The following are extracts of stories about Elder Porphyrios giving advice on the topic of marriage – about if to get married or be celibate, how to fix a broken marriage, about how to pick the right partner, and i think a few other things. I present them here merely as a GUIDE of how someone could be successful in marriage or celibacy. These stories are about specific scenarios pertaining to a specific person, and it’s unwise to wholly, absolutely apply it to yourself.
Elder Porphyrios himself was very big on individualized pastoral care. He often told people not to share the advice he gave them to others, and that what could work for them would not work for others. A book said as well “that 10 people could come to him with the same problem and he’d give 10 different answers”. One or two books about him, really tried to emphasis this concept. It’s also been said that “One person’s medicine is another person’s poison.”
Hence these are GUIDES for specific cases, specific people and specific personalities. However, I am sure they are still very edifying and insightful and can reflect certain aspects of our souls and aspirations.
How does one find the right answers for themselves to answer questions related to a desire to be married or celibate?
- Pray about it as often and as fervently as possible
- Consult your confession father and mature, spiritual friends
- Be patient
- Don’t despair
- Read about marriage from solid Orthodox sources, including stories of how the saints dealt with it when they were approached about it
Hence, please don’t blame me, if by reading something on this page, you completely and carelessly think it’s applicable to you, and you refuse to test your convictions/ideas by other reliable sources, your experiences and your teachers. Be guided holistically and wisely, my reader! Happy reading my friends!
All the below extracts are taken from the book “With Elder Porphyrios: A Spiritual Child Remembers” by Constantine Yiannitsiotis.
He helps someone form a family
The Elder directed those who desired to be married towards the creation of a truly happy family. He told me the following with regard to this: “A good young man came to me and asked me to help him form a Christian family. I told him to find a modest and chaste girl from a village, outside of Athens. He listened to me.
He found a girl with a very good soul in a village. He liked her, and proposed marriage. They got married, and had some beautiful children, little dolls. Now they live a simple, and happy, family life.” The Elder saw that the many, complicated and farfetched worldly merits of candidates for marriage, was anything but a guarantee of happiness in marriage.
Prayer helps an older single lady find a match
The Elder helped those who wanted to get married. One day he said to me, “One day an older single lady visited me. She had a good character, but had despaired of marriage. I told her that we should pray together about her difficulty before the icon of the Mother of God. As soon as we had finished praying I said, “You’ll get married, and very soon.”
She went back to her village and was soon visited by a matchmaker. She told her that a good man, a Greek-Australian had come to Greece to find a wife but had been disappointed and would leave the next day without having achieved anything. She suggested a meeting. The meeting happened the next day, and the day after that the engagement, and in a few days the marriage and the departure for Australia.”
An acquaintance of mine told me that the Elder united him with his wife. Not only that, but he protected them from future pitfalls. He said that, “If the Elder had not been by our side our marriage would have blown up in the air.”
Confronting the mistake of picking the wrong partner
Someone who had made a rushed and completely emotional choice for a wife. He had grave marital and more generally family problems that he discussed with the Elder. On one occasion he said to him, “Anyway, you have made the great mistake. That cannot be fixed. Now we’ll see how we can confront the consequences of the mistake with the greatest success.” The Elder was a realist. He did not idealise the visitor’s mistaken choice, but he also did not let him become disappointed, when he became consciously aware of the irrevocability of his mistake. He led him into an effort for the best confrontation of the disagreeable effects of the mistake and this effort was a success, acceptable to God.
“Your Little Child Will Unite You”
The Elder told a couple that had intense difficulties, which troubled their small child, “You two are now separated, but your little child will unite you. Don’t quarrel in front of him, because you’ll wound his soul. Use his innocence as an example. Don’t pull him back with your discord. Let him move forward, and hold you both by the hand, to pull you both forward too. You child in the middle and you to the left and to the right of him, held by his little hands so that you can all move forward and upward together.”
It was some vivid advice from the Elder, which lent itself to an artist’s canvas. It reminds one of Christ’s words, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the Kingdom of God” (Mk. 10: 14) and “unless you are converted and become as little It was some vivid advice from the Elder, which lent itself to an artist’s canvas. It reminds one of Christ’s words, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the Kingdom of God” (Mk. 10: 14) and “unless you are converted and become as little”.
Finding it hard to break-up an unhealthy relationship
The Elder helped normalise “mixed-up” situations. This was, of course, on the precondition that the interested person would also contribute. Once, a young man wanted to form a proper family, and thought about proposing marriage to a sincere young lady. However, he considered it necessary to ask the Elder before doing anything. He went to visit him.
When the Elder saw him he said, “I see that your soul is disordered. You keep an old, sick relationship with an unstable girl on hold. When you are with her, she is bored with you; she looks down on you and rejects you. When you go away, she’s jealous of you, she wants you and she calls you. If you do not break it off with her once and for all, you will not be freed, to form the family that you want. Now she’s rejected you. If she calls you to explain, supposedly repentant, don’t go. You’ll only end up staying with her again and you’ll continue with the same story, without stop.”
The young man did not listen to him. At her first invitation he went, with self-assurance, in order to clear up the matter in person. The result was that he stayed with her and the Elder’s prediction was fulfilled.
Admin’s comment: I feel like the last paragraph could’ve been better recorded and elaborated, but that’s all that was written in the book.
Instability is bad!
Sometimes the “mix-up” was deeper and its solution was not just a matter of correct handling of an external problem. The Elder recounted, “A girl used to come to me from time to time. I saw her soul from the very first moment. She visited a women’s monastery once.
One day the Abbess came to me. “What should I do with that girl, Elder?” she said to me. “She’s very much desires to become a nun.” I replied, “Do not make her a nun.” She did not listen to me and she dressed her up as one. Some time later the Abbess came to visit me again. She was very upset. “I made a great mistake by not listening to you,” she told me. “That girl threw away her monastic robes, and she was seen dancing in worldly clothes at some celebration.”
“What am I to do with you now?” I said to her. A few days passed and what would you know, the girl came to see me. “I’m in despair,” she said, “I’m in two minds. I don’t know if I should become a nun or get married.” I said to her, “You should do neither. You won’t do as a nun, or as a married woman. The only place for you is the hippie-camp at Matala. You do whatever you find in front of you.”
“Why?” she asked angrily. “Because,” I said to her, “You’re not stable. You are like a windmill that blows in whichever direction the wind blows. If you find yourselves with Christians you are a Christian, if you find yourself with worldly people you are worldly, if you found yourself with hippies you would go to Matala with them. Sometimes you go here, at other times there, you have not obtained your own convictions.”
“With her crankiness, she’ll make you and you’ll make her holy.”
Someone that I knew was considering a match proposed for himself. However, he was hesitant because he saw that the proposed bride had some grave faults. I advised him to visit the Elder. He discerned and listed all the faults of the prospective wife and finished off by saying enigmatically, “But marriage is like that.”
“How is it like that, Elder?” he asked him. The Elder replied, “Well, with her crankiness, she’ll make you and you’ll make her holy.” With this he evidently meant that if he married her he would have to exercise patience, tolerance, understanding of others, forgiveness and, in general, all the virtues. Consequently, he would become a saint. Upon hearing this, the interested party rejected the match made for him. He was not bold enough to follow such a path to sanctification.
“Onward Now to Holiness”
A believing young man, who had become engaged to a young lady who was rather indifferent to the faith, visited the Elder, to get his advice. The Elder, who found himself before an accomplished fact, immediately “saw” the weaknesses of the fiancee. He told him characteristically, “Onward now to holiness. There is no other solution for you. Make a great effort to become holy, more and more so each day. Your wife will see your face shine with Christ’s joy and will envy you and want to imitate you.” The Elder found the most suitable solution to each and every problem.
* Admin’s comment: keep in mind, engagements in Orthodoxy, can still be broken. No harm, no foul. But maybe in Greek society, a few decades ago, it was really frowned upon to break up, even an engagement.
To marry or not
With a company of six or seven friends, who were all single then, we sat under a pine tree one summer afternoon listening to the Elder talk to us about the matter. “Don’t be tormented by the problem of choosing between marriage and celibacy. Sometimes days come when you have great desires of the flesh and soul for marriage, and sometimes those desires withdraw, because you feel divine desires, more than marriage. When pleasure – seeking temptations come do not try and drive them away by force, because Satan benefits. He makes them even more attractive and harms you. It is better to face them calmly and convert them from sinfulness to purity.
Say, “We may get married and enjoy the pleasures of marital relations, as Christ wants. When desires for virginity come, accept them with gratitude, secretly cultivating the art of sanctification. At some point, the scales will fall down on one side or the other. Others try to become holy by fighting against their passions and their sins, and others by loving Christ and His will. The former achieve only a few things, because their effort is very cold and hard. The latter achieve a lot more, because by loving Christ sinful passions lose their appeal and power before the joy and love of Christ that they feel. When dawn breaks and the light of the sun enters your room all the darkness leaves immediately and unavoidably.”
The Elder stopped speaking and it seemed like he was thinking about something. Then he spoke again, “Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ll tell you anyway: Someone may reach quite a mature age and still be in two minds about marriage and celibacy. Then Satan will attack him as harshly as he can. He’ll make him panic in his soul about being unmarried. Then he’ll anxiously start looking for a spouse. He’ll ask people to find him a spouse. They laugh at him all together and he will end up in state of sickness of soul. That’s why I’m telling you not to get stuck on the question – marriage or celibacy? Rather than wearing yourself out, vainly trying to find the answer for yourself, spend all your effort in trying to love Christ with all your soul. Then He will give you, at the most suitable time, the answer that suits your soul. You’ll accept it not with force or distress, but calmly with thanksgiving. Then you’ll be freed from that question forever. You’ll walk along the right road, giving glory to God.”
Either way could work
A friend was facing the dilemma of marriage or celibacy. The Elder offered many prospects of salvation and so he was freed from the anxiety of the dilemma, even before he had decided one way or the other. He did this by saying, “Don’t torment yourself unfairly, by putting pressure on yourself to make the choice now. Free yourself from that persistent thought and give all your attention to how to love Christ who loves you. Everything belongs to Christ, our past as well as our present and our future, where His Providence is revealed even to the very last detail of our lives. You could have a family; you could go, wherever you like, to dedicate yourself. You could, however, do none of those things and stay at home, as you are now, again you can be saved, it is enough that you love Christ. Christ will bring about the solution that suits you most, that will speak clearly in your heart. Do not be sad, you are on Christ’s road even now.”
Being attached to an old crush
Another friend had great difficulty in getting married. The Elder revealed to him that the deep down cause of his long drawn out inhibitions towards marriage was a teenage crush that was not realised. He said to him, “You loved her with all the strength of your soul. You made her your life’s ideal. You were wounded by her indifference. You were broken in two. You tried to find her face in the face of every girl that they had arranged for you as a match. But, since that was impossible, your heart has remained shut.” With the Elder’s help, he became consciously aware of this hidden obstacle; he was freed from it, once and for all, and thus able to form his own family.
“You suit both” and “The most important thing, everything, is for a person to love Christ and all other problems are then sorted out”
Someone that I knew went and asked the Elder what suited him more: marriage in Christ or virginity in Christ. He got a quite unexpected answer from the Elder: “You suit both.” Following that answer he asked, which of them was more in his interests, since both were within reach. The Elder, in his discretion, did not give him an answer. Perhaps he decided that there was no reason for him to give it, because it already exists in the Gospel. That man was clearly one of those “to whom it had been given” and consequently “he could accept the saying” (Matt. 19: 11) about practising virginity for the “kingdom of heaven”.
Despite this, the Elder waited for certain defining events to happen. He then told him, what had also become apparent to the man in question. He told him that God had now spoken to him clearly about him about what was in his best interests, both according to the Gospel and events. He reached the point of telling him, “If you, however, prefer marriage you are free to choose it even now. Anyway, I ring an alarm bell. My dear, marriages are beyond us now.”
With delightful modesty, he placed himself amongst those who could no longer think about marriage. This, despite the fact, as well known, he had made his choice from his boyhood and had never thought of marriage.
The Elder’s visitor made his final decision and settled the matter for himself. Now, however, he had to face his parents. He had not told them of his decision, in order not to upset them, and they, unawares, put pressure on him to form a family. This created some irritation for him and he turned to the Elder again. The Elder quite naturally repeated word for word all that his parents had told him regarding the matter, as though he had been in man’s house. “Now your parents are saying, “How long will you remain like that? It’s time you settled down. It’s time you start your own home, with your wife and children. If you remain like that who’s going to look after you in your old age?” Don’t misunderstand them.
They are also right from their point of view. If you were in their position, you would say the same thing. They look at things in a secular manner. They want you to live well and to have a good old age. But aren’t there more than a few people who form a family, are deserted by their children and have a difficult old age? The most important thing, everything, is for a person to love Christ and all other problems are then sorted out.” My acquaintance expressed his admiration for the Elder to me. With great discretion the Elder had focused him towards what was in his greatest interest, but also justified his parents stance, and his own, with understanding.
The Art of Orthodoxy 