What is the right relationship
the couple, the man and the woman, should have upon entering the new stage of
their life? Married life has been understood by many in a number of ways,
according to their beliefs, their philosophical, ideological, social, economic,
traditional and religious beliefs. However, the Orthodox Church shows the
richness of this relationship through its Marriage Service, found in the
Euchologion of the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, St John Chrysostom below
gives a revolutionary understanding of marriage, which applies not only in his
time, but also today:
‘Through fear you may bind a
servant, though he will not be long in escaping: but it is not by fear or
threats that you can bind the companion of your life, the mother of your children,
the well-spring of your happiness, but only by love and affection. What is a
household where the wife trembles before her husband? What joy is there for a
husband when he lives with his wife as with a slave and not with a free woman?’[1]
[1]
Quoted by Jean Meyendorff in Le marriage
dans la perspective orthodoxe, YMCA Press/O.E.I.L., Paris, 1986, p. 120.
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