as a rule, chastity is not present in such a desire. Even if we are not talking about the periodic, with a bachelor status, satisfaction of one's carnal passions, and a person lives abstinently, there is still something unkind in the fact that he allows himself a life that is not connected with everyday responsibility for others. It is a different matter when a person remains lonely due to some special circumstances, for example, a daughter devoted her whole life to her sick mother, who had nowhere else to go. And of course, laying down your worldly well-being in this way, arranging your destiny for the sake of caring for another person is a sacrifice. However, after all, no one will say about such a daughter or such a son that they are in a bachelor state, this term is usually invested in something else - some kind of liberty, allowing oneself to live the way one wants. But what else is bad such a life. A person lives as he has to, without constraining himself with anything. Of course, he can do something pleasant for his friends, one thing, another, the third, especially if he is by nature kind, sociable, not a complete egoist, but there is no feat in such a life. And family life is valuable for salvation because it brings into our existence, into our being the feat of self-restraint.

39. Modern family practice suggests entering into sexual relations before marriage in order not to make a mistake by checking your relationship for bodily incompatibility ahead of time. What does the Church say about this?

Of course, church family ethics presupposes the purity of the relationship between a girl and a boy before marriage. And no kind of preliminary tests - they say, we'll live for a year, see how things are going with us, and then decide whether it's good for us to be together - is not expected. In fact, a real family (in the church's sense of the word) begins only when two people make a decision: no matter what happens, we will be together forever. Before that, at best, it is a union of social, or even just sexual partners, for whom, for some reason, it is easier to exist together and who give each other mutual satisfaction. But while there is no final decision that he and she are together, there is no family. However, are preliminary experiences of sexual testing of each other necessary to make such a decision? What can they add to create a family? On the contrary, they are rather harmful, because implicitly with them the opportunity to try something else is necessarily associated: well, here everything is not bad for me, but with Masha it can turn out even better, and Tanya is what a beauty, and even younger than mine - something, and her forms are richer, maybe I should have become intimate with her, maybe feelings will be even brighter with her ?! And this completely anomalous consciousness undermines the very need to create a family. After all, the norm is precisely that the union of one man and one woman is for life and people should not have any other extramarital experiences. And if there is this inner readiness to accept only one and only one into your heart and forever, then the very possibility of betraying him or even simply comparing him with someone else is cut off. And this is the very strong foundation that can be laid in the basis of family relationships.

40. What if a young man insists on intimacy before marriage?

Refuse.

41. Extramarital cohabitation for a believing Christian is impossible under any circumstances?

For a Christian, any extramarital cohabitation is a sin. And there is no relativism here and cannot be.

42. What is permissible for the bride and groom? There are many variations here. Each priest interprets this in his own way - some do not bless their spiritual children even to walk by the hand, and some allow kissing.

Such different interpretations of what is permissible are explained by the fact that in certain specific life circumstances, different things can be useful to a particular young person. Other pious, restrained and wise beyond their years young people can, without harm to their own relationships, during the period of waiting for marriage, allow themselves to be seen off by the arm and gentle touches. This will in no way introduce any impurity or inflamed passion into their union. And before marriage, it would be more useful for others not to be in the same room together, not only to hold hands. Most likely, the priest, if he knows these young people as his spiritual children, will be able, in relation to the degree of abstinence of each of them, to give advice on how it is wiser for them to behave before the wedding. Whether they listen to this advice or not is another matter, but at least the voice of the Church will sound through the lips of a priest in their lives.

43. Some priests say that before the wedding, or at least before the betrothal, the bride and groom should not reveal their relationship in any way, so as not to cause rumors. Is it so?

First of all, I want to say that in the practice of our Church that exists and decisively prevails today, betrothal is combined with the Sacrament of the Wedding, although deviations from this rule for one reason or another are permissible. The requirement that a young man and a girl, who firmly accepted the intention to enter into marriage, somehow hide this intention, like a treasure lying under a bushel, can hardly be justified by Church Tradition.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries, the wedding ceremony was even preceded by a special rite of announcement. In parishes where the future spouses were parishioners, for several Sundays they announced their intention to marry. So if someone had something to say against the legality of this union (for example, if the groom had already promised his hand and heart to someone), then he had to do it now, before the Wedding. And this had not only a practical, but also a spiritual meaning: the two showed to the church community, to the whole world, their intention as pure, honest, unclouded by anything. It seems that there is a reason in all this in relation to today - not in the sense of restoring the announcement, but in the fact that young people, without hiding their intentions, thereby pass this test of other people's knowledge of their imminent marriage as one from premarital temptations, which, given the good beginnings of this union, cannot harm them in any way.

44. What is chastity?

Chastity, if we turn to the Catechism of St. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, in the truest sense of the word means the integrity of wisdom. That is, not the disintegration of the personality into spiritual and bodily, but a single aspiration to God, not subject to the lusts of the body and soul. Every Christian should strive for such integrity. And one of its most serious destructions is the pairing of one's personality mainly with the area of ​​sexual attraction, the cultivation of this attraction in oneself and slavish service to it. Whether it manifests itself in an indiscriminate craving for lust, for dirt, for not keeping the purity of one's path, or in excess and intemperance in marital relations - all this leads to the disintegration of a person far from chastity.

45. What is the acceptable age difference between the bride and groom?

On the canonical side, there are no obstacles for marriage, in which the difference between the ages of the spouses is significant, church charters do not prohibit them. I know families where the wife is much older than the husband, and this does not have any negative impact on their married life. I know where the husband and wife are the same age, and this does not prevent the strengthening of the authority of the husband, of course, with the conscious and wise attitude of the wife. But of course, when a spouse is a step or two ahead of his wife in terms of age, life status, experience, inner adulthood, as a rule, this is more optimal. Because in this situation, the spouses will face fewer temptations, and it will be easier for them to enter the good, pious, measured way of the Christian family. But I repeat: there are no hard and fast rules here. There are limiting considerations, especially if the age gap towards the future wife is too great. In this case, those entering into marriage should think about those temptations that may follow not now, but in fifteen or twenty years, and whether there will be enough love, patience and wisdom to cope with them. Think not only about what is now, but also about what, maybe, will be later. However, this is also important in the case when, say, a forty-year-old man offers his hand and heart to a twenty-year-old girl, since in such a decision there is an additional responsibility in relation to the usual situation. After all, when the husband becomes sixty, and the wife forty, will then their aspiration to each other remain and will the measure of internal acceptance acquired over the years of a mature young woman and a man already beginning to enter the period of old age cope with all these problems?

46. ​​And if an already mature woman was proposed by a young man ten or fifteen years younger than her, will the Church bless such a union?

It is impossible to consider even such a difference in age as an absolute obstacle to marriage, otherwise it would be reflected in church legislation, in church canons, which indicate various situations when the Sacrament of the Wedding cannot be performed. So, in principle, the possibility of a union of two people with a very significant age difference exists. However, before deciding to take such a step, it is necessary (especially for those who are older) to think and evaluate, firstly, their own strengths, and secondly, the motivation of the second, younger member of the future union. And if, indeed, in someone who is younger, his spiritual and spiritual aspirations so prevail over bodily and worldly aspirations that even in these rather young years, the criteria for creating a family are ecclesiastical, and the values ​​\u200b\u200bof family good are completely final, then God help.

However, it is worth taking a closer look at whether there is a desire in this to be under the soft wing of a more wiser wife or, on the contrary, under a firm hand that has replaced the guiding right hand of the mother, fear of responsibility, up to an escape from reality, which is expressed in this way. But, as a rule, the first serious difficulties in life test and refute the illusory nature of such aspirations.

47. How long does it take young people to understand: are they ready to enter into a joint marriage or not?

All this is infinitely individual. Therefore, I think that to indicate some general times and dates, to recommend something specific, would be at least impudent and unfounded. There are two extremes here. The premarital period should not be so short that the motivation of lovers to marry is based only on first, external impressions of each other. They liked him externally, physically and mentally: how he (she) looks, how he speaks, how he smiles, and his heart lit up with strong sympathy. And both are believers, which means that we must immediately decide on marriage. I have not yet recognized the person at all, I have not seen him in any serious life situation. But what if there is something in his character, in his mindset, in the social conditions in which he was formed, in his upbringing, that is unacceptable for you in life? Therefore, there must certainly be such a period of preliminary recognition, and most importantly, recognition of the inner features of a person as a person, as the image and likeness of God. On the other hand, this period should not be such that people's desire for each other has time not only to grow and mature, but also to wither and wither. There can also be too much in a super-rational approach: you need to get to know each other better, so I already know my dad and mom, and now I need to get to know my grandparents, and I still need to go home, look at school friends, and chat together for another winter, then in the spring we will dig up the garden together, and only after all this will we make a decision. The apple must be picked on time: if it is green, then it is sour; if it is overhanging, then it is either wormy or withered. Everything has its time. And between these two extremes, you need to be located.

48. Is it necessary to insist if the groom does not want to get married?

First you need to think: is such a groom needed? But if there is hope that this unwillingness to get married comes from the inner honesty of a worthy chosen one who respects the faith of his bride, but cannot yet sincerely share her and honestly testifies to her (with the risk of even being not together in eternity), such a person can and should be respected, and, apparently, there is reason to hope that by faith, patience and love it will be possible to lead him to the church fence. But if we are talking about a secular slob who is simply afraid that the Wedding will bind him more tightly to his future wife and generally threatens with great consequences in his later life, then you need to think about it and, perhaps, send him to some other bride.

49. Why is it necessary for a husband and wife who have been living together for a long time to get married when they come to faith?

This question can be answered in two ways. On the one hand, the Church has a special rite of blessing spouses who have been married for many years, which differs somewhat in the composition of prayers from the usual wedding ceremony. And this is undoubtedly correct, because the wedding prayers are addressed either to the very young, or to those who are just starting their married life, and may sound, if not paradoxically, then as not quite referring to those who are already over fifty and who have only now come to the need consecration of their many years of marital union. In this case, indeed, it is better to resort to such a rite of church blessing of marriage, which includes all the main components of the Sacrament of Marriage, including the attire of crowns and the sacramental prayer.

On the other hand, answering this question, we can say that any human union, even the most sincere one, is a union of two people who bring into it all their good and good, and all their weak and sinful. And in the Sacrament of the Wedding, as in any Sacrament, the grace of God is given, which a person himself, no matter how wonderful he may be, cannot deserve. He cannot acquire what is given to him in the Sacrament of Baptism - the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. And further in life, no matter how much a person laments, he cannot receive the forgiveness of sins that is given to him in the Sacrament of Confession. In the same way, at the wedding, we are given something for married life that we ourselves cannot bring into it - God's help, the correction of our own infirmities, love, indulgence, patience ... And all this is given to us for free. Why refuse such a wonderful gift, even if we ourselves have already managed to acquire a lot of good things in family life? How can one not take from God what is good can make the best, and what is very good just beautiful?!

In the Sacrament of the Wedding, the family is created as a single spiritual organism in blessed union. If this Sacrament is not performed, then two people cohabit together, run the household together, but the formation of a family as a single spiritual organism does not occur.

50. The Sacrament of the Wedding begins with the gospel words: “... a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). What does "leave" mean?

In the Orthodox Church, the transition to an independent life of two young people is clearly marked - it begins with the Wedding. Before that, they are children, they not only have to honor their parents, but live with them as one family, and the Wedding is the creation of their own family. This Mystery begins with the words: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife…” (Genesis 2:24). And everyone needs to be aware of this: since the wedding took place, it means that the young, continuing to honor their parents, should be ready to create their own family. The business of parents is not to interfere in the lives of children, but only to pray and, if necessary, help them. Blessed means given away. Of course, for every mother, her child is the best and deserves a better life, but since the Lord allowed marriage, since the Sacrament of the Wedding took place, there was thus a confirmation that the young were blessed by God for a life together. A crowned marriage is a gift from God, and only in it can one be saved. If this union were not pleasing to God, then many circumstances could prevent the Sacrament of the Wedding from taking place.

51. Doesn't this result in some humiliation of the relationship between parents and children? And what if it's really embarrassing?

These gospel words reflect the real life truth, which in fact every person knows by experience. That the measure of the relationship between wife and husband is qualitatively different from the measure of the relationship between parents and children, even if only simply because husband and wife are two people who find each other by a conscious choice, or at least by a conscious non-refusal to accept someone's recommended choice. . Children do not choose their parents, but each one finds a husband and wife in one way or another in his life. And this meeting of two people who had not been connected with each other before, but then voluntarily forming a marriage union (it is no coincidence that the main question before the Wedding for the bride and groom is about the voluntariness and inner consciousness of the decision to enter into marriage), leads to an amazing overcoming of selfhood, which is achieved in the family as husband and wife, and which, of course, is qualitatively higher than what exists in natural relations between children and parents. But this does not mean that a person ceases to be a son or daughter, that his moral duty to his parents exists only as long as he lives with them or until he himself has acquired a marriage or monastic status. This means that his inner care for his parents, his inner closeness to them are different in nature. What is not even commanded, but simply testified by the Apostle Paul, who, after all, says not a new thing about a husband and wife, that “there shall be two one flesh” (Eph. 5:31). This also existed in the pagan world, and it still exists in the non-church world. What is new in the apostolic gospel is that this union of the two is accomplished in the image of the union of Christ and the Church and that it implies, firstly, finality, which the pagan family did not know, and the modern atheistic secular family does not know, and secondly, sacrifice towards to each other. The union of Christ and the Church is a sacrificial union based on the atoning sacrifice of the Savior and on the voluntary desire of Christians to follow the narrow and narrow path of salvation. Similarly, the Christian family is a mutual willingness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of another, to put oneself in second place for the sake of another. And this is something new that is commanded to us in the gospel gospel, in contrast to the completely understandable soul-bodily unity of husband and wife, which can sometimes be observed even in the non-church world.

52. What does the rank of betrothal mean?

In the ancient Church, betrothal was separated from marriage. This is such a church service, when the bride and groom, with a priestly blessing, exchange rings. They are not yet husband and wife, but they assume their obligations towards each other: mutual fidelity, property. And most importantly, each of them becomes for the other the only one or the only one with whom (which) some time later a full-fledged family will be created. However, in assuming marital obligations, they do not yet receive the rights to a joint married life. The betrothal took place, as a rule, separately from the Wedding in those historical epochs, when it took place at a younger age than a full-fledged married life could begin. Then the children were more obedient to their parents, and the arrangement of marriages was largely carried out at the discretion of the parents.

It seems that in our time, betrothal apart from the Wedding is justified in those cases when young people, undoubtedly, already sincerely and deeply related to each other and testified to their desire to marry by the purity and firmness of their relationship, due to some objective circumstances, do not can begin to live married life in all its fullness. Well, let's say they have to finish their studies at a university, or they still have nowhere to live, or the age of one of them does not allow it. But at the same time, as Orthodox Christians faithful to the Lord, they understand that there can be no prior bodily cohabitation before marriage. And in order to support them, in order to lighten the burden of waiting for the fullness of married life, you can separate the betrothal and the wedding. And since the purpose of the betrothal is to bring the future spouses closer together, the time remaining before the Wedding will not be so difficult for them to pass in mutual preparation for it. In other cases, the betrothal is performed together with the Wedding as a single ceremony.

53. What does the Sacrament of the Wedding mean?

In the Sacrament of the Wedding, as in any Sacrament of the Church, and in this they differ from other sacred rites, we are not simply given certain gifts of God and not only the grace of God acts, but there is a meeting, a direct meeting of a person with God, a person with Christ. And this means that at the center of the life of every church family (first husband and wife, then children born) is Christ, and it is the meeting with Him that is granted in the Sacrament of the Wedding. What is given is immeasurably higher than us, which we ourselves, no matter how good people may be, are not capable of arranging. It is given as a gift. And our task is to first understand it, then accept it and not lose it until the end of our lives through our own sins and unworthiness.

54. Why are crowns put on during a wedding?

First, crown means crown. And putting on crowns is a symbol of crowning. The bride and groom during the Sacrament of the Wedding, being dressed in these crowns, signify the first people - Adam and Eve, who were the crown of creation, since they were placed by God over all creation. Secondly, crowns are given to the newlyweds for their preservation of themselves until marriage, for their patience and striving for the correct marital union sanctified by the Church. Thirdly, these are crowns of martyrdom, which should remind us that family life is also the voluntary bearing of the burden of another person. The combination of all these meanings occurs in the Sacrament of the Wedding.

55. Why do the words “Holy martyrs…” sound during the wedding rite?

The priest proclaims the opening words of the troparion, which the choir then sings: “Holy martyrs, having suffered well, being married, pray to the Lord, save our souls,” because at the Wedding, the bride and groom (now husband and wife) are given royal crowns for what they have passed before the wedding (in the norm - this should be the case) the path of mutual abstinence and voluntary renunciation of bodily pleasures. And in this sense, the crowns are the reward with which the Church praises the bride and groom, putting high their purity and chastity.

56. During the wedding, the marriage union is compared with the union of Christ and the Church. What does it mean?

The Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians says that “the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is also the Savior of the body. But just as the Church obeys Christ, so do wives obey their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:23-25). The main thing in this unity is the principle of sacrificial love and giving oneself to another. Christ loved the Church, because He sacrificed Himself for the salvation of all those who compose it. The principle of sacrificial love is the main postulate of the building of a true family, and this is precisely what the apostle is talking about. But he also speaks of the measure of depth that is achievable in a family union. It is no coincidence that in a family this constraint of oneself for the sake of another and the constant sacrifice of one's “I” can reach the greatest depth and significance for the joint life of a husband and wife, so that this is what becomes the basis for the continuation of their existence in eternity. And nothing else, except as a truly Christian marriage bond, has reason to be indissolubly connected in it.

57. Often a wedding for unbelieving young people becomes just a part of the wedding ceremony.

Even in such a situation, getting married is still better than not getting married, because the grace of God makes people wiser. But of course, the seeds are sown, and the person himself must cultivate them. It is important that young people realize that vows are pronounced in the Sacrament of the Wedding, which cannot be broken.

58. How to relate to the marriage contract?

As for a contract that is understandable for people who do not believe and are not sure that their current cohabitation (I use this word in terms of Roman law) is final and that you can trust your current life partner in everything. And indeed, if you have a lot of money, and you assume that, perhaps, those material benefits that a person entering into marriage with you acquires through you attract him more than you yourself, then why not insure yourself? ! But it is clear that this kind of relationship cannot take place in the structure of an Orthodox family. If we proceed from the fact that monogamy is the only norm for a Christian and that the wedding unites husband and wife forever, then what kind of reservations in their property status can we talk about?

59. Is it possible to get married a second time and get married?

Yes, our Church does not prevent this and, of course, allows the Wedding in the event that it was preceded by a civil marriage before churching.

60. If you got married in your first marriage, then, when creating a new family, what needs to be done to get married a second time?

Although the Orthodox Church, of course, advises its members to keep the family to the last strength, despite all the temptations, sorrows and bewilderments that befall us in life, but if the family has already actually broken up, then, condescending to human infirmities, the Church allows the second and, as maximum, the third marital union. No more. In the event that the first marriage was crowned, it is necessary to appear at the appropriate diocesan administration (in Moscow, this is the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate in Chisty Lane) and meet with a priest specially appointed to interview people who find themselves in such situations. It is necessary to write a petition for the removal of the church blessing on your previous marriage, and after the resolution of the ruling bishop, you will receive the right to a second legal church marriage.

61. And when both first husbands died, is it possible to get married a third time and get married again?

Undoubtedly, absolute monogamy and monogamy are the norm of the Church's attitude to the organization of family life. And the ideal of the family is the union of a man and a woman for life, when each of them and the inevitable time of widowhood can be cleansed. And the one who walks the path of such a chaste marriage has an immeasurably greater fullness and richness of family relationships than the one who wanders along the crossroads of that country, which in the Gospel is called “a country far away” (Lk. 15, 13). But having monogamy as the norm and ideal, church regulations also include a sober and merciful indulgence towards a weak person: to one who in his early years turned out to be a widow, or to one who has lost a life partner and is raising children alone, or to one who who, left early alone, cannot endure bodily continence for all the subsequent decades of his earthly journey, and, without prompting him to it, the Church allows a second marriage. At the same time, the Church rite of the Wedding is much more modest and prayers are somewhat different, including not only the joy of the marital union, but also repentance for our weakness, which prompts us to again seek clinging to a person - to a creature, and not to the Creator and deviate from the absolute norms. But, nevertheless, this is a legitimate church union, which the Church blesses.

The third marriage is allowed as the ultimate indulgence, so that there is nothing worse - fornication or some kind of disorderly life. But, of course, it has never been considered and is not considered the norm for a believing Christian.

62. What is the attitude of the Church towards early marriages, especially unmarried ones?

The Church perceives early marriages positively, as well as marriage in general, in contrast to disorderly relationships or some other empty, vain, unnecessary hobbies that are so characteristic of modern non-church youth. Family is always good. If it is only really a family, and not a partnership of interest, not a club for delivering additional entertainment for each other, and not a carriage compartment in which fellow travelers ended up together until the next stop, always knowing that now the door will open and in which case you can get out. Of course, a real family is not like that. It does not matter - student or miner.

If people are still non-church and their worldview is still far from Christian, then how can they get married? Yes, they love each other, they want to start a family, and one can only rejoice that even outside the church fence, at least something good is still being done - a little of it is already left in the world. However, it is simply impossible to imagine that two Orthodox people for some reason want to start a family, but do not want to consecrate it with the Sacrament of Marriage. In this case, these are either non-Orthodox people, but calling themselves that because they were baptized in infancy, or this is not about a family, but about some form of cohabitation authorized by the registry office, which is doubly meaningless.

63. Why does the Russian Orthodox Church forbid marriage between cousins?

Marriages between cousins ​​are forbidden by the canons of our Church, and these limits should not be transgressed, trusting the wisdom, experience and authority of the holy fathers.

64. Is it possible to get married in an Orthodox church with a Protestant?

According to a practice dating back to the synodal era, marriages are performed in the Russian Orthodox Church with those Christians whose baptism is recognized as valid (as was the case, for example, with Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and the venerable martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna). The latter also include traditional Protestants: Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans. The moral and religious duty of an Orthodox spouse in an interfaith marriage, of course, is to bring his life partner into the fence of the Orthodox Church - thanks to the feat of intense prayer for him and his own good life example.

65. Is it possible for a girl to marry a priest if her parents are categorically against such a marriage and do not give their blessing?

Christian parents will certainly forbid marrying a priest simply because the priest is either already married or is a celibate, that is, he has taken a vow of celibacy by the time of his consecration. There are such exceptional cases when someone who has mistakenly chosen the path of the priesthood is overcome by such a passionate aspiration that he is ready to leave even the very rank in order to unite with this woman. After all, a celibate priest can marry, only in this case he must lay down his rank. But can there be God's blessing on such a family? Yes, of course, by the utmost indulgence towards such a person, the Church allows this. However. what kind of life should it be for these people, who, after they sober up, should in fact bring unceasing repentance for what they did: one, leaving the path that he promised to go through until the end of his life, and the other, pushing him to it or by agreeing to it. And if parents keep their daughter from this, realizing how harmful such a decision is, then, of course, you need to obey them, and not follow according to your own impulse. But of course, you need to soberly weigh all the arguments that parents bring.

If they proceed from the fact that there is no reason for their daughter to marry the future priest, then in this case their power and decision should not apply to her. It’s another matter when parents, knowing well who their daughter is at the moment in her current sinful state, honestly warn her: can you be a priest’s wife, be always there, pray together, fast together, and at the same time be on the periphery of his life and, in fact, lay down his life for the sake of his priestly ministry?

The priest, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, must be the husband of one wife and become one only before the deacon's ordination. That is, he can only have one marriage.

And of course, a pious Christian woman can and should strive for marriage with someone who is going to become a priest. Although it is better not to dream about it. After all, what are these dreams if not the soaring of the mind, into which it is so pleasant to plunge: oh, I will be a mother, oh, I will have many children, oh, they will be so fine, and everyone will love and respect my husband, but somewhere this will also apply to me, and I will come with him to the temple, and everyone will see how piously we live! And such waves of vanity, on which one can sway in dreams, are not at all a preparation for becoming the wife of a priest.

66. What does it mean to prepare to become a priest's wife, or, as she is called, mother?

First, to keep her virginity, for the wife of the future pastor of the Church must, for his pure ministry, keep herself pure. Secondly, to conform one's life to the maximum with the statutes of the Church, to love divine services, prayers, to understand that fasting is not a burden, but joy and the best time of the year. Get used to reading and church singing, which will become an integral part of her life. And the most important thing is to learn to humble yourself, because the path of a spouse and mother is a path of humility and belittlement of oneself, as if constantly staying in the background, a conscious rejection of creative or some other self-realization, except for caring for a husband, children, about the house. Everything else is only insofar as it is possible to fully bear the most important thing. And this is what you really need to prepare yourself for and check: do I want this, do I think about this when I think of myself as the wife of a servant of the Church. This is a difficult path.

67. According to tradition, after the wedding, everyone gathers at the festive table. How to make sure that, on the one hand, you don’t have to blush, as often happens, for unrestrained fun, and on the other hand, so that it doesn’t turn into boring gatherings?

To do this, you need to prepare for the festive meal. And not so much by the young themselves, who naturally focus on something else, but by their loved ones and friends who love them. Relatives should take care that the amount of alcohol per capita at the wedding feast does not exceed the measure that the Holy Scripture speaks of when "wine gladdens the soul of a man." It amuses, and does not introduce into a state of stupefaction or senseless euphoria, or, moreover, moves to a horizontal position.

Perhaps you even need to take care of some scenario of the wedding day, in which wishes from relatives and friends should be combined with non-sinful entertainment. It can also be mutual testing of the bride and groom for knowledge of each other, which, of course, for the most part will turn into ignorance and thus a lesson for themselves. These can be kind songs that sound so natural at a wedding. It can be some kind of general game. The main thing is not to create an atmosphere that usually happens at concerts of popular music, an atmosphere of a triumphant collective unconscious, when those who were just normal individuals merge into a single, creative, multifaceted, multilingual, but stupid mass. Avoiding this at the wedding feast is extremely important.

In the good traditions of a number of past centuries, it was accepted that the bride and groom are present only at the first part of the wedding meal, and then leave it. In the XVI-XVII centuries it was very beautiful and solemn. In subsequent centuries, this already came out of both the ritual and everyday areas of life. Although, as a rule, the bride and groom did not have to sit at the table until the last guests left.

In my opinion, today it is becoming a good practice, of course, if there is such an opportunity, for the newlyweds to go directly from the wedding ball to the ship, or to the plane, or to the train, leave the usual worldly cares, triumphant loved ones and relatives and be alone for a while. If there is no money to go somewhere far away, then you can go to live with friends in the country or to someone in an empty apartment, so long as no one disturbs the newlyweds for some time.

Dear sisters! I once talked for three hours with girls who really wanted to get married. This conversation was recorded, it turned out more than twenty pages in small print.

The text of my conversation was shortened and edited by Ekaterina Stepanova. She recently got married and is very happily married, so I hope she knows what I said is right and what is wrong.

I also edited her version of the conversation for a long time, I still could not stop, which caused some displeasure of the editors. It is impossible to delay the publication further, and I present to you for discussion our joint work with Katya, hoping that it will help at least one of you, dear sisters, to get married. I wish you find a good groom! If there are questions, write.

With love in Christ, ep. Panteleimon.

Getting ready for marriage

In our time, creating a family is a feat.

There is no need to imagine marriage as a safe haven where all your problems will end, and there will be a person who understands, loves, on whom you can pour out all the love that has accumulated over the years of waiting.

One God understands us in everything, and the most ardent love does not always have the same temperature. And that unspent that overwhelms your heart may turn out to be not at all a willingness to sacrifice oneself, but a desire to arrange everything in life based on one’s desires.

If you want to get married, you need to not just sigh, worry and cry about your loneliness, but prepare. Preparing for marriage means preparing to become a good wife and mother of many children, because in an Orthodox marriage one cannot evade this feat.

Having many children in the modern world is a lot of work and a feat. Our world is not adapted, not convenient for large families. But without the fulfillment of this will of God about the birth of children, you will be unhappy in marriage.

I do not think that the Lord, when we violate His commandments and rules, completely leaves us with His love, but still we lose a lot.

Learn to live within your means

Unfortunately, a large family in Russia is doomed to be among the poor.

Therefore, already now you can start training to live within your means. Try to be economical, learn not to spend money right and left. Make do with the laptop you have, don’t buy yourself a new phone every year, take good care of your clothes – beautifully combine what you already have in your closet, and don’t buy new dresses at sales.

It is not known whether your husband will have a well-paid job. You will marry for love, not for convenience. If he has a small salary or loses his job, he will have to live in poverty, so it is better to prepare for this in advance.

It would be nice to learn not only to save, but also to donate money - to share, to help large families or single mothers. Learn not to be greedy, but compassionate and generous.

The main thing that families with many children lack is spacious housing. And in a small apartment with children it is very difficult to keep order. Therefore, it would be good to learn how to get rid of unnecessary things in advance, then it will be much easier to clean the apartment and maintain order.

Family is like a submarine

In marriage, it will be difficult for you to find time for yourself: read a book, go to the theater, pray in the temple. Because there will always be a husband and children. They will need you, waiting for your attention. You can’t get away from the family, like from a submarine when it plunged into the water.

In order to keep up with everything in marriage, I would advise you to learn to get up early now. Read the Gospel more often, study the lives of the saints, memorize, while you have time, morning and evening prayers so that they can be read without turning on the light or while feeding the child. All this will be very useful to you when you become a wife and mother.

Of course, it is very good to study children's literature in advance in order to know what to read to children. It would be good to get acquainted with the lives of the saints and learn how to retell them to the children of friends, godchildren or nephews.

It is very important to learn how to cook. And not for themselves, but for others. It is not difficult to cook for yourself - you made a sandwich and ate it, but for your husband to cook, for example, lean food so that it is tasty and that he is satisfied is a tricky business.

For training, be like a large family and help prepare holiday lunches or dinners. And learn to cook, and do a good deed. Maybe the Lord will send you a good groom for this!

You, perhaps, will say: well, I prepared, prepared, learned everything, but no one offers marriage. But if you learn to love, to pray, this will help you live fully, even if you don’t find a husband.

Be active

You don’t want to approach a girl who is gloomy and dissatisfied with her loneliness. However, even a girl who is in active search, prowling like a she-wolf with her eyes around, scares off potential suitors.

If you want to get married, you should not be discouraged and not look for candidates on the Internet and among passers-by on the street and in the subway, but be active.

And I mean not the appearance of activity, when a girl paints herself, dresses up (or, on the contrary, undresses!) and poses for photos for social networks. I'm talking about really living actively.

You can, having deep faith, shut yourself up in a room and pray that God will send the groom. But if there is no such strong faith, it is better not to avoid association with young people.

Sign up to volunteer. Go to the audition, maybe you will be accepted into the choir. Try to work with children in Sunday school. Help organize parish weddings or mission trips. Missionary trips are very helpful.

I organized my first missionary campaign because I had four daughters who had no suitors. All of them got married and almost all the participants of this campaign started families!

An active girl is easier to notice, and most importantly, she is immediately visible in action.

Drinking groom is not an option

When choosing a husband, you need to pay attention to how he relates to alcohol. If he overdoes it, if he has a habit, how upset he is - drinking "out of grief" is scary.

After all, earlier, for example, they didn’t drink wine at a wake, they drank at weddings - with joy.

For joy, you can drink a little. The Lord blessed the wine at the wedding. But if a person drinks from grief (a bitter drunkard), it is better to wait for another groom.

Do not be afraid to push the groom away with severity

Many men believe that you first need to live in the so-called. “civil marriage”, and then get married. True, it often does not come to marriage.

Starting a relationship with carnal intimacy is wrong.

There is a certain sequence in the development of relations between husband and wife: first - friendship, understanding, recognition of this person. Then, when you feel what kind of person he is, how reliable he is, how interesting you are with him - you have the basis for the development of other relationships that begin already in marriage.

After all, you live with this person, talk, share impressions, look at the world together, raise children, help each other, experience sorrows, illnesses, difficulties - this is the most important thing and you need to prepare for this!

You are looking for yourself not a “partner”, but a life partner, the father of your children. Do not be afraid to clearly and definitely tell him that close relationships are impossible for you before marriage.

People who obeyed and adhered to such strict rules thanked me later.

If you start building relationships on carnal needs, this will inevitably distort the consciousness of your choice - your love, passion, passion, dependence on a person you like will interfere. And you will not be able to evaluate it soberly.

There should be as many children as God wills

You need to talk about this with your future husband even before the start of a life together - before marriage. Because it happens, unfortunately, that a man is not ready for the birth of children or wants only one child. You need to explain in advance to the person who wants to become your husband that you cannot avoid having children. Strict confessors do not allow communion to those who, while maintaining marital relations, prevent the birth of children. It is a sin.

Of course, marital relations are committed not only for the sake of having children. The marital relationship in marriage is an expression of love for each other, when the spouses are united into one and become one body, one being.

There is nothing sinful for spouses in this. And if the spouses are infertile, these relationships can continue, there is no need to abstain from them.

But if children can be, it is impossible to avoid their birth. Therefore, even in the case of a disease in the treatment of which pregnancy is undesirable, one should refrain from marital intercourse, and not find ways to avoid the birth of a child.

Marital posts

As you know, there are fasts in Christianity - they apply to marital relations as well. There is a lot of talk about this topic now, some believe that marital relations should not be regulated.

But such confessors as Archimandrite John (Krestyankin), Hieromonk Pavel (Troitsky), Archimandrite Tavrion (Batozsky) said that marriage is a school of chastity and fasting should be observed by spouses and in close relationships. It is necessary that in marriage you and your husband have unity on these issues.

Marriage is a comfort and joy, some even marry for it. But on the other hand, marital relations can also be a source of sorrow.

The apostle Paul said that it is better to remain pure so that there are no sorrows according to the flesh. Because not always spouses can be together, they do not always have the same intentions and desires.

You need to take this calmly, do not worry, do not get hung up, do not build your entire married life on this side of marriage.

A good wife loves her husband more than her children.

The husband is the most important in the family. If the husband is loved and everything goes well with him, it will be well with the children. No matter how much you love children, you need to love your husband more.

My late wife raised her children in such a way that they understood: the best and most delicious is for dad. The youngest daughter sometimes said: “What about me? I want too". I handed her a sandwich thickly spread with black caviar, which my wife had prepared for me, but the older girls made terrible eyes, whispered something sternly in her ear, and she fell silent guiltily and for no reason wanted to take even a part of this sandwich.

Of course, they also got caviar sandwiches in those rare moments when they managed to get it, but on my father's, the layer of caviar was thicker.

For children, quarrels of parents are worse than punishment.

If children see the love and unity of their parents, they are peaceful and calm.

My eldest daughter recently recalled what a tragedy, when she was still very young, our dispute with her wife was for her.

The daughter was standing in a crib with railings, and her mother and I were arguing. I said that she should be forced to put away the toys, but my wife thought that it was already late, it was time for bed and there was no need to take her out of the crib. It seemed to the poor little girl that the world was collapsing.

Of course, I am very ashamed that I did not understand this then, but still my advice to expectant mothers: if a husband punishes a child, it is better not to argue with him. It will be easier for the child to endure the punishment than to see your argument and disagreement with each other.

After some time, when the husband calms down, you can choose a convenient moment and try to talk with him in the absence of children, how you can and how you can’t punish and what to do if the situation repeats, but you can’t argue with your husband in the presence of children. It may seem to you that you are protecting the child, but in fact you are inflicting a deep wound on his soul.

You ask, what if the husband punishes too cruelly, often and unfairly? Of course, if there is a threat to the life and health of children, one should not argue and fight with her husband, but get a divorce.

That is why it is necessary to discuss with your fiancé before marriage how you will raise children, which punishments are acceptable and which are not.

If a husband resorts to punishment because of anger and irritability, you must be able to calm him down when a thunderstorm begins. One remarkable priest told me that his grandfather, when the children were noisy at the table, hit the guilty on the forehead with a wooden spoon. Grandmother, who knew about this, always put a spoon with a very thin handle on her husband. The spoon broke, and this softened the blow.

Of course, now such educational measures are not common, but the wife must be wise and inventive in order to soften her husband's severity without entering into disputes.

What even Baba Yaga should know about

The book “Housekeeping”, published back in Soviet times, gives this advice: “You must remember that you need to prepare daily for the arrival of your husband from the service. Prepare the children: wash them, comb their hair and change into clean, smart clothes. They should line up and greet their father when he comes to the door. For such an occasion, put on a clean apron yourself and try to decorate yourself - for example, tie a bow in your hair.

Do not enter into conversations with your husband, remember how tired he is, and that every day he has to go to the service for you. Feed him in silence, and only after he has read the newspaper, you can try to talk to him.

This may seem like a mockery to you, but so many men tell me that when they come home tired, their wives do not let them rest - they pester with various questions, with stories, and they suffer from this, the poor.

Even Baba Yaga in the Russian folk tale, before asking Ivanushka about something, who wandered into her hut on chicken legs, first fed him; he even suggested to her: “First you feed me, give me a drink, and then ask questions!” And women need to remember this. After all, a well-fed man is kinder.

When I gave advice from “Housekeeping” to a mother with many children, weary of life, she was very surprised and said that everything is the other way around at home: her husband comes home, she wants to feed him as soon as possible and go to rest, and he starts pestering her with conversations, questions; not realizing how tired she is during the day.

Well, well ... It happens that such a test falls to your lot. You have to sit and answer questions about the children, listen to stories about the husband's boss or subordinates. In this case, before the husband arrives home, turn on some fairy tale for the children, and lie down for 15 minutes or read the canon herself in order to gain strength before meeting with her husband. You should be comforted by the fact that he loves you so much that it is difficult for him to end the day without talking to you.

How to be at peace with your husband's relatives and friends

Be prepared to perceive your husband not as an individual, but together with his relatives: with his mother - your mother-in-law, his father - your father-in-law, with the husband's sisters - with daughters-in-law. And if you don't like someone, you need to be ready to endure. This is how respect for the husband’s relatives and for himself is shown, because his relatives are part of his life. Love must be sacrificial.

How to overcome hostility, if it arises? There is such a way - a prayer for these people. If you pray, the heart will become softer, and the relationship will be smoother and calmer.

The husband has not only relatives, but also friends. At first, of course, he will forget about everyone, will spend time only with you, text you every five seconds. But then friends will return. Therefore, it is better to get to know them in advance.

For a man, friends, it seems to me, are more important than girlfriends for a woman. You can not deprive him of the opportunity to communicate with them.

No need to think that if your husband married you, then now he is completely yours. After the wedding, he will remain and continue relationships with both friends and parents.

Especially if he is the only child in the family, especially beloved by his mother. It'll be hard. The mother-in-law can involuntarily be jealous, demand additional attention to herself, and do it indirectly, but in a roundabout way, because female nature, I won’t say “sly”, but very flexible.

To overcome all this, you need to be ready for this and try to be patient, helping yourself with prayer. Over time, as the experience of many shows, if you make an effort and force yourself to be kind, the relationship between the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law will even out, even if they were difficult.

Avoid being a bore saw

The duty of a wife is to be wise. Not cunning, but wise. Wisdom should be asked from God. All Christians are commanded to be wise as serpents, though simple as doves.

Directly, by force, by pressure, it will not work to achieve anything from a husband: to accustom him to cleanliness, for example, if he is sloppy; ask for time for you get a job and stop playing tanks on the computer.

You can cut him every day, press him, persuade him, but men do not give in to this. And relationships can deteriorate forever.

Many girls, while they are not married themselves, agree with this, understand the failure of this method of influence, but, having become a wife, they still do not avoid the role of a boring saw. And they don't even notice it!

And how is it right, you ask. The strength of a woman is in her weakness, and men are more likely to bow to a quiet, gentle, meek request.

You need to be feminine, you need to be able to preserve femininity in everything - in relation to your husband, to children, to life - you need to be different than a man. This is why men love women.

What if that doesn't help? I endure, endure, endure - and he only gets worse. Do not forget about God, Who can do everything. If you pray diligently for your husband, the situation will definitely change: either your husband will become more careful, or his carelessness will stop annoying you.

If you quarreled

You must put up with your husband first, no matter what happens. Anything can happen, but you can’t go to bed without reconciling. There is no need to carry over the showdown to the next day. If the husband is irritated, you must not be irritated. If you are unable to do this, it is better to evade the conversation under a plausible pretext.

If you want to talk about something important, but controversial, it is better to do it in the morning so that before the evening you both have time to think everything over, calm down and reconcile.

For serious conversations, you need to choose a time when your husband is in a good mood. When he ate, for example. Or his favorite team won.

Meet the confessor of your future husband

If your future husband does not have a confessor, you need to help find him. Because then you will have no one to ask for advice, help. Who will you go to if your husband does not listen to anyone? A person must have authority whom he trusts, with whom he consults.

If the groom has a confessor, get to know him, ask about this priest, find out what his views are, how close these views are to you. Is there a big difference between the views of your confessor and your husband's confessor?

The confessors of the husband and wife may be different, but in this case it is better to agree before marriage - which temple to go to, how to pray (together or separately), so that later there will be no disputes.

You need to warn your husband that in all matters you will obey him, but in spiritual matters (how often you should take communion, how to fast, etc.) - your confessor.

There is no need to push your husband and confessor against each other so that your husband does not have tension or jealousy towards your confessor.

Be careful and reasonable.

In a dispute with your husband, you should not cite the opinion of your confessor as an argument if the husband does not have confidence in him. Even if he treats your confessor with respect, it is better to say: “I think it’s better this way”, “I think it’s right to do this”, and not “my confessor advised me this way”. After all, you freely choose obedience to the confessor in this or that issue and you yourself are responsible for this or that decision.

Choose the person you are interested in

It is better when the husband and wife have a common cultural level. Emotionally, by temperament, spouses can be very different, but the circle of friends, the circle of interests should coincide.

If the cultural level is different, and the husband, for example, does not understand serious music at all, and you are used to visiting the conservatory every week and Haydn's quartets are always heard at home; if you don’t fall asleep yet, be sure to re-read Gogol or Pushkin, and he loves base detective stories, there can be difficulties in family life.

A year must pass before the wedding

My main advice is don't rush. Keep an eye on the person throughout the year.

Not only crazy people have exacerbations in spring and autumn. Everyone feels differently at different times of the year. Therefore, in a year you have the opportunity to get to know a person more fully, from different angles, in good and bad, difficult periods.

It is very important to find out before marriage not only the good, but also the bad sides of the future husband. Try to see it with a sober eye. Pray that the Lord will show it to you as it is.

Be sure to introduce the candidate to his confessor and parents before making a decision on marriage. They should also participate in choosing a husband, because if a person is drugged by love, it is difficult for him to reason soberly.

True, we had a case when one couple secretly got married - my mother was categorically against it. But then the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II was received for the wedding. Mom and I reconciled and everything is fine. But this is an exceptional case. As a rule, it is worth listening to the opinion of parents.

As for friends, I don't know. If you have some kind of wise friend, you can introduce her to the groom and then ask her opinion. Although, of course, it should not be decisive.

The main reason for divorce

Probably the main reason why people get divorced so often in our country is that their acquaintance was short-lived, and the decision to marry was ill-considered, not very responsible.

There was such a case with the elder, father Pavel Troitsky. One girl fell in love with a young man, asked permission to go on a date with him, and Father Pavel, since he was a man of insight, knew that this man was not suitable for her husband. But he allowed me to go on a date and said: “I will pray that you see him for who he is.”

And when the girl came on this date, she suddenly saw the young man completely different, not the way she imagined.

Therefore, before marriage, you need to be very critical of your future husband: to doubt, not to trust your feelings, not to trust your mind. Be very careful.

So that it doesn’t turn out that you married a prince, and your husband turned out to be Ivanushka the Fool.

The Enchanted Prince

But when you got married and got married, everything changes here. Here you can recall a fairy tale about how one young man was taught to behave well and treat people correctly. And one teacher told him: "You should see a prince in everyone, and serve him like a prince - like an enchanted prince, although he may not even look like a prince."

So a wife, if she chose a husband for herself, got married, got married, and he suddenly turned out to be bad, she should treat him like an enchanted prince.

After all, you and I are Christians, we know that human nature has amazing possibilities, and a person can change. And you can get better, and your husband can get better - thanks to mutual patience, respect, self-sacrificing love and God's help. This is what you need to believe.

Islamic canon marriage law allows marriages between Muslims and women of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews). At all times - both during the period of the mission of the Prophet, and in our day - Muslim men could marry Christian and Jewish women.

Today, in the context of globalization and mixing of cultures, as a result of interfaith marriages, a number of problems arise in families, for example, with raising children in the spirit of the Islamic faith or instilling in them an Islamic worldview. The demographic factor is also important: the marriages of Muslims with non-Muslim women to a certain extent reduce the chances of Muslim women to find a spouse of the same faith, forcing them to marry non-Muslims, which is canonically unlawful.

The vast majority of authoritative scholars of Islam, including theologians of all four madhhabs, expressed the opinion that it is undesirable for a Muslim to marry a woman from the People of the Book. As an argument, the example of the second righteous caliph ‘Umar is given, who, when he was the ruler of the faithful, called on Muslims to divorce Christian and Jewish wives. All but Hudhaifa immediately divorced. The same divorced his wife after some time, thus showing that there is no direct ban on this kind of marriage in Islam, but the command of the Caliph cannot be disobeyed.

'Umar's order was not unfounded. In view of the canonical permissibility of marriages of Muslims with women from the People of the Book, many Muslims began to marry Christians and Jews, but did not subsequently show a desire to introduce their wives to the Truth of the Qur'anic gospel, to strengthen them in Islamic virtue.

Some theologians, especially those of the Hanafi madhhab, declare that such marriages are forbidden (haram) in a non-Islamic state where Muslims are a minority, since under such conditions, basically, the question of the personal religious status of a believer - the right to live - has remained unresolved. in accordance with the canons of their creed, which implies the free exercise of religious needs (including the possibility of timely performance of five prayers), regulation of their lives in accordance with Sharia law (in matters of family, marriage, inheritance, etc.). An important factor is the nationalist, anti-Islamic sentiments in society in some states and propaganda in the media, as well as (perhaps as a result of the above) the categorical desire of a non-Muslim wife to raise children in a different (non-Islamic) religious tradition. This state of affairs cannot but have an impact, first of all, on families in which the spouse (the keeper of the hearth, mother and educator of children) is not a Muslim: the spiritual-religious and national-cultural foundations of the family are weakened.

Of course, Islamic canons allow marriages between Muslims, on the one hand, and Christians or Jews, on the other, but you need to understand that this permission of the Lord contains hidden wisdom and benefit. A person who has embarked on the path of truth will try to help his neighbor to find this path, will make every effort to ensure that his family members hear the Word of the Lord and practice His commandments, which is sometimes not easy to do even in a Muslim family if society and the environment do not contribute.

That Muslim who marries a woman of the Christian or Jewish faith because of her beauty, but then makes no effort to make her understand and accept Muslim values, falls under the aforementioned order of Caliph ‘Umar. If he neglects this serious warning, then he calls into question the well-being of himself and his children in both worlds.

Summarizing the above, we can conclude that the marriage of a Muslim with a chaste and well-behaved woman of Christian and Jewish cultures is canonically allowed, however, it is necessary to take into account (1) the preservation of the husband's status in the family according to the canons of Islam, (2) the desirability of the spouse adopting Islamic dogma and (3) the obligation to educate children in the spirit of morality and religiosity, commanded by the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the final Messenger of God (may the Almighty bless him and welcome). And all this should be in the context of faith in the One God, among whose last prophets were Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.

May the Almighty protect us from rash acts and grant us and our descendants ways and opportunities to achieve happiness in the earthly world and in the eternal world!

Answers to questions on the topic

I am Orthodox and he is Muslim. We fell in love and would like to start a family. Is this possible and under what conditions?

If your feelings are full, sincere and mutual, then try to see the world through the prism of the worldview that your loved one lives in and, perhaps, you yourself will answer the questions that have arisen.

I am a baptized Christian, I love a Muslim very much. Love has been mutual for almost five years, but we can’t start a family, because my young man can’t decide on nikah because I don’t accept Islam. His mom doesn't mind me. He recently asked for advice from his relative, a mullah, who said that I must definitely convert to Islam.

I relate to Islam very well, knowing that God is One. I want our future children to be Muslims. Yes, and I, perhaps, will accept Islam if I come to this myself. I consider it wrong to take such a responsible step as the adoption of a different faith, knowing practically nothing about it. Give, please, advice. And is it sinful if I accept Islam because I love a man very much, and he wants to marry a Muslim woman? Tatyana, 27 years old.

You say that the feelings have been mutual for 5 years already, but if your intentions are serious, why have you not decided for such a long time whether you need Muslim spiritual values ​​in your life or not?! And one more thing: if your friend cohabits with you (lives like a wife) all these years, then it is not clear what values ​​he is guided by and what he follows. It turns out that Islam is a kind of formal status, but otherwise - live as you please, the main thing is that words such as “live according to the Koran and Sunnah”, “how is it according to Sharia”, etc. Strange, isn't it?

My Christian wife wants to get married. Can I marry her, and then perform a similar ritual according to Muslim traditions? If it is possible, what should be done and how? Nail, 21 years old.

There is no need to get married, you should not do this, registration in the registry office and a Muslim marriage will be enough.

My fiancé is a Muslim, I am a Christian. His parents insist that I change my religion, otherwise I will not be accepted into the family. But I am not ready for this, to be more precise, this religion is absolutely unknown to me, to tell the truth, it is even scary, because, I think, this is a great sin. What should I do? I'm afraid of losing my young man. Veronica, 27 years old.

Yes, from the point of view of any denomination, a change of faith is regarded as a sin, apostasy. But "there is no compulsion in religion!" (Holy Quran, 2:256). Only your heart can tell you what to do. For an introduction to Islam, read my books The Path to Faith and Perfection and Peace of the Soul.

I am a Christian dating a Muslim. We have a wonderful relationship, but I was married and I'm afraid to tell him about it. I think that if I tell him, he will decide to leave. I'm tired of being silent and it's getting harder and harder to communicate because of this. After all, for him it is a shame, on my part a deceit. Irina, 22 years old.

It's best to tell the truth.

I have Muslim roots, I myself am half Armenian. I would like to connect my life with a Muslim. I am drawn to Islam. But as soon as I start a relationship with some young man from this environment, after a while everything stops just because I am a non-Christian. Answer, why are parents sometimes against the happiness of their children? I am from a decent family, modest and educated, but they seem not to look at that.

They, parents, have their own understanding of happiness. For each person it has its own shapes, shades, colors.

I married a Russian girl. After the marriage, I found out that she was not a girl, she had a relationship with another before me. Can I continue to live with her? Is this allowed or prohibited? Now she is studying Islam and is going to become a Muslim.

Your situation is a sad and common reality of our time. In this case, canonically you have the right to divorce, but you can continue to live with her if you think that she has repented of her deed and is not going to repeat this kind of sinful and harmful actions.

I hope you yourself did not have an intimate relationship with anyone before marrying her.

Tell me, please, what should a Muslim who is married to a non-Muslim woman who does not accept Islam, although she says in words that she wants to become a Muslim, do nothing?

Be a full-fledged Muslim, that is, such a person from whom only good, positive, creative energy comes both in relation to others and in relation to oneself (the desire to successfully realize one's capabilities and constantly improve oneself intellectually, physically, spiritually). This will require a serious attitude and a lot of energy and effort from you, but everything will quickly pay off with the result. Do not be rude, do not force, and you will see how those around you will be transformed as a result of your personal transformation. "Example is more powerful than preaching" (S. Johnson).

What do you think, can I, a Muslim, marry a Christian girl who wants to convert to Islam, as it seems to me, for my sake, for the sake of marriage (not by conviction yet)? Jimmy.

Theoretically, you can, but practically, it is very responsible and has dangerous prospects for you and your future children.

Is it permissible for a Muslim man to live with a non-Muslim wife, although he has called and admonished her many times? I know that a Muslim can live with a Christian, Jewish wife. And if it does not apply at all to either the first or the second?

The question of whether it is possible to live with a non-Muslim wife (especially not related to either Christians or Jews) would be relevant if asked before marriage, and not now, when the relationship has already been realized.

For a Muslim, as a person obedient, devoted to God, in such a situation, patience is the only key to preserving the family, especially one in which there is a child who needs both fatherly and motherly care. In addition, it can be very difficult for a person who has been formed as a person in a society in which spirituality is clearly in decline to change his inner world, fill it with faith, and even more so to understand and accept the final Scripture sent down to all mankind, especially when there is no living example of Muslim virtue, for example, in the face of a beloved husband. By the way, some married couples took years to come to the Divine Truth.

My husband is a Tatar, a Muslim, I am Orthodox, and very religious, observing all fasts and canons, from a non-drinking and non-smoking family. Before the wedding, my husband assured me that there should be no issues in religion with a child, that I would be able to raise children in my traditions. But now, when I am in position, he walks sad, downcast, I guess because of what. He is afraid that I will give the child a Christian name, that the child will not know Muslim traditions. What to do? I love my husband very much and do not want him to be upset. He says that even if I do it my way, he will never leave me, but he will live all his life in anguish and sadness, as if he will withdraw into himself. It's like he's blackmailing me. Is it possible to circumcise a child, read adhan and iqamat, and then baptize in a church? Is it possible for a child to instill two faiths at once, and is it not considered a terrible sin if a child attends a mosque and a church? To me, as an educated and urban person, this seems possible, given the century we live in, in order to avoid family conflicts and reproaches.

Islam is the stage of the religious development of mankind, following Judaism and Christianity. It is unrealistic to inculcate several religions at once, especially when there are serious differences between them. For a believer, if he really understands the meaning and significance of his religion, this is absurd, this is, as they say, neither here nor there. The reaction of your husband is clear, understand that he, as the head of the family, must answer before God on Judgment Day for the righteousness, correctness of the beliefs of his wife and children.

See, for example: az-Zuhayli V. Al-fiqh al-islami wa adillatuh. In 11 vols. T. 9. S. 6654.

The order of the caliph concerned only those Muslims whose wives during the period of married life did not accept Islam, did not become Muslim women.