Family vs. Church?

As every Christian family strives to live out its faith, it must face a fundamental choice: how to reconcile the demands family life and Church life, of work and play and education and social engagements, and commitment to worship, fellowship and the giving our time, talents and finances to the parish?

The problem lies in understanding what we mean by “church” and “family.” When we speak of “church,” we tend to think of parish-related activities: attending a service, going to a parish party, helping with a fundraiser. Because these events make demands on our time and personal resources, they often come into conflict with we think of as “non-Church” or “family” commitments: swimming lessons, supper with friends, an extra shift at work. As a result, church and family often become an either/or scenario, a choice in which one can be enjoyed only at the expense of the other.

I would suggest that this dilemma would not exist if we allowed ourselves a more meaningful definition of “church.” According to the Orthodox understanding, “church” does not refer only to events revolving around the parish, but rather to the continuing presence of Christ in all human life through the Holy Spirit.

The Incarnation was God’s entry into the world of first century Palestine. By sending His Holy Spirit—His breath, His divine life—upon His apostles and all those baptized in His Name, Jesus has made it possible for God’s Presence to penetrate every human life, in all places and throughout all time. Because of Pentecost, every sphere of human existence—working and playing, learning and growing, birth and dying, marrying and child-bearing—could become an ark in which God dwelt and make Himself known. In short, all human life acquired the potential to become Church.

As Orthodox Christians, therefore, we cannot separate “church life” from “family life,” because everything we are and do is called to shine with the life of the Church, which is the continuing Presence of God in history. The formal dimension to the Church—its tradition of worship, fellowship and stewardship—cannot be disconnected from, let alone opposed to, everything else we do. Rather, we must learn to see Church tradition as a spiritual framework within which God reveals the potential for all our activities to become Church: repositories of God’s Presence, daily icons of the Incarnation.

What does this mean for us? Firstly, any family that is dedicated to serving Christ in the Orthodox Church must strive to conduct its activities within a framework of Church tradition. On a basic level, these means planning our professional, social and educational events around the cycle of the Church year, including daily services and weekly reception of the Eucharist, the twelve Great Feasts, Lent and Pascha. Times of fellowship and stewardship commitments should stand on at least an equal footing with other financial and time commitments. Fasting periods should become a regular part of our family menu-planning, as much as we are able. Reading Scripture and spiritual literature, along with personal prayer, should find a regular place in our daily routines. Only with this framework in place can our lives begin to fulfill their God-bearing potential to become Church.

While tradition is a framework for our lives, it alone cannot form the whole picture. At its heart, the liturgy calls us to “commend ourselves, each other and all our lives unto Christ our God.” While we need to sing those words on a weekly basis, we also need daily opportunities outside of liturgy to accomplish the challenge of our song. We need to establish and cherish those informal, non-liturgical times as God-given arenas in which service to our family can itself become a churchly act, our personal liturgy.

How then can we strike a balance between participating the formal dimension of the Church—its tradition—and serving the liturgy of our lives? In a monastery, the schedule of monks and nuns is determined for each member by the common rule. This rule allows both for liturgical activity and for intervening times when monks can simply live out their vocation of brotherly love in work and quiet solitude.

In a parish, by contrast, the schedule will vary depending on the needs of each family, which must evolve its own “rule” within the larger boundaries of Church tradition. A good starting-point is to consult with your parish priest to determine what level of formal Church commitment will realistically and reasonably work in your own situation, depending on your circumstances and your stage of life.

In the end, the path of the spiritual life is a matter of balance, of all things finding their proper place in their proper proportions. The debate between family and church is not really a debate at all, a question of either/or. Rather, it is like the relationship of the flower to the soil. Without the rich soil of tradition, the flower of family will wither into worldliness. But if the flower of family is somehow unable to grow, then we must conclude that the soil of tradition is barren, religion for the sake of religion. In isolation, the frame of prayer, fasting and asceticism is empty, but without that framework we can have no real sense that our life is more than end in itself, an image of God’s life, an icon of His Kingdom.

The Ministry of Suffering

I was speaking recently to a colleague of mine who for the past several months has been suffering from a series of unexplained migraine headaches. At some point in the course of our conversation, he exclaimed, “How can people live this way?” It’s a good question. How do we deal with the phenomenon of chronic suffering, both as sufferers and healthy loved ones who care for the afflicted?

Chronic illness and disability are a common reality. Millions of people continue to endure diabetes, MS, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, depression, back pain—to mention just a few. Pain, debilitating weakness, the inability to think or speak clearly are a daily, continuing fact of life that many must negotiate.

And with no end in sight. When I get the flu, I can expect to recover. I have been forced to take a detour from the highway, but I fully anticipate rejoining the main flow in the foreseeable future. I can hardly imagine having the flu and knowing with all certainty that I will never recover from it. I won’t die, but I won’t get better either.

The temptation in this line of thinking, of course, is to conceive of chronic suffering as a permanent detour from normalcy. “Real life” is somewhere else, and other people are living it. The experience of the chronic sufferer, because it is not “normal,” is somehow inadequate when compared to the experience of others.

According to the Gospel, however, this is just not so. Through the Incarnation, God entered the world to do away will all illness and ultimately, end all suffering: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

God’s ultimate purpose, then, is the end of chronic suffering, including death itself. But how does He achieve that goal? He enters into suffering, fills it with Himself. He makes suffering itself the medium in which freedom is to be found.

In other words, according to the Gospel, chronic pain and illness and weakness are not a detour from real life; they are the very path leading to Real Life, which is nothing less than an encounter with the living God whose very purpose is to dwell with His people: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.” (Rev. 21:3)

For those of us who are generally physically healthy, it is easy to assume that the real spiritual life consists of such activities as prayer, preaching, reading the Bible, going to Church. Real ministry is overtly spiritual or religious.

If we consider the deeper implications of the Christian Gospel, however, we must realize that while some are called to obvious expressions of faith—preaching and teaching, missionary work, faithful attendance and support of their communities—many others are called simply to suffer with chronic illness and disability. In short, chronic suffering itself is a ministry, and no less so than anything else in the spiritual life.

Indeed, I would be so bold as to say that chronic suffering is the most important of all ministries. Someone who endures daily pain and weakness while trusting in the love of God, speaks far more eloquently of His power than a healthy person who, say, writes a regular article for the local newspaper…

It’s one thing for a person to talk about the death and resurrection of Christ; it’s another thing for him or her to live the Cross in the form of MS or cancer, while demonstrating Jesus’ resurrection in his or her ongoing love for neighbour.

I would therefore urge those of us who are “healthy” to be patient with those who suffer chronically. Don’t expect them to participate in obvious expressions of faith, because the fact is, they don’t really need to. They are living the spiritual life more fully and really than we are, and if they even learn to endure their condition without bitterness, they will have achieved a far higher goal than we ever could.

For those who endure chronic suffering, I would say: this is your ministry. Your victory in the smallest of things—getting out of bed, being gentle with a loved one in the midst of the pain—can and will change the lives of those around you more powerfully than the most talented of writers or preachers or missionaries. It was for you above all that God entered His creation. He came to suffer not just for you, but with you and beside you. He came to go through what you are going through, so that He might see you all the way through, into a place where all sickness, sorrow and sighing will finally flee away.