7. Unity of Home and Family in the Faith (Part VIII of IX)
When I first began this series of reflections on why I was attracted to Orthodoxy, I did not intentionally leave this topic for last. It was an accident that I ordered the topics in the way that I did. Yet this topic is, in many ways, the one closest to my heart. And as it so happens, there have been in the last few weeks events that have made this among the most exciting of any of these topics. (I'll reflect on some of those in the next--and last--reflection.)
In his Ephesians homilies, St John Chrysostom calls the home "a little church." This had had an immense impact on my life and thought.
Apart from the Orthodox Church, it was my heritage churches that provided me with the concept of the Christian home. We were taught that theology and practice of such texts as Ephesians 5.21ff, Proverbs 31, and 1 Peter 3.1ff. Prayer was to be central to the Christian home. A Christian home was one in which all the members participated in the worship and teaching of the church, in mission and evangelistic work, and sought to live a life of Christian character.
But what was lacking was, in a real sense, familial union. Indeed, rejecting infant baptism, there was the odd setting in which one or more of the children might not have been in real union with the family by way of the Gospel. In fact, lacking any real sacramental theology, the struggle of faith in my churches' understanding, was moral exertion as radically individual. My family might acept the same doctrines theoretically, and go to the same fellowship, but the sort of Christian union which bound us was more intellectual than it was ontological.
I came into the Episcopal Church as an adult. In the Episcopal Church I could discern no overt teaching on the Christian home. Although the Episcopal Church lays claim to sacramental theology, any moral exertion was either almost exclusively through political activist causes or through the lense of individual piety. So while a family might conceivably find an important and real union at the altar rail, there was no other teaching or example in my experience of what the Christian home was to be except that of individuals promoting causes or engaging in pious practices alone. (Indeed, in my own limited experience, most of the teaching in the Episcopal Church on the Christian home were efforts at explaining why it is the case that husbands are not the head of the Christian household in the traditional sense.)
In Orthodoxy, my expeirence has been strikingly different to my past. Even more so than was the case in my heritage churches, the Orthodox affirm the Christian husband as the head of the household, whose ministry is sacrificial love and faithful leadership. Although a husband who is a layman may not, for example, pronounce absolution of his family's sins, in a very real way, his leadership is a priesthood. One of the roles of the Christian husband and father is to bless. And so every night I pray over Sofie and anoint her with holy water. The Christian husband and father leads the family in the faith. And so by example primarily, though also by teaching, I have affirmed the doctrines of the Church (as well as the truth of the claims of the Orthodox Church), not the least of which is the role of public worship. The family, in the Orthodox Church, is united by Baptism and Chrismation and by their common communion in the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Orthodox Church is like my heritage churches in that it affirms the husband as head of the home and his role in teaching the faith, prayer and example of life, and leading in worship. But Orthodoxy differs in that it provides a real ontological union in Christ in a way that surpasses that of my more intellectualized and individualized heritage churches.
The Orthodox Church is like the Episcopal Church in that there is the assertion of union of the home in the sacraments. But it differs in that it undermines this unity it its silence on, if not outright denial of, the New Testament teaching on the roles of the husband and father in the Christian home.
Or to say it another way, the positive aspects of the teaching on the home found in my heritage churches and in the Episcopal Church are similarly affirmed and surpassed in Orthodoxy. And those deficiencies that exist in these churches are filled up with the fullness of the historic Faith.
In Orthdoxy, the Church does not cease to be at the threshold of the Christian home. Rather it takes up the home and fulfills its true essence in the ordering of the ome under the headship of Christ and the union of each and all family members in his Body and Blood.
[Please note: Speaking as I must about my previous and present church experiences in light of my attraction to Orthodoxy, I must necessarily and frequently take up a critical stance to many aspects of these experiences. But I have also tried to offer honest and heartfelt positive appraisals where I can.]
Next: Conclusion: What Remains; or, Why I Haven't Yet Been Chrismated
Posted by Clifton at December 1, 2003 05:30 AM | TrackBack