When the Homily is about Immunology

Huw and the Orthodox View of Marriage

Susan and I have been reading Preserve Them O Lord, a book written for married or to-be married couples from an Orthodox perspective. It is quite good and I had intended on bringing some of what I have learned here, but the newly illumined Huw (grin) has written something that really pours the foundation of what I would have to say (and learn) about marriage. He writes:

What cinched this for me was Pomazansky's "Orthodox Dogmatic Theology" and Yannaras' "Freedom of Morality." Both of them offered me a view of the Mystery of Matrimony not as a way the church blesses a relationship and "allows" them to have sex, but rather as a way of redeeming human relationships - as creating a church in the home. Within this blessing sex is no longer "the thing we do because we, as human animals, have this internal thing that makes us want to do it..." Rather it becomes the furthering of the unity of the Husband and Wife in the icon that they are for us of the unity of the Church: their salvation together in marriage shows us how to be saved together in the Church. It is not permission to have sex: it is redemption of sex - human love bringing forth new life sealing in one flesh the unity.

SALVIFIC!