Introduction

In keeping with today's Roman Catholic reading regarding the various gifts given by the Spirit for varied tasks (1 Cor 12), I decided to post this little essay I wrote back in 2015, about the variety of vocations.  I may have gone a bit overboard in my quotations, and perhaps the style and precise formulations are not how I would word them now, but, overall, I think it's still a decent piece of writing.

The Many-Lighted Stars of Vocation

“One [is the] glory of [the] sun, and another [the] glory of [the] moon, and another [the] glory of [the] stars: therefore star differs from star in glory” (1 Cor 15:41).  Each of these has its own role, and usurping another’s role leads to chaos.  So if the sun were the moon, the earth would be consumed like a dry leaf in a bonfire; if the moon were the sun, the earth would be frozen.  Even having any other star replace the sun could have disastrous results: the star could be too large and engulf the solar system, or it could be so small that earth felt no heat.  Even if it were similar to the sun, a small change in size, light, or heat, could makes the planets collide, the plants die without food, or the people decimate through heat or cold.  Thus heavenly body has its own role, and usurping another role leads only to chaos.  So though the sun is greater than the moon—in its size, light, and heat—its full potential is only realized when it fulfills its due role.  The small, dim, and cold moon is more useful than the sun if the former is in its correct orbit, while the latter has wandered from its position.

 

This image could also apply to the vocations of Christians, though it is, of course, not exact.  Thus, though the life of virginity for the Kingdom is greater than married life, it is of no avail if one misuses one’s vocation or even pursues the opposite path.  Though the idea of Christians being given varying rewards in Heaven due to their differing vocations and good works on earth is common—see, for instance, the last vision in St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Vitae Meritorum or Dante’s Commedia divina—one passage illuminating this point has always struck me.  In the 4th century, St. Ephraim the Syrian explained a similar view in his Letter to Publius, and, at one point, he sees thrones that were destined for those called to the life of virginity.  Alas, they did not worthily fulfill their vocation, and they fell from grace.  The throne did not remain abandoned, though: the virtuous married, who had faithfully done as the Lord commanded, were rewarded with the throne of the virgins, or, as St. Ephraim said, “their virtues filled the place of virginity” (§15).  Thus a higher vocation is no guarantee of a place in Heaven or even if a high place, for it is necessary for one to live his vocation well.  St. Augustine, too, proclaims this view: “Obedience is a greater perfection than celibacy…A more obedient married woman should be more highly regarded than a less obedient virgin” (The Excellence of Marriage, 23,28).

 

The doctrine that the life of virginity is higher than that of marriage has roots even in the Scriptures.  “For I wish all men to be as I,” declared the virginal Paul—yet he also said, “but each an individual charism has from God” (1 Cor 7:7).  The Lord Himself declared the eunuch for the Kingdom to be blessed, fulfilling what was foretold in the Wisdom of Solomon: “And [blessed is] the eunuch who did not work in [his] hands a lawless deed, nor desire against the Lord a wicked deed; for will be given to him faith’s select grace and a more well-pleasing allotment in the temple of the Lord” (Wis 3:14; cf. Mt 19:12).  He also declared, about all men, that “in the resurrection, neither do they marry, nor are they given in marriage, but as angels of God in heaven they are” (Mt 22:30).  The angelic life is thus the life that the virginal (or the monastic, as we could also term them) emulate.  This is the life that all will have in Heaven: what monastics do is to live this life now, on earth.  In thus pre-empting their resurrection, in a sense, they live the heavenly life on earth rather than saving it only for heaven.  In contrast, those who are married have more ties to earth, both in their marriages and in their physical procreation of children, two things which will not exist in heaven.  Of course, this does not mean that it is impossible for married people to emulate the heavenly life; these connections of marriage to earthly life and virginity to the heavenly or angelic life describe the states themselves, not the individual Christians living in those states.  As St. Francis de Sales said, there is a distinction between the “state of perfection” (virginity or monasticism) and “being perfect”: all are called to the latter, though only some to former, and living the former does not necessarily  meant that one is living the latter (Introduction to the Devout Life III.XI).
   

In living the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, rather than living in a state that is so united with this world which passes away, the virginal or monastic vocation is intrinsically greater than the vocation to marriage.  This is the general teaching of Christianity from the time of the Fathers, and it was viewed as heresy to deny that virginity is greater than marriage, as St. Jerome forcefully showed in his Against Jovinianus.    Thus St. Augustine said, "Marriage and abstinence are two good things, one better than the other,” and St. Ephraim hymned, “Chastity's wings are greater and lighter / than [the wings of] marriage” (The Excellence of Marriage, 8,8; Hymns on the Nativity 28.3).  A catena of all the Fathers’ quotes that confirm this view would be incredibly unwieldy; suffice it to say that Sts. Jerome, Augustine and Ephraim were not the only, nor even the earliest, to affirm this view.  Nor has this teaching ceased since the Fathers, but it continues to be the Church’s teaching even today, though it is not always emphasized.  Despite the at times overly-harsh statements of some of the Fathers regarding the inferiority of marriage, the Church’s general teaching has continued to proclaim the complementarity between these two vocations, though a hierarchy exists between them.

 

“Both are holy in the Lord, one as a wife, the other as a virgin,” and these two even complement each other, because, to echo the statement of St. Paul quoted above, “Celibacy and marriage have their distinctive services of the Lord, their different ministries” (St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, III.88, III.79).  The Church has never, except maybe at its very origins, been formed solely or even mostly of the virginal; married Christians have been the majority of the Church.  God does not call only the select few who live as monks to holiness and salvation, despite the feeling some may have received from the Church in the past, and sometimes still do.  The “universal call to holiness,” so lauded at Vatican II, is nothing new; it did not even begin with St. Francis de Sales, as some explain it.  When Christ told His listeners to “Be ye perfect, even as thy Father in the heavens is perfect,” He spoke to the crowds, and it is very unlikely that all the crowds who came to see Him where virgins (particularly before He had even declared the teaching of celibacy for the Kingdom) (Mt 5:48).  If Christ called all, married and monks, to be perfect and holy, neither did that call cease with Him.  The early desert father Abba Makarios of Egypt taught the same: “Truly, it is not the name of 'monk' or 'layperson' or 'virgin' or 'wife and husband' but an upright disposition that God seeks, and he gives his Holy Spirit to all of these people” (Sayings §33).  Both are called to share in the life of prayer, which is, as an anonymous Syriac writer stated, is both “the seal of virginity” and “the firm basis of marriage.”  Russian Christians were strongly reminded of this by that great monk and saint, Seraphim of Sarov: "The Lord listens equally to the monk and the simple Christian layman provided that both are Orthodox, and both love God from the depths of their souls and have faith in Him, if only as a grain of mustard seed; and they both shall move mountains” (The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit §7).  To remember both the complementarity of the vocations and the universal call of holiness, we need only recall the words of St. Hildegard: “Secular people are the embrace of God's arms, and spiritual people are His eye, and God greatly loves both of them when they follow His precepts” (Letter 351).
   

So if all are called to holiness, how does one determine which state to live in?  St. Clement of Alexandria answered, “The choice of celibacy or wedlock is in our power and not a matter of the absolute constraint of a commandment”; in a sense, though, there is a commandment involved: the commandment of God’s individual call (Stromateis III.66).  The Lord calls each of us to a particular vocation, to receive and to utilize particular charisms, and refusing this call is a serious evil.  Taking it upon ourselves to choose our path contradicts the prayer of the righteous King David, who implored, “Make known to me, Lord, the way in which I shall go” (Ps 142:8).  St. Hildegard of Bingen strongly commanded Christians not to choose a vocation God was not calling them to, even if it is the higher one: regarding virginity, she directed, “Let no woman undertake anything that the Holy Spirit did not bestow upon her, lest afterward she remain unfulfilled” (Letter 250r).  If one is called by God to be a monk, he should not run away from that call in order to enjoy marriage’s unique pleasures; nor should the one called to marriage run to the unique blessings and spiritual pleasures of monasticism.  Both vocations have their own pleasures, and both have their own difficulties and challenges.  If we obey the Lord’s direction, He will give us the graces needed to fulfill our proper vocation; but if we ignore His direction, we will be like Israelites who wandered forty years in the wilderness for fearing the Canaanites, or even worse.  For illicitly grasping for the monastic vocation is like unworthily grasping the Ark of the Covenant, a deadly deed, while running to marriage without a call is like the prodigal son who squandered his inheritance on earthly pleasures.  Of course, these are imperfect images, but the truth they are being used to illustrate is true: God has a unique calling and charism for each member of Christ’s Body, and it is evil to refuse or ignore this calling.  

 

Finally, let us explore more deeply how marriage and monasticism complement each other.  We saw above that monasticism is an emulation of the angelic life, an emulation of their worship, which is “the perfect and complete activity” (Babai, Letter to Cyriacus §1).  However, the angelic life is what all will live in Heaven; after all, Heaven will be pure prayer, and prayer is that which “satisfies our yearnings and makes us equal to the angels” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer I).  In Heaven, all will live the angelic life, but, on earth, it is most fully lived by monks, for their entire state of life is based on that of the angels.  Since both married and monks share a common goal (that is, the angelic life), though, then the monastic life, based on that of the angels, is not divorced from married life.  The teaching of the Christian East is that there is no difference in kind between the spirituality of a monk and the spirituality of a married Christian; instead, there is only a difference in degree.  Thus modern Orthodox writers can rightly declare, “Each one should be a monk and ascetic in his heart” and “Not all can become monks in the full sense…but all are saved by their approximation of the monastic life” (Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church; Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology).  The monastic life is thus not self-enclosed, but it is a life that is to be shared by all Christians, to some degree.  St. John Klimakos (John of the Ladder) summarizes all of these thoughts when he writes, “Angels are a light for monks and the monastic life is a light for all men” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26).

 

The Revelation of St. John speaks of those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes, and the Church has traditionally ascribed this text to describing virgins and monks (Rev 14:4).  But this path of the Lamb is not only for monks: “No doubt even married people can follow those footsteps; even if they do not put their feet exactly in the same footprints, at least they walk the same path” (St. Augustine, Holy Virginity, 28,28).  The footsteps the married walk in are not always easier; indeed, St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite recounts that St. John Chrysostom criticized the married who did not read the Scriptures: when they retorted that they could not because they were not monks, John “urged the laity to read the Scriptures even more than the monks, precisely because they are in the world and in the midst of greater temptations and they need the fortification of the Scriptures to struggle against evil each day” (A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel).  Monks may have more subtle difficulties by demons’ attacks, by physical weakness due to fasting and penance, and by temptations to pride or acedia, but married Christians have the difficulties of being tied to a world that passes away, of being bombarded by the weight of that life’s stresses, and of being tempted to distraction or hedonism.  Monks may have the pleasures of a life that is a prologue of the prayerful bliss of Heaven, but married Christians have the pleasures of familial love proclaimed by the Psalms, as well as more earthly pleasures.  (Of course, married Christians can also have the pleasures of prayer, and monks can have the pleasures of a spiritual family.)  Both states thus have their own difficulties and pleasures, but both are paths to holiness.  Even if we are not living that higher life of the virginal monks, let us not despair of our salvation: if we are following the Lord’s vocation for us, then we, too, will be with Him forever in Heaven, that “incomprehensible dance of the angels” where there is no pain, no grief, and no sighing, but everlasting life (St. Andrew of Crete, Homily on the Dormition II.5).