Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

A TIME TO GO ONPILGRIMAGE 137marry, have children, and maintain relationships in their familiesfor reasons of prestige, or for reasons of control and power. Theyoften humiliate others and subjugate them to their will. Or theymarry out of their insecurities and their needs which must be metby others. They marry to fulfill themselves through others. In all ofthis, seeking the good of the other is not the primary goal of manyfamily men. Consequently, without the religious life witnessing tosomething transcendent, family life could be eroded.By sacrificing the goals of prestige and control and power, bysacrificing even the desire to fulfill himself and to address his insecurities,the monk concretizes great values. He evidences the virtueof humility by his submission to God’s will; he exercises the virtueof charity by his service to others and by placing the needs of othersabove his own. His heart and mind are sanctified by the worshipthat he continuously gives to God. These values ultimately infusenot only the monastery, but also the Church the monasteryserves and, therefore, all the families of that Church. All peoplewho come as pilgrims to the monastery are blessed by the reinforcementof these values. All readers of monastic hagiography, allthose who were ever romanced by the ideals or the reality of themonastery are enriched by the vocation of the monk. Therefore,the families of the Church in Egypt are ultimately strengthened,even if in some immediate sense they are seemingly weakened bythis or that particular monastic vocation.In addition, it occurred to me that, in terms of an anthropologicalanalysis, while the monk’s vocation to a monastery seeminglytrivializes secular life and diminishes the value of self-seeking relationshipsor merely natural family relationships, it simultaneouslyinverts the wealth, the status, and the prestige of the secular world.That is, by what he sacrifices he shows the relative value of his vocation;he demonstrates the proportional level of his commitment.That is why monasteries frequently boast about members whohave given up much to enter. The would-be engineer or physicianmay have lost his worldly position, but the magnitude of themonk’s sacrifice becomes his ultimate success. Those who give upmuch seemingly lose much, but, in the loss, they obtain for themselvesand for their monastery a different kind of wealth: the prestigeof great self-donation by which the value of the alternative socialorder of the Church is reinforced.